[
{
"id": "orion",
"title": "Project Orion",
"doc": "Nuclear Pulse Vehicle Study: Condensed Summary Report (GA-4891)",
"agency": "NASA Marshall · General Atomic",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A spaceship pushed by nuclear bombs",
"hook": "A spaceship pushed by nuclear bombs set off behind it, one after another. Freeman Dyson worked on it.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19760065935",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Condensed summary report (GA-4891) of a 1964 General Atomic study for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Project Orion, a spacecraft propelled by small nuclear explosions detonated behind it.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Orion began at General Atomic, San Diego, in 1958 under physicist Ted Taylor, with funding first from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and later from the Air Force and NASA. The concept, first sketched by Stanislaw Ulam at Los Alamos, called for ejecting small nuclear charges behind the ship and absorbing each blast on a thick pusher plate mounted on shock absorbers. Physicist Freeman Dyson worked on the project.\n\n3. FINDINGS. In July 1963 Marshall contracted General Atomic to identify NASA missions for the vehicle, including a version with a 10-meter plate sized for launch on a Saturn V.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No nuclear version flew. A small model, Hot Rod, flew on chemical explosives in 1959. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty eroded political support, and the project was terminated in 1965.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Earth to Mars in 10 Days",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwlTsa9oMM"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Freeman Dyson - Project Orion: Dyson’s work",
"by": "Web of Stories",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToeGbhJDiU4"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Project Orion Nuclear Propulsion - 1950s Tests",
"by": "VideoFromSpace",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Sv5y6iHUM"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship",
"by": "George Dyson",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Project_Orion.html?id=r_Gu4f0QxrkC"
}
]
},
{
"id": "pluto",
"title": "Project Pluto",
"doc": "The Pluto Program (UCRL-6398)",
"agency": "USAF / AEC · Lawrence Radiation Laboratory",
"year": 1961,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A nuclear ramjet cruise missile",
"hook": "A nuclear ramjet cruise missile meant to fly low for weeks. Its unshielded reactor would have irradiated the ground beneath it.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4073736",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. April 1961 report (UCRL-6398) by the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory for the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on Project Pluto, a nuclear ramjet for a low-flying cruise missile.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Pluto ran from 1957 to 1964 at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, directed by Ted Merkle. Its objective was a reactor to power the Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (SLAM), intended to fly low for weeks at about Mach 3 beneath Soviet air defenses. Its unshielded reactor would have irradiated the ground below.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report, by H. L. Reynolds, describes the program and its Tory test reactors, which ran at Jackass Flats on the Nevada Test Site.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Tory II-A reached full power in May 1961. Tory II-C ran for 5 minutes in May 1964, averaging about 480 megawatts. The program was canceled on July 1, 1964, as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) advanced and concern grew over its radioactive exhaust. It had cost about $260 million.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "SLAM - America’s Big Stick & Doomsday Weapon",
"by": "Curious Droid",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZHONQAMV48"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Nuclear-powered Ramjet Cruise Missile: LASV-N1 (Progress Report 1963)",
"by": "What is Nuclear?",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qMuS5kaDBI"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Flying Crowbar: The Insane Doomsday Weapon America Almost Built",
"by": "Jalopnik",
"url": "https://www.jalopnik.com/the-flying-crowbar-the-insane-doomsday-weapon-america-1435286216/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Vought SLAM (Pluto)",
"by": "Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles",
"url": "https://designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/slam.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "nb-36h",
"title": "The NB-36H Nuclear Bomber",
"doc": "Review of Manned Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program (B-146759)",
"agency": "GAO",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A bomber that flew with a live reactor",
"hook": "The GAO’s review of the nuclear airplane program, which flew a B-36 bomber dozens of times with a working reactor aboard.",
"url": "https://www.gao.gov/products/b-146759",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. February 1963 report (B-146759) by the Comptroller General of the United States reviewing the Manned Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program, an effort to build a nuclear-powered bomber.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program was run jointly by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Department of Defense and spent about 15 years and roughly $1 billion. Its flight-test aircraft was the Convair NB-36H, a modified B-36 bomber, which flew 47 times between September 1955 and March 1957 carrying a 1-megawatt reactor that operated during 89 of its flight hours. The reactor did not power the aircraft; it was carried to test shielding. The crew rode in an 11-ton cockpit lined with lead and rubber.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the Defense Department had not given the program sufficient, timely guidance and had reoriented it repeatedly without formalizing the changes.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. President Kennedy canceled the program in March 1961, while it was still at the research stage.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "America’s Insane Plan for Nuclear Powered Planes",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jt924xjaJo"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Convair XB-36H atomic reactor inflight tests",
"by": "Avialogs",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbkQex7Hfz0"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "America’s Lone “Nuclear-Powered” Bomber: Convair NB-36H",
"by": "IHYLS",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfOXK1kQxYQ"
}
]
},
{
"id": "lunar-research-flights",
"title": "A Study of Lunar Research Flights",
"doc": "A Study of Lunar Research Flights, Vol. I",
"agency": "USAF · Armour Research Foundation",
"year": 1959,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A plan to nuke the Moon",
"hook": "A study of setting off a nuclear device on the Moon, partly to show it could be done. A young Carl Sagan did calculations for it.",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon02.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Volume I of a June 1959 study by the Armour Research Foundation for the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Special Weapons Center on detonating a nuclear device on the Moon.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Leonard Reiffel of the Armour Research Foundation at the Illinois Institute of Technology led the study beginning in 1958. It later became known as Project A119. The report’s title gave no indication of its subject. Reiffel later stated that the main aim was to impress the world with American capability.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study examined delivering a nuclear device to the Moon and detonating it on or near the surface. Carl Sagan, then a graduate student, modeled the expansion of the resulting dust cloud and whether it could be seen from Earth.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Air Force dropped the idea after deciding that the risks outweighed the benefits. The study remained unknown to the public until a 1999 Sagan biography led Reiffel to describe it in 2000.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Time We Asked Carl Sagan to Nuke the Moon",
"by": "Kyle Hill",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmYkSYZ6Hfg"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Nuking the moon - The Secret USAF Project A119",
"by": "Curious Droid",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGOPjuA7WdY"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Why the Air Force Almost Blasted the Moon with an H-Bomb",
"by": "HISTORY",
"url": "https://www.history.com/articles/nuclear-bomb-moon-cold-war-plan"
},
{
"type": "podcast",
"title": "Nuke the Moon: Project A119",
"by": "Everything Everywhere Daily",
"url": "https://everything-everywhere.com/nuke-the-moon-project-a119/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "chariot",
"title": "Project Chariot",
"doc": "Bioenvironmental Features of the Ogotoruk Creek Area, Cape Thompson, Alaska (TID-12439)",
"agency": "AEC",
"year": 1960,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A harbor dug with nuclear blasts",
