ligence Agency considered in January 1953 the UFO issue in the United States. [I-18] After a lengthy discussion, members of the panel "concluded that reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings." Moreover, concerning one of the central questions this body had about UFOs, it "concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the objects sighted.'

1180

A report released by the Air Force in 1957 reached similar conclusions. It said:

first, there is no evidence that the "unknowns" were inimical or hostile; second, there is no evidence that these “unknowns” were interplanetary space ships; third, there is no evidence that these unknowns represented technological developments or principles outside the range of our present day scientific knowledge; fourth, there is no evidence that these "unknowns" were a threat to the security of the country; and finally there was no physical evidence or material evidence, not even a minute fragment, of a so-called "flying saucer" was ever found.81

Even with these studies, however, a fair percentage of Americans still believed that UFOS were probably of extraterrestrial origin.

Explanations of why several thousand people saw something they could not identify and thought was an extraterrestrial spacecraft have ranged far and wide. Humanity has long been intensely interested in supernatural occurrences. The ancient Greeks had their gods who came down from Mount Olympus; people of the Medieval era saw appearances of angels, the Virgin, and devils, as well as fairies and elves. UFO sightings in the 1940s and 1950s-none of which apparently produced any physical evidence-are essentially in the same category.

Humans have always been fascinated and terrified of the unknown. While some feared the stars and planets, others studied them. While some spoke of "the harmony of the spheres," others warned that comets and other stellar phenomena foretold of humanity's destruction. Reports of encounters with extraterrestrials were a response to the duality of fascination and terror of humanity over contact with alien species. Some of the reports were in part a Cold War phenomenon, as Americans longed for the help of a benevolent, wise, and powerful alien race who could chaperon humanity through the possibility of nuclear holocaust à la Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Some reported incidents were negative, harkening back to the terror expressed in Wells' War of the Worlds. Some reports reflected American perception of the technological possibilities of space travel. Moreover, if the Earth was on the verge of a space age, what about more advanced civilizations on other worlds? Might they someday journey to Earth? To some the UFOs spoke to the nightmares of humanity. But to others they spoke to some of the sublime dreams of humanity, and they were therefore significant at the time because of what they signaled about public perceptions of what was possible in the emergent space age."

Conclusion

82

The combination of technological and scientific advance, political competition with the Soviet Union, and changes in popular opinion about spaceflight came together in a very specific way in the 1950s to affect public policy in favor of an aggressive space program. This found tangible expression in 1952 when the International Council of Scientific

80. "Report of Meetings of Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects Convened by Office of Scientific Intelligence, CIA, January 14-18, 1953," copy in "NACA-UFO, 1948-1958," folder, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

81. "Air Force's 10 Year Study of Unidentified Flying Objects," Department of Defense, Office of Public Information, News Release No. 1083-58, November 5, 1957, copy in "NACA-UFO, 1948-1958," folder, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

82. Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (New York: Ballantine Books, 1974), pp. 65-70; Philip Klass, UFOs Explained (New York: Random House, 1974); Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, eds., UFOs: A Scientific Debate (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1973).

Unions (ICSU) started planning for an International Polar Year, the third in a series of scientific activities designed to study geophysical phenomena in remote reaches of the planet. The Council agreed that July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958, would be the period of emphasis in polar research, in part because of a predicted expansion of solar activity; the previous polar years had taken place in 1882-1883 and 1932-1933. Late in 1952 the ICSU expanded the scope of the scientific research effort to include studies that would be conducted using rockets with instrument packages in the upper atmosphere and changed the name to the International Geophysical Year (IGY) to reflect the larger scientific objectives. In October 1954 at a meeting in Rome, Italy, the Council adopted another resolution calling for the launch of artificial satellites during the IGY to help map the Earth's surface. The Soviet Union immediately announced plans to orbit an IGY satellite, virtually assuring that the United States would respond, and this, coupled with the military satellite program, set both the agenda and the stage for most space efforts through 1958. The next year the United States announced Project Vanguard, its own IGY scientific satellite program. 83

By the end of 1956, less than a year before the launch of Sputnik, the United States was involved in two modest space programs that were moving ahead slowly and staying within strict budgetary constraints. One was a highly visible scientific program as part of the IGY, and the other was a highly classified program to orbit a military reconnaissance satellite. They shared two attributes. They each were separate from the ballistic missile program underway in the Department of Defense, but they shared in the fruits of its research and adapted some of its launch vehicles. They also were oriented toward satisfying a national goal of establishing "freedom of space" for all orbiting satellites. The IGY scientific effort could help establish the precedent of access to space, while a military satellite might excite other nations to press for limiting such access. Because of this goal a military satellite, in which the Eisenhower Administration was most interested, could not under any circumstances precede scientific satellites into orbit. The IGY satellite program, therefore, was a means of securing the larger goal of open access to space. Before it could do so, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and began the space age in a way that had not been anticipated by the leaders of the United States.

83. A good account of the IGY satellite projects can be found in Bulkeley, Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy, pp. 89-122.

Documents I-1 and I-2

Document title: Medieval universe at the time of Dante, as presented in The Divine Comedy, from Edward R. Harrison, Cosmology: The Science of the Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 77.

