Project Mogul: Difference between revisions

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→‎Roswell incident: Better to simply delete this section. There is no documentation to support that a Mogul balloon caused the Roswell incident.. All such balloons were accounted for.
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Echoes of Mogul's experimental [[infrasound]] detection of nuclear tests exist today in ground-based detectors, part of so-called [[Geophysical MASINT]] (Measurement And Signal INTelligence). In 2013, this world-wide network of sound detectors picked up the large explosion of the [[Chelyabinsk meteor]] in Russia (see Chelyabinsk article for details). The strength of the sound waves was used to estimate the size of the explosion.
Echoes of Mogul's experimental [[infrasound]] detection of nuclear tests exist today in ground-based detectors, part of so-called [[Geophysical MASINT]] (Measurement And Signal INTelligence). In 2013, this world-wide network of sound detectors picked up the large explosion of the [[Chelyabinsk meteor]] in Russia (see Chelyabinsk article for details). The strength of the sound waves was used to estimate the size of the explosion.

==Roswell incident==
{{main|Roswell UFO incident}}
In the summer of 1947 a Project Mogul balloon crashed in the desert near [[Roswell, New Mexico]]. The subsequent military cover-up of the true nature of the balloon and burgeoning conspiracy theories from UFO enthusiasts led to a celebrated "UFO" incident.<ref name=olmsted>{{cite book|author=Kathryn S. Olmsted|title=Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=u7Sd5vyOOtEC&pg=PA184|date=11 March 2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-975395-6|pages=184|quote=When one of these balloons smashed into the sands of the New Mexico ranch, the military decided to hide the project's real purpose.}}</ref>


==References==
==References==

Revision as of 18:55, 16 December 2014

Project Mogul (sometimes referred to as Operation Mogul) was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving microphones flown on high altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests. The project was carried out from 1947 until early 1949. The project was moderately successful, but was very expensive and was superseded by a network of seismic detectors and air sampling for fallout, which were cheaper, more reliable, and easier to deploy and operate.

Project Mogul was conceived by Dr. Maurice Ewing who had earlier researched the deep sound channel in the oceans and theorized that a similar sound channel existed in the upper atmosphere: a certain height where the air pressure and temperature result in minimal speed of sound, so that sound waves would propagate and stay in that channel due to refraction. The project involved arrays of balloons carrying disc microphones and radio transmitters to relay the signals to the ground. It was supervised by Dr. James Peoples, who was assisted by Dr. Albert P. Crary.

One of the requirements of the balloons was that they maintain a relatively constant altitude over a prolonged period of time. (See aerostat.) Thus instrumentation had to be developed to maintain such constant altitudes, such as pressure sensors controlling the release of ballast.

The early Mogul balloons consisted of large clusters of rubber meteorological balloons, however, these were quickly replaced by enormous balloons made of polyethylene plastic. These were more durable, leaked less helium, and also were better at maintaining a constant altitude than the early rubber balloons. Constant altitude control and polyethylene balloons were the two major innovations of Project Mogul.

Project Mogul was the forerunner of the Skyhook balloon program, which started in the late 1940s, as well as two other espionage programs involving overflights and photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s, Project Moby Dick and Project Genetrix. The spy balloon overflights raised storms of protest from the Soviets.[1] The constant-altitude balloons also were used for scientific purposes such as cosmic ray experiments.

Echoes of Mogul's experimental infrasound detection of nuclear tests exist today in ground-based detectors, part of so-called Geophysical MASINT (Measurement And Signal INTelligence). In 2013, this world-wide network of sound detectors picked up the large explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor in Russia (see Chelyabinsk article for details). The strength of the sound waves was used to estimate the size of the explosion.

References

External links