"hook": "A plan to blast a harbor into the coast of Alaska with nuclear explosives. This survey of the site came first.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/bioenvironmental00comm",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1960 report (TID-12439) by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Committee on Environmental Studies for Project Chariot on the bioenvironmental features of the Ogotoruk Creek area, Cape Thompson, Alaska, the proposed site of a harbor to be blasted with nuclear explosives.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Chariot was part of Plowshare, the AEC’s program for peaceful nuclear explosions; Edward Teller was its leading promoter. In 1958 a field team selected Cape Thompson in northwest Alaska, 32 miles from the Inupiat village of Point Hope. The first design called for 6 buried devices totaling 2.4 megatons, later scaled down.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report summarized more than 30 environmental field studies, which raised concerns about radioactivity entering the local food chain.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Point Hope residents, University of Alaska scientists, and conservationists opposed the plan, and in 1962 the AEC set it aside. No nuclear device reached the site. That year the U.S. Geological Survey buried soil carrying fallout from a Nevada test there; the Department of Energy removed it in 1993.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Project Chariot: The US Government’s Plan To Nuke Alaska SIX Times",
"by": "Joe Scott",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0fwWHcPIYk"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Insane Plan to Build a Harbor in Alaska With Nukes",
"by": "RealLifeLore",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9TvC_Nw6Ss"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "A Story 50 Years in the Making",
"by": "KNOM Radio Mission",
"url": "https://knom.org/2014/09/29/a-story-50-years-in-the-making/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "camp-century",
"title": "Camp Century and Project Iceworm",
"doc": "Camp Century: Evolution of Concept and History of Design, Construction and Performance (CRREL TR 174)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · CRREL",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A nuclear base under Greenland’s ice",
"hook": "A nuclear-powered research base under the Greenland ice sheet, and the secret plan to hide missiles in tunnels around it.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0477706.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1965 technical report (TR 174) by the Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) on the design, construction, and performance of Camp Century, a nuclear-powered research base under the Greenland ice sheet.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The U.S. Army built Camp Century in 1959 and 1960 in northwest Greenland, cutting trenches into the ice sheet and roofing them with snow. The base was also a testing ground for Project Iceworm, a classified Army plan to conceal up to 600 shortened Minuteman missiles, designated Iceman, in tunnels under the ice. Denmark was never formally asked.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A portable nuclear reactor, the PM-2A, powered the base from 1960 to 1963. The ice moved faster than expected and crushed the trenches, so Iceworm was dropped.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. In 1966 scientists there finished drilling through the ice to bedrock, and the core became an early record of past climate. The Army abandoned the camp in 1967, leaving diesel fuel, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), sewage, and radioactive waste under the ice.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "How NASA Discovered a Military Base under Greenland",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKP6tYA6ds4"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "What the US Built Under Greenland",
"by": "The B1M",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OndXawgRAeo"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Army Research and Development Progress Report: Camp Century (1964)",
"by": "Nuclear Vault",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28NYczAuXl4"
}
]
},
{
"id": "nerva",
"title": "NERVA",
"doc": "Rover Nuclear Rocket Engine Program: Overview of Rover Engine Tests (NASA-CR-184270)",
"agency": "NASA Marshall · Sverdrup Technology",
"year": 1991,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Nuclear rockets fired in Nevada",
"hook": "The test record of the nuclear rockets built and fired in the Nevada desert from 1959 to 1972.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19920005899",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1991 contractor report (NASA-CR-184270) for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center summarizing tests of the nuclear rocket engines built and fired in Nevada under Project Rover and NERVA from 1959 to 1972.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Rover began at Los Alamos in 1955 to build a nuclear rocket, in which a reactor heats hydrogen and expels it through a nozzle. NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) later added NERVA, with Aerojet and Westinghouse developing flight-style engines. All testing took place at Jackass Flats on the Nevada Test Site.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report, written by J. L. Finseth of Sverdrup Technology, summarizes the test record of the Kiwi, Phoebus, Pewee, NRX, and Nuclear Furnace reactors and the XE-Prime engine. Phoebus 2A peaked above 4,000 megawatts in 1968. In 1965 engineers deliberately destroyed a Kiwi reactor to study a runaway.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA announced the end of the program on January 5, 1973, after about $1.4 billion had been spent. None of the engines flew.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why Nuclear Rockets Are Going To Change Spaceflight",
"by": "Scott Manley",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlKAMB71wT4"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Nuclear Propulsion in Space",
"by": "US National Archives",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDNX65d-FBY"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "To the End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket",
"by": "James A. Dewar",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/To_the_End_of_the_Solar_System.html?id=PjA5PwAACAAJ"
}
]
},
{
"id": "horizon",
"title": "Project Horizon",
"doc": "Project Horizon, Vols. I–II",
"agency": "U.S. Army",
"year": 1959,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "An Army base on the Moon by 1966",
"hook": "The Army’s plan for a military base on the Moon by 1966, with a crew of 12 soldiers.",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Two-volume U.S. Army study, issued in June 1959, of a manned lunar station: a military base on the Moon by 1966 with a crew of 12 soldiers.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Horizon began in March 1959, when Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau, the Army’s chief of research and development, ordered a study of a manned lunar station. Wernher von Braun’s Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville did the work, led by Heinz-Hermann Koelle.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study proposed burying cylindrical metal modules in the lunar soil for protection from radiation and temperature swings, powering the outpost with nuclear reactors, and supplying it with Saturn rockets that had not yet flown.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The plan did not go past the study stage. As space work shifted to the new civilian NASA, the Army sent the plan to the Secretary of Defense in 1960, and he passed it to NASA. Von Braun’s team moved to NASA that year.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Secret US Army Moon Base Plans",
"by": "Curious Droid",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4t59a3y-Ww"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Project Horizon: Army Base on the Moon",
"by": "Defense Media Network",
"url": "https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/an-army-base-on-the-moon/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Project Horizon: ABMA Explores a Lunar Outpost",
"by": "U.S. Army (Sharon Watkins Lang)",
"url": "https://www.army.mil/article/189129/smdc_history_project_horizon_abma_explores_a_lunar_outpost"
}
]
},
{
"id": "space-settlements",
"title": "Space Settlements",
"doc": "Space Settlements: A Design Study (NASA SP-413)",
"agency": "NASA Ames · Stanford",
"year": 1975,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Spinning colonies for 10,000 people",
"hook": "Designs for rotating space colonies of 10,000 people, with widely reproduced paintings of life inside.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770014162",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Design study by NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University, published by NASA as SP-413, of rotating space colonies for 10,000 people.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The report came out of a 10-week summer program in 1975 run by NASA Ames and Stanford with the American Society for Engineering Education. Nineteen professors, six students, and three volunteers took part. Princeton physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, who had spent six years on the idea, was technical director. One student was Eric Drexler, later known for nanotechnology.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The main design, now called the Stanford torus, was a wheel 1,790 meters across, spinning once a minute to simulate Earth’s gravity and parked at L5, a stable point along the Moon’s orbit. Its residents would refine lunar ore and build solar power satellites for Earth.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA published the study in 1977. No settlement was funded. The study’s paintings of life inside, by Don Davis and Rick Guidice, are still widely reproduced.",