Document title: The infinite universe of Thomas Digges, from Edward R. Harrison, Cosmology: The Science of the Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 79. Source: Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

The ancient conception of the universe as Christianized by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century was carried to its logical conclusion by Dante in his classic work, The Divine Comedy. In this representation, I-1, hell became a nether-region inside the Earth's crust, purgatory was the sunlunar region, and the ethereal regions were found to be ideal for the residence of hierarchies of angelic beings. The astronomer and mathematician Thomas Digges modified Dante's medieval conceptions of the universe in his Description of the Caelestiall Orbes (1576), 1-2, by adopting a Copernican view that placed the Sun in the center of the universe and by eliminating the outermost of the crystalline orbs and dispersing stars throughout an infinite universe beyond.

Document title: Edward E. Hale, "The Brick Moon," The Atlantic Monthly, October 1869, pp. 451-60, November 1869, pp. 603-11, December 1869, pp. 679-88, February 1870, pp. 215-22. Also published in His Level Best, and Other Stories (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873) pp. 30-124.

Edward Everett Hale was an author and clergyman who was best known for his 1863 short story "The Man Without a Country" (about a member of the Burr Conspiracy being exiled from the United States) He was widely regarded as one of the foremost literary figures of his time and was the primary speaker at Gettysburg in 1863 when Lincoln gave his famous address.

According to Hale, the idea for "The Brick Moon" was inspired by Richard Adams Locke's Moon Hoax. Hale further stated that while attending Cambridge University in 1838, the idea came from “an old chart, dreams and plans of college days" and was written while working in a room of his brother's, a professor, at Union College, Schenectady, New York, in 1869. The story was serialized in October, November, and December 1869 in The Atlantic Monthly, and a short sequel, “Life in the Brick Moon," appeared in the same magazine in February 1870.

Despite claims by both the Germans and Russians that Oberth and Tsiolkovskiy were the first to discuss Earth satellites, Hale's story is the first account of an artificial Earth satellite. In addition to being the first to mention the concept, Hale also outlined several uses for such an object, navigation being the most important in his view.

The Brick Moon

FROM THE PAPERS OF CAPTAIN FREDERIC INGHAM

I. PREPARATION.

[451] I have no sort of objection now to telling the whole story. The subscribers, of course, have a right to know what became of their money. The astronomers may as well know all about it, before they announce any more asteroids with an enormous movement in declination. And experimenters on the longitude may as well know, so that they may act advisedly in attempting another brick moon or in refusing to do so.

It all began more than thirty years ago, when we were in college; as most good things begin. We were studying in the book which has gray sides and a green back, and is called "Cambridge Astronomy" because it is translated from the French. We came across this business of the longitude, and, as we talked, in the gloom and glamour of the old South Middle dining-hall, we had going the usual number of students' stories about rewards offered by the Board of Longitude for discoveries in that matter,-stories, all of which, so far as I know, are lies. Like all boys, we had tried our hands at perpetual motion. For me, I was sure I could square the circle, if they would give me chalk enough. But as to this business of the longitude, it was reserved for Q, to make the happy hit and to explain it to the rest of us.

I wonder if I can explain it to an unlearned world, which has not studies the book with gray sides and a green cambric back. Let us try.

You know then, dear world that when you look at the North Star, it always appears to you at just the same height above the horizon or what is between you and the horizon: say the Dwight School-house, or the houses in Concord Street; or to me, just now, North College. You know also that, if you were to travel to the North Pole, the North Star would be just over your head. And, if you were to travel to the equator, it would be just on your horizon, if you could see it at all through the red, dusty, hazy mist in the north,-—as you could not. If you were just half-way between pole and equator, on the line [452] between us and Canada, the North Star would be half-way up, or 45° from the horizon. So you would know there that you were 45° from the equator. There in Boston, you would find it was 42°20' from the horizon. So you know there that you are 42°20' from the equator. At Seattle again you would find it was 47°40' high, so our friends at Seattle know that they are at 47°40' from the equator. The latitude of a place, in other words, is found very easily by any observation which shows how high the North Star is; if you do not want to measure the North Star, you may take any star when it is just to north of you, and measure its height; wait twelve hours, and if you can find it, measure its height again. Split the difference, and that is the altitude of the pole, or the latitude of you, the observer.

"Of course we know this," says the graduating world. "Do you suppose that is what we borrow your book for, to have you spell out your miserable elementary astronomy?” At which rebuff I should shrink distressed, but that a chorus of voices an octave higher comes up with, “Dear Mr. Ingham, we are ever so much obliged to you; we did not know it at all before, and you make it perfectly clear."

Thank you, my dear, and you, and you. We will not care what the others say. If you do understand it, or do know it, it is more than Mr. Charles Reade knew, or he would not have made his two lovers on the island guess at their latitude, as they did. If they had either of them been educated at a respectable academy for the Middle Classes, they would have fared better.

Now about the longitude.

The latitude, which you have found, measures your distance north or south from the equator or the pole. To find your longitude, you want to find your distance east or west from the meridian of Greenwich. Now if any one would build a good tall tower at Greenwich, straight into the sky,—say a hundred miles into the sky, of course if you and I were