"more": [
{
"type": "podcast",
"title": "Home on Lagrange",
"by": "99% Invisible",
"url": "https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/home-on-lagrange/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "This ’70s Artist Painted Our Future In Space",
"by": "Science Friday",
"url": "https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/this-70s-artist-painted-our-future-in-space/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Fred Scharmen on “Space Settlements”",
"by": "Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf0YAe7Lz9A"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space",
"by": "Gerard K. O’Neill",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_High_Frontier.html?id=goFTAAAAMAAJ"
}
]
},
{
"id": "advanced-automation",
"title": "Advanced Automation for Space Missions",
"doc": "Advanced Automation for Space Missions (NASA CP-2255)",
"agency": "NASA · University of Santa Clara",
"year": 1980,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A self-copying factory on the Moon",
"hook": "A study of a factory on the Moon that builds copies of itself.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19830007077",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Conference Publication CP-2255, published in 1982, reporting a study of space missions that would depend on artificial intelligence and robotics, including a factory on the Moon that builds copies of itself.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The 10-week study ran in summer 1980 at the University of Santa Clara, co-hosted by NASA Ames Research Center. Eighteen university educators and 15 NASA engineers took part.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The group selected four missions: a very deep space probe, an asteroid-mining system, an orbiting laboratory for hazardous experiments, and a self-replicating lunar factory. The factory chapter sketched a seed of about 100 tons, landed on the Moon, that would mine local material and build more of itself. In a worked example, making a million tons of solar cells for power satellites would take a non-replicating plant 6,000 years and a replicating one under 20.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Robert Freitas Jr. and William Gilbreath edited the report, published in 1982. None of the missions was built.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Self-Replicating Robots and Galactic Domination",
"by": "PBS Space Time",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H55wybU3rI"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Self Replicating Machines",
"by": "Isaac Arthur",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-96C4ExhWM"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines",
"by": "Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle",
"url": "https://www.molecularassembler.com/KSRM.htm"
}
]
},
{
"id": "space-elevators",
"title": "Space Elevators",
"doc": "Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millennium (AIAA 2000-5294)",
"agency": "NASA Marshall",
"year": 2000,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A cable from the ground to orbit",
"hook": "An engineering look at a cable running from the ground into orbit.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20000105202",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) report 2000-5294, compiled in 2000 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, on space elevators: cables running from the ground into orbit.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The report summarized a 1999 workshop on space elevators at Marshall, sponsored by Marshall’s Advanced Projects Office. David Smitherman of Marshall compiled the findings in 2000.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The structure would run from the equator to geostationary orbit, about 35,786 km up, with its center of mass at that height so it turns with Earth. Payloads, power, and gases would move up and down it, and the workshop estimated it could cut the cost of reaching orbit below $10 per kilogram. The main obstacle was the cable, which would need materials such as carbon nanotubes, put by the report at 100 times stronger than steel. The report judged an elevator possible in the late 21st century.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. In 2009 NASA’s Centennial Challenges paid LaserMotive $900,000 for a laser-powered cable climber.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Are Space Elevators Possible?",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa_xteu_Mts"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why Don’t We Have Space Elevators?",
"by": "Kyle Hill",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eRFAu4RR-U"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Space Elevator",
"by": "Bradley C. Edwards and Eric A. Westling",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Space_Elevator.html?id=DQ5Ls-1cB7kC"
}
]
},
{
"id": "longshot",
"title": "Project Longshot",
"doc": "Project Longshot (NASA-CR-184718)",
"agency": "NASA · U.S. Naval Academy",
"year": 1988,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A fusion probe to Alpha Centauri",
"hook": "Naval Academy midshipmen design an uncrewed fusion-powered probe to Alpha Centauri.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19890007533",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA contractor report NASA-CR-184718, a 1988 U.S. Naval Academy student design for an uncrewed fusion-powered probe to Alpha Centauri.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Seven senior midshipmen in the Naval Academy’s aerospace engineering department did the project over the 1987–88 school year as part of the NASA/Universities Space Research Association (USRA) University Advanced Design Program.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The probe would be launched in modules, assembled at a space station, and pushed by a pulsed fusion engine burning pellets of helium-3 and deuterium, a drive modeled on the British Interplanetary Society’s earlier Daedalus study. A 300-kilowatt fission reactor would supply onboard power, and a laser with 250 kilowatts of input power would send data home at 1,000 bits per second. The trip would take about 100 years. The students put the spacecraft’s weight above 350 metric tons.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No probe was built. The fusion drive it depends on does not yet exist.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Project Longshot: Fast Probe to Centauri",
"by": "Centauri Dreams",
"url": "https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2008/02/06/project-longshot-fast-probe-to-centauri/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "breakthrough-propulsion",
"title": "Breakthrough Propulsion Physics",
"doc": "NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program (NASA/TM-1998-208400)",
"agency": "NASA Lewis",
"year": 1998,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "NASA’s warp drive program",
"hook": "NASA’s official program studying warp drives and propulsion without propellant.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19980201240",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA technical memorandum NASA/TM-1998-208400, written in 1998 by Marc Millis, on the methods of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project and the results of its first workshop.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. NASA started the project in 1996 at its Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, renamed Glenn in 1999, with physicist Marc Millis as its lead. It sat inside a long-range space transportation plan run by Marshall Space Flight Center. Its goals were propulsion that needs no propellant, the fastest travel physics allows, and new energy sources to power such engines.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Topics included links between gravity and electromagnetism, vacuum fluctuation energy, warp drives, wormholes, and faster-than-light quantum effects. Because the goals were far off, the project favored small, affordable experiments that could show measurable progress. The memorandum lays out these methods and the results of the first workshop, held in Cleveland in 1997.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The project ended in 2002.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Marc Millis - Breakthrough Propulsion Study: Assessing Interstellar Flight Challenges / Prospects",
"by": "Interstellar Research Group",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StKLeD5h_Tw"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Frontiers of Propulsion Science",
"by": "Marc G. Millis and Eric W. Davis (eds.)",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Frontiers_of_Propulsion_Science.html?id=qcceAQAAIAAJ"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "To the stars!",
"by": "NBC News (Alan Boyle)",
"url": "https://www.nbcnews.com/science/cosmic-log/stars-flna6C10406184"
}
]
},
{
"id": "warp-field-mechanics",
"title": "Warp Field Mechanics 101",
"doc": "Warp Field Mechanics 101 (JSC-CN-24651)",
"agency": "NASA Johnson (H. White)",
"year": 2011,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "The energy cost of a warp drive",
"hook": "A paper on how much energy an Alcubierre warp drive would need.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20110015936",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Conference paper JSC-CN-24651, presented in September 2011 by Harold “Sonny” White of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, on the energy an Alcubierre warp drive would require.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. White, a physicist, presented the paper at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/NASA 100 Year Starship Symposium in Orlando. It revisits the warp drive that physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed in 1994, in which a ship sits inside a bubble of space that contracts ahead of it and expands behind. White’s team worked at Johnson’s Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, known as Eagleworks.\n\n3. FINDINGS. White offered a reworked form of the math and compared it with a related metric to show how the effect would work. The paper also describes a laser interferometer the team was building to detect a tiny warp in the laboratory.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A year later White said a reshaped bubble could cut the energy needed from Jupiter’s mass-energy to roughly that of the Voyager 1 probe.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Is The Alcubierre Warp Drive Possible?",
"by": "PBS Space Time",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ed4v_T6YM"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Dr. Harold “Sonny” White - Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion",
"by": "NASA’s Ames Research Center",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wokn7crjBbA"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "A Lab Experiment to Test Spacetime Distortion",
"by": "Centauri Dreams",
"url": "https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2012/09/18/a-lab-experiment-to-test-spacetime-distortion/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "teleportation",
"title": "Teleportation Physics Study",
"doc": "Teleportation Physics Study",
"agency": "USAF · Warp Drive Metrics (E. Davis)",
"year": 2004,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "An Air Force survey of teleportation",
"hook": "An Air Force-funded survey of teleportation, from the quantum kind to psychic claims.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA425545",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Study of 88 pages, published in August 2004 under contract to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), on whether material objects could be teleported.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Physicist Eric W. Davis of Warp Drive Metrics, a Las Vegas company, wrote the study for AFRL’s propulsion directorate at Edwards Air Force Base.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Davis reviewed every form of teleportation he found in the literature: science-fiction-style transport, warping spacetime, the quantum teleportation of particle states, and transport through extra dimensions. The study also covered reports of psychic teleportation that U.S. and foreign governments had investigated, and it treated them as a category worth further study. Davis proposed models based on manipulating either the shape of spacetime or the energy of the vacuum. The study ended with recommendations for more research and a long bibliography.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Not recorded in the available sources.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Air Force: Turning Over Stones With the Mind—and Our Money",
"by": "Reason",
"url": "https://reason.com/2004/11/10/air-force-turning-over-stones/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Teleportation",
"by": "The Skeptic’s Dictionary",
"url": "https://www.skepdic.com/teleportation.html"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Transporters and Quantum Teleportation",
"by": "minutephysics",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAaHHGHuy1c"
}
]
},
{
"id": "aawsap",
"title": "The AAWSAP Papers",
"doc": "Defense Intelligence Reference Documents",
"agency": "DIA · Bigelow Aerospace",
"year": 2009,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "DIA studies of wormholes and antigravity",
"hook": "DIA-funded studies of wormholes, invisibility cloaks, and antigravity. DIA released 37 of the 38 under FOIA in 2022.",
"url": "https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Set of 38 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents, dated 2009 and 2010, written for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to forecast aerospace technology decades ahead.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. AAWSAP began in 2008, backed by Senator Harry Reid and directed by DIA analyst James Lacatski. DIA contracted the work to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies in Las Vegas, which commissioned physicists, including Eric Davis, to write the technical studies.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The studies range from metallic glasses and fusion to negative-mass propulsion, traversable wormholes, warp drives, invisibility cloaks, and antigravity.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The studies drew wide attention after news reports in 2017 revealed the Pentagon’s UFO-related work. In 2022 DIA released 37 of them to The Black Vault under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); the remaining one, a classified version of the laser-weapons study, was not released.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "How Secretive Groups Cashed in on Senators’ Interest in UFOs",
"by": "Reason",
"url": "https://reason.com/2022/11/15/the-military-ufo-complex/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The X-Files Revealed: The Paranormal Roots of the Pentagon’s UFO Program",
"by": "Den of Geek",
"url": "https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-x-files-revealed-unidentified-history/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Skinwalker Ranch Is A Grift. There, I Said It.",
"by": "Joe Scott",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEdcyWF6VA"
}
]
},
{
"id": "stargate",
"title": "Stargate",
"doc": "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications",
"agency": "CIA · American Institutes for Research",
"year": 1995,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Government-funded remote viewing",
"hook": "The review that ended more than two decades of government-funded research into remote viewing.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/node/304505",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of September 1995 by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), evaluating government-funded research into remote viewing, the claimed ability to describe distant places by mind alone.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. From 1972 the U.S. government paid for remote-viewing research. The work began with CIA funding at SRI, the California research institute, then ran through a series of Army and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) programs that took the name Stargate around 1991. In 1995 Congress moved the program to the CIA, which hired AIR to evaluate it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. AIR relied on two reviewers. Statistician Jessica Utts concluded the laboratory effect was real; psychologist Ray Hyman argued that methodological flaws and a lack of independent replication made that conclusion premature. AIR found that remote viewing had not proven useful for intelligence and that continuing it was not warranted.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The CIA ended the program in 1995, after more than two decades of government-funded research.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Journalist Annie Jacobsen: ESP and the U.S. Government",
"by": "Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw4gyDnDL-4"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Phenomena",
"by": "Annie Jacobsen",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Phenomena.html?id=dVzJDAEACAAJ"
},
{
"type": "podcast",
"title": "The Truth About Remote Viewing",
"by": "Skeptoid",
"url": "https://skeptoid.com/episodes/44"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Men Who Stare at Goats",
"by": "Jon Ronson",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Men_who_Stare_at_Goats.html?id=7DlpxJmDX_4C"
}
]
},
{
"id": "gateway-process",
"title": "The Gateway Process",
"doc": "Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process",
"agency": "U.S. Army · INSCOM (W. McDonnell)",
"year": 1983,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Meditating beyond time and space",
"hook": "An Army analysis of using meditation to move consciousness beyond time and space. It went viral on TikTok in 2023.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001700210016-5",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Assessment of 29 pages, written in June 1983 by Lt. Col. Wayne McDonnell of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), of the Gateway Experience, a meditation-based program intended to move consciousness beyond time and space.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Gateway Experience was a training program from the Monroe Institute in Virginia for inducing altered states of consciousness. It used Hemi-Sync, sound patterns meant to bring the brain’s two hemispheres into step. The Army was then exploring such techniques alongside its remote-viewing work.\n\n3. FINDINGS. McDonnell tried to explain the method in physical terms, drawing on brain-wave frequencies, holograms, and quantum physics, and judged it scientifically plausible.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declassified the report in 2003 with the remote-viewing records. Page 25 was missing from the released copy for years until one surfaced from the Monroe Institute. In 2023 TikTok users promoted the report as a guide to astral projection.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA",
"by": "Vice",
"url": "https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-to-escape-the-confines-of-time-and-space-according-to-the-cia/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "When the CIA Studied Psychic Techniques to Alter Human Consciousness & Unlock Time Travel",
"by": "Open Culture",
"url": "https://www.openculture.com/2024/05/when-the-cia-studied-psychic-techniques-to-alter-human-consciousness-unlock-time-travel.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "blue-book",
"title": "Project Blue Book",
"doc": "Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14",
"agency": "USAF · Battelle",
"year": 1955,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "12,618 UFO reports, by the numbers",
"hook": "The Air Force’s statistical study of its UFO reports, from the project that collected 12,618 sightings.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/node/802639",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, dated May 5, 1955, a statistical analysis of U.S. Air Force reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) prepared by the Battelle Memorial Institute.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Air Force ran Project Blue Book from 1952 to 1969 to investigate UFO reports. It hired Battelle, of Columbus, Ohio, to analyze the reports statistically.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Battelle coded 3,201 reports from 1947 through 1952 and sorted them into knowns, unknowns, and cases with too little information. About 22 percent remained unknown. The report concluded that it was highly improbable that any sighting represented technology beyond known capabilities.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Air Force presented the report as evidence against flying saucers. Critics countered that the unknowns differed statistically from the identified cases. Blue Book closed in December 1969 after the University of Colorado’s Condon Report, with 12,618 sightings on file and 701 unidentified.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects",
"by": "Edward J. Ruppelt",
"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17346"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Air Force Investigation into UFOs",
"by": "Origins (Ohio State University)",
"url": "https://origins.osu.edu/read/air-force-investigation-ufos"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Project Blue Book: Unidentified Flying Objects",
"by": "National Archives",
"url": "https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos"
}
]
},
{
"id": "gay-bomb",
"title": "The “Gay Bomb” Proposal",
"doc": "Harassing, annoying and “bad guy” identifying chemicals",
"agency": "USAF · Wright Laboratory",
"year": 1994,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "A chemical weapon to spark attraction",
"hook": "An Air Force proposal for nonlethal chemical weapons, one meant to make enemy troops sexually attracted to each other.",
"url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20050306021330/http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/jnlwdpdf/wpafbchem.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Three-page proposal of June 1994 from Wright Laboratory (U.S. Air Force), titled “Harassing, annoying and ‘bad guy’ identifying chemicals,” for nonlethal chemical weapons.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Scientists at Wright Laboratory, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, wrote the proposal and requested $7.5 million over six years to develop the chemicals.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The proposal included an aphrodisiac meant to make enemy troops sexually attracted to each other, chemicals that would draw stinging insects or rodents to enemy positions, and chemicals that would give troops severe bad breath, making them easy to identify or harass.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Sunshine Project, a group that campaigned against biological weapons, obtained the proposal under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and made it public in early 2005. Defense officials described it as brainstorming that never moved forward, and there is no record that any of the chemicals were made. The laboratory won the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize; no one from the military came to collect it.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "That Time the U.S. Tried to Make a “Gay Bomb”",
"by": "Today I Found Out",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhrPORgYbY"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "That time the Air Force proposed making a ‘gay bomb’",
"by": "Military Times",
"url": "https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/military-history/2026/04/10/that-time-the-air-force-proposed-making-a-gay-bomb/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The mysterious case of the ‘gay bomb’ request",
"by": "The Register",
"url": "https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2005/01/18/the-mysterious-case-of-the-gay-bomb-request/939430"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded",
"by": "NPR",
"url": "https://www.npr.org/2007/10/05/15027444/ig-nobel-prizes-awarded"
}
]
},
{
"id": "owning-the-weather",
"title": "Owning the Weather in 2025",
"doc": "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025",
"agency": "USAF · Air University",
"year": 1996,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Weather control as a weapon",
"hook": "An Air Force paper on using weather control as a weapon.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA333462",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Air University (U.S. Air Force) paper of August 1996, “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,” on using weather control as a weapon.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The paper came out of Air Force 2025, a study ordered by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman to plan for U.S. air and space dominance 30 years ahead. Air University ran the study at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. A team of officers led by Col. Tamzy J. House wrote the paper.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The paper argued that by 2025 U.S. forces could shape weather for military advantage, from enhancing or suppressing storms and rain to creating or clearing fog and manipulating the ionosphere for communications. It listed required capabilities such as nonlinear modeling and a global sensor network, and it compared the field to nuclear fission as high risk and high reward.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Like every Air Force 2025 paper, it stated that it did not reflect official policy.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Fixing the Sky",
"by": "James Rodger Fleming",
"url": "https://cup.columbia.edu/book/fixing-the-sky/9780231144124/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "We Will Bury You. In Mud.",
"by": "Cabinet Magazine",
"url": "https://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/3/brown.php"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Project Controlled Weather - Operation Popeye",
"by": "Dark Docs",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mJqFxArpy0"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Fact Check: It Is NOT Air Force Policy To ‘Control The Weather By 2025’",
"by": "Lead Stories",
"url": "https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2022/11/fact-check-it-is-not-air-force-policy-to-control-the-weather-by-2025.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "cyborg-insects",
"title": "Cyborg Insects",
"doc": "BAA 06-22: Hybrid Insect MEMS (HI-MEMS)",
"agency": "DARPA",
"year": 2006,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Remote-controlled beetles and moths",
"hook": "Beetles and moths with electronics implanted while they were still pupae, so they could be steered in flight.",
"url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20070521054921/http://www.darpa.mil/MTO/solicitations/baa06-22/index.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announcement BAA 06-22 of 2006 for the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program, which sought insects that could be steered in flight.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. DARPA announced HI-MEMS in 2006 under program manager Amit Lal, a micromechanics specialist. The plan was to insert chips into insects such as beetles and moths during metamorphosis, so their tissue grew around the electronics, and then steer the adults with electrical signals.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The final milestone was an insect that could fly to within 5 meters of a target 100 meters away, guided by remote control or GPS, while carrying a small sensor payload.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. DARPA funded teams at the University of Michigan, MIT, and the Boyce Thompson Institute, and researchers reported implanting chips in pupae that emerged as working adults. A separate DARPA-funded group at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Michel Maharbiz, later used brain electrodes to start, stop, and turn flying beetles by radio.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Robot Insect Race",
"by": "IEEE Spectrum",
"url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-robot-insect-race"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Pentagon’s Beetle Borgs",
"by": "Discover Magazine",
"url": "https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-pentagons-beetle-borgs-16519"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Michel Maharbiz, University of California, Berkeley",
"by": "DARPAtv",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMM9HI9fjjQ"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Cyborg Beetles Designed to Save Human Lives",
"by": "Motherboard",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgLjhT7S15U"
}
]
},
{
"id": "avrocar",
"title": "Avrocar",
"doc": "Avrocar Flight Evaluation",
"agency": "USAF / U.S. Army · Avro Canada",
"year": 1958,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A real flying saucer that barely flew",
"hook": "An actual flying saucer, tested in NASA wind tunnels. It hovered but couldn’t get much more than a few feet off the ground.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0270921",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Air Force Flight Test Center report on the 1960 and 1961 flight evaluations of the Avrocar, a disc-shaped vertical-takeoff craft built by Avro Canada.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Avrocar was designed by John Frost’s team at Avro Canada and paid for by the U.S. Air Force and Army, which designated it VZ-9AV. Three small jet engines drove a central turborotor, and air blown out around the rim was meant to carry the craft from hovering into high-speed flight. Two were built, and the craft was tested in NASA wind tunnels.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Two evaluations were flown at Avro’s plant in Malton, Ontario, in April 1960 and June 1961. The pilots found the craft limited to a hover of about 2 feet and a speed of roughly 20 knots. Above that height it pitched and rolled unpredictably.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The program was canceled in 1961. One Avrocar is displayed at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force; the other is at the U.S. Army Transportation Museum.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Real Flying Saucer",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85aFTVijEc8"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Avrocar Continuation Test Program and Terrain Test Program, 1960–1961",
"by": "US National Archives",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opD86VZSWpo"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Pentagon’s Flying Saucer Problem",
"by": "Air & Space Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-pentagons-flying-saucer-problem-4613827/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Avrocar: The U.S. Military’s Flying Saucer",
"by": "The Unwritten Record (National Archives)",
"url": "https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2014/04/03/avrocar-the-u-s-militarys-flying-saucer/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "area-rule",
"title": "The Area Rule",
"doc": "A Study of the Zero-Lift Drag-Rise Characteristics of Wing-Body Combinations Near the Speed of Sound (NACA RM L52H08)",
"agency": "NACA Langley (R. Whitcomb)",
"year": 1952,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The Coke-bottle shape that cut drag",
"hook": "The discovery that pinching a fuselage into a Coke-bottle shape cuts drag near the speed of sound.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930087283",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Research memorandum RM L52H08 of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), issued by Langley in September 1952, on the drag rise of wing-body combinations near the speed of sound and the basis of the area rule.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1952 Richard Whitcomb, a young NACA engineer, tested wing-body models in Langley’s 8-Foot Transonic Tunnel.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Whitcomb found that drag near Mach 1 depended on how the aircraft’s total cross-sectional area changed from nose to tail. Smoothing that curve, by narrowing the fuselage where the wings attach into a Coke-bottle shape, cut the sharp drag rise at the speed of sound.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The memorandum was first given limited distribution. Convair’s F-102 interceptor could not exceed Mach 1 in early flight tests; after it was reshaped along Whitcomb’s guidelines, it flew supersonically. Whitcomb received the 1954 Collier Trophy for the work, and the area rule has shaped high-speed aircraft design since.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Area Rule: How To Make Planes Fly Faster",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X5VHl0eMTk"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Man Who Could See Air",
"by": "Air & Space Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-man-who-could-see-air-28723910/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Richard T. Whitcomb",
"by": "NASA Langley",
"url": "https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/richard-t-whitcomb/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "intergalactic-network",
"title": "The Intergalactic Computer Network",
"doc": "Memorandum for Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network",
"agency": "ARPA (J. C. R. Licklider)",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "An early outline of the internet",
"hook": "Licklider’s 1963 memo on how separate computers could share programs and data, an early outline of the internet.",
"url": "https://purl.stanford.edu/wj409km7108",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum of April 25, 1963, from J. C. R. Licklider of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to the members and affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network, on how separate computers could share programs and data.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Licklider wrote the memo a few months after he became head of ARPA’s new computer research office. He addressed it to the researchers ARPA was funding at universities and companies across the country, to postpone a meeting and set out topics for it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Most of the memo lists problems for the group to discuss: how separate time-sharing computers could share programs and data, how to agree on common languages, how a user at one site could find and borrow a program written at another, and how files could be protected while in use.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Those questions shaped ARPA’s later networking work, and the memo is an early outline of the internet. The ARPANET, planned from 1966 after Licklider had left the office, connected its first sites in 1969.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Some Reflections on Early History by J.C.R. Licklider",
"by": "Yoshiki Ohshima",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN--t9jXQc0"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Dream Machine",
"by": "M. Mitchell Waldrop",
"url": "https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Where Wizards Stay Up Late",
"by": "Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon",
"url": "https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/Katie-Hafner/9780684832678"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "A Brief History of the Internet",
"by": "Internet Society",
"url": "https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "augmenting-human-intellect",
"title": "Augmenting Human Intellect",
"doc": "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework",
"agency": "USAF · SRI (D. Engelbart)",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "The agenda behind the mouse",
"hook": "The 1962 report that set the agenda for Engelbart’s lab, which went on to build the mouse and hypertext.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0289565",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report written in October 1962 by Douglas Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), setting out a conceptual framework for augmenting human intellect.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Engelbart prepared the report under an AFOSR contract. It built on Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Memex proposal.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report set out a framework for improving how individuals think and solve problems by combining people with tools, concepts, and methods. It argued that the most promising tool was a computer used interactively, and it described a hypothetical system for writing and linking ideas on a screen.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report became the plan for Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center at SRI. His group built the oN-Line System (NLS) and developed the mouse and hypertext, then demonstrated linked text, on-screen editing, and shared-screen collaboration in a public presentation in San Francisco in December 1968.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "1968 “Mother of All Demos” by SRI’s Doug Engelbart and Team",
"by": "SRI",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rKUf9DWRI"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Mother of All Demos (1968)",
"by": "Doug Engelbart Institute",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhpTiWyVa6k"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Doug’s 1962 Framework: Augmenting Human Intellect",
"by": "Doug Engelbart Institute",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU1qskMNxIM"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Augmenting Human Intellect - 35 Years Later (1997)",
"by": "Doug Engelbart Institute",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu5UHXcap-0"
}
]
},
{
"id": "brookings-report",
"title": "The Brookings Report",
"doc": "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs (NASA-CR-55643)",
"agency": "NASA · Brookings Institution",
"year": 1960,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Should NASA hide alien life?",
"hook": "A NASA-commissioned report warning that finding alien life could destabilize society, and asking whether to withhold the news.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19640053196",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Brookings Institution report, delivered to NASA in December 1960, proposing studies of how peaceful space activities might affect human affairs, including a passage on the discovery of extraterrestrial life.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. NASA’s Committee on Long-Range Studies hired the Brookings Institution to propose research on how the space program might affect American life. Social psychologist Donald N. Michael directed the study. Its outside reviewers included anthropologist Margaret Mead.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Most of the report covers communications and weather satellites, the economy, public attitudes, and government. The passage on extraterrestrial life runs a few pages. It said contact would most likely come by radio, observed that societies sure of their place in the universe have disintegrated after meeting unfamiliar cultures, warned that such a finding could destabilize society, and recommended studies of how such news might be presented to or withheld from the public. The report claimed no discovery.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report is still cited for its passage on extraterrestrial life.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Communications, Technology, and Extraterrestrial Life: The Advice Brookings Gave NASA about the Space Program in 1960",
"by": "Brookings Institution",
"url": "https://www.brookings.edu/articles/communications-technology-and-extraterrestrial-life-the-advice-brookings-gave-nasa-about-the-space-program-in-1960/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "cyclops",
"title": "Project Cyclops",
"doc": "Project Cyclops: A Design Study of a System for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life (NASA-CR-114445)",
"agency": "NASA Ames · Stanford",
"year": 1971,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "1,000 dishes listening for aliens",
"hook": "A design for about 1,000 radio dishes listening for alien civilizations. Its methods shaped later SETI work.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19730010095",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Contractor report NASA-CR-114445, a 1971 design study of about 1,000 radio dishes for detecting extraterrestrial intelligent life.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Cyclops was the 1971 summer faculty study of NASA and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) at NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University, led by Hewlett-Packard engineer Bernard Oliver and John Billingham, chief of the Ames biotechnology division.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The design was an array of 100-meter dishes, built at about 100 a year until a signal was found, at an estimated $6 billion to $10 billion over 10 to 15 years. The study argued for searching the water hole, the quiet radio band between the hydrogen and hydroxyl lines, and described a signal processor that could watch a billion narrow channels at once.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was published in 1972. Cyclops was not funded. Its methods and reasoning shaped later work in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), including NASA’s own search, which began in 1992 and which Congress canceled in 1993.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "John Billingham 1930 - 2013",
"by": "SETI Institute",
"url": "https://www.seti.org/news/john-billingham-1930-2013/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Search for Aliens with SETI Co-Founder, Jill Tarter",
"by": "StarTalk",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2z685OhYCU"
}
]
},
{
"id": "habitability-of-mars",
"title": "On the Habitability of Mars",
"doc": "On the Habitability of Mars: An Approach to Planetary Ecosynthesis (NASA SP-414)",
"agency": "NASA Ames",
"year": 1976,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "NASA’s first terraforming study",
"hook": "NASA’s first terraforming study, on whether Earth organisms could give Mars a breathable atmosphere.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770005775",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Special Publication SP-414, published in 1976 by NASA Ames Research Center, the agency’s first terraforming study, on whether Earth organisms could give Mars a breathable atmosphere.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The study was done at Ames under its Planetary Biology Division, with university scientists funded through the Stanford-Ames faculty fellowship program. Robert MacElroy of Ames coordinated it, and he and Maurice Averner of Southern Oregon College edited the report.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The group compared what was then known of Martian temperature, chemistry, and ultraviolet levels with the limits of Earth life, and ran computer models of lichens and blue-green algae growing on Mars. It found no fundamental barrier to an Earth ecology there. Producing an oxygen atmosphere with organisms might take millions of years, but melting the polar caps to warm the planet and genetically engineering Mars-adapted strains could shorten that.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was published in 1976 as NASA SP-414. The Viking landers reached Mars the same year.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Terraforming Mars",
"by": "IEEE Spectrum",
"url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/terraforming-mars"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Definitive Guide To Terraforming",
"by": "Universe Today",
"url": "https://www.universetoday.com/articles/guide-to-terraforming"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Long View of Mars: Biology & Terraforming - Dr. Chris McKay",
"by": "Wonderfest Science",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hunX0cI_yFU"
}
]
},
{
"id": "mercury-chimpanzees",
"title": "The Mercury Chimpanzees",
"doc": "Results of the Project Mercury Ballistic and Orbital Chimpanzee Flights (NASA SP-39)",
"agency": "NASA",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Chimps who flew before astronauts",
"hook": "The full record of Ham and Enos, the chimps who flew Mercury capsules before the astronauts and worked levers in flight.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19640003002",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA SP-39, edited in 1963 by James P. Henry and John D. Mosely, the full record of the ballistic and orbital chimpanzee flights that tested the Mercury capsule before astronauts rode it.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The chimpanzees trained at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico to work levers in response to lights, earning banana pellets for right answers and mild shocks for wrong ones, so engineers could see whether spaceflight impaired performance.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Ham flew a suborbital mission on January 31, 1961. His rocket overperformed and sent him higher and farther than planned, but he kept working and came back in good condition. Enos made two orbits on November 29, 1961, and kept answering correctly even when a faulty lever shocked him for right answers.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Astronauts followed the chimpanzees: Alan Shepard flew three months after Ham, and John Glenn flew after Enos.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "NASA’s First Chimp in Space",
"by": "Smithsonian Channel",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wdbV4SBGYo"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Enos: The Forgotten Chimp",
"by": "Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum",
"url": "https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/enos-forgotten-chimp"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "HAM the Astrochimp",
"by": "Air & Space Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/ham-the-astrochimp-140718786/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Animals in Space",
"by": "Colin Burgess and Chris Dubbs",
"url": "https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-0-387-49678-8"
}
]
},
{
"id": "moon-dust",
"title": "Moon Dust vs. Earth Life",
"doc": "Apollo 11 – Exposure of Lower Animals to Lunar Material",
"agency": "NASA Lunar Receiving Laboratory",
"year": 1970,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Testing moon dust on live animals",
"hook": "Scientists exposed fish and other small animals to Apollo 11 moon dust, checking for anything that could multiply and harm Earth life.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19700061293",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper published in Science in 1970 by C. A. Benschoter and nine colleagues of NASA’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory, reporting tests that exposed fish and other lower animals to ground-up Apollo 11 lunar material.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Before NASA released Apollo 11’s samples from quarantine, the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston checked whether moon material carried anything that could multiply in Earth life or prove deadly to it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Ten species of lower animals were exposed to lunar material for 28 days, with no harm attributable to it. Aquatic animals lived in water containing lunar material, and insects ate it in their food. NASA’s later summary lists species including planaria, oysters, brown shrimp, German cockroaches, houseflies, wax moths, minnows, and Japanese quail. Many oysters died in the Apollo 11 tests, but the deaths could not be tied to the samples.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Testing continued through Apollo 14, after which NASA ended quarantine for returning crews.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "What can we learn from the lunar pandemic that never was?",
"by": "Aeon",
"url": "https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-we-learn-from-the-lunar-pandemic-that-never-was"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why NASA quarantined the Apollo 11 astronauts",
"by": "Vox",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYXT8hEI8tM"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Lunar Receiving Laboratory",
"by": "A/V Geeks 16mm Films",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1yWWbB-9Nc"
}
]
},
{
"id": "surveyor-3",
"title": "Surveyor 3, Returned",
"doc": "Analysis of Surveyor 3 Material and Photographs Returned by Apollo 12 (NASA SP-284)",
"agency": "NASA",
"year": 1972,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Bacteria in a camera back from the Moon",
"hook": "Apollo 12 astronauts cut parts off a probe that had sat on the Moon for 2.5 years. Bacteria found in its camera started a long debate.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19720019081",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Special Publication SP-284, issued in 1972, analyzing Surveyor 3 material and photographs returned by Apollo 12 after 2.5 years on the Moon.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Surveyor 3 landed in the Ocean of Storms on April 20, 1967. In November 1969, Apollo 12’s lunar module set down 155 meters away, and Pete Conrad and Alan Bean walked over to the probe and removed its television camera, sample scoop, cabling, and tubing.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The publication collects the findings of about 40 teams that studied the parts and photographs, covering dust, micrometeoroid pits, aging of materials, and changes in the surrounding soil over 31 months. One chapter reported that Streptococcus mitis, a common bacterium of the human mouth, was grown from foam inside the camera, and suggested it had been there since before launch.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The bacterium finding started a long debate. A 2011 review by John Rummel, Judith Allton, and Don Morrison concluded it more likely came from contamination after the camera returned to Earth.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Moon Microbe Mystery Finally Solved",
"by": "Space.com",
"url": "https://www.space.com/11536-moon-microbe-mystery-solved-apollo-12.html"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Refute This, Hoax Lovers: More Proof Men Totally Walked on the Moon",
"by": "Vice",
"url": "https://www.vice.com/en/article/more-proof-men-totally-walked-on-the-moon/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Moon Meeting of Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3",
"by": "Scientific American Space Lab",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PP_h2XslN0"
}
]
},
{
"id": "apollo-17-pocket-mice",
"title": "The Apollo 17 Pocket Mice",
"doc": "Biocore Experiment (Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report)",
"agency": "NASA Johnson / NASA Ames",
"year": 1973,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Mice with brain sensors around the Moon",
"hook": "Five pocket mice flew around the Moon with radiation detectors under their scalps, to test whether cosmic rays damage the brain.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19740010345",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Chapter of the Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report, published in 1973 by NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Ames Research Center, on Biocore, an experiment that carried five pocket mice around the Moon.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Biocore flew on Apollo 17 in December 1972. Scientists led by Ames wanted to know whether the heavy, high-energy particles in cosmic rays damage brain and eye tissue. The mice, nicknamed Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey, each had a plastic radiation detector implanted under the scalp, so researchers could trace each particle’s path to the tissue it crossed. They rode in a sealed canister in the command module with their own oxygen supply.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Four mice survived the flight; the cause of the fifth’s death was never determined. The chapter covers the radiation monitors, autopsies, and early tissue findings.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Later analysis found no clear brain lesions, which left the brain-damage question open.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Of Mice, Men And Moon: A Short History of Animals in Space",
"by": "Amusing Planet",
"url": "https://amusingplanet.com/2020/08/of-mice-men-and-moon-short-history-of.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "light-flashes",
"title": "Astronaut Light Flashes",
"doc": "Light Flash Phenomenon Seen by Astronauts (NASA-TM-X-68419)",
"agency": "NASA · Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory",
"year": 1971,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Cosmic rays seen with eyes shut",
"hook": "Apollo crews saw flashes with their eyes shut. Researchers traced them to cosmic rays passing through the eyeball.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19720016426",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA technical memorandum NASA-TM-X-68419, issued in 1971 with Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, on flashes of light that Apollo astronauts saw, including with their eyes shut.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin reported brief flashes of light in the darkened cabin during Apollo 11, and crews on Apollo 12 and 13 saw them too. A team including Thomas Budinger and Cornelius Tobias of the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and researchers from the University of Washington analyzed crew observations from Apollo 11 through 14.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report concluded that heavy cosmic-ray nuclei passing through the eye caused the flashes, and its data suggested slow protons and helium ions could cause them too. It also discussed what galactic cosmic rays might do to people on long missions.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Apollo 16 and 17 carried the Apollo Light Flash Moving Emulsion Detector (ALFMED), a helmet device with emulsion plates that recorded particle tracks while crews called out flashes. Astronauts on the International Space Station still report the flashes.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "How Cosmic Rays Make Astronauts See Stars",
"by": "SciShow Space",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn26xDLL5R4"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Apollo 17 Astronauts Spot Light Flashes on the Moon",
"by": "Science Channel",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udOG62bt5xc"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "‘Seeing’ Cosmic Rays in Space",
"by": "Universe Today",
"url": "https://www.universetoday.com/articles/seeing-cosmic-rays-in-space"
}
]
},
{
"id": "empire",
"title": "EMPIRE",
"doc": "EMPIRE: A Study of Early Manned Interplanetary Missions (NASA-CR-51709)",
"agency": "NASA Marshall · Ford Aeronutronic",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Crewed Mars flybys before Apollo",
"hook": "Before anyone had orbited the Moon, NASA was studying crewed flybys of Mars and Venus lasting 400 days or more.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19650082475",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report NASA-CR-51709 by Ford’s Aeronutronic division for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, covering May to November 1962, on crewed flybys of Mars and Venus lasting 400 days or more.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. EMPIRE, for Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Roundtrip Expeditions, was a 1962 program of Marshall’s Future Projects Office, begun before anyone had orbited the Moon. Marshall paid three contractors to study crewed flights past Mars and Venus: Aeronutronic, General Dynamics, and Lockheed.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Aeronutronic examined a six-person crew on two routes: one launching in August 1971 and taking about 400 days, and one launching in July 1970 and taking about 630 days. It favored the longer, lower-energy route, using a nuclear stage to leave Earth orbit, a ship of about 180,000 kilograms, and a polyethylene radiation shelter. It priced the program at $12.6 billion and urged immediate work on larger nuclear rocket engines.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No EMPIRE mission was approved.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "EMPIRE Building: Ford Aeronutronic’s 1962 Plan for Piloted Mars/Venus Flybys",
"by": "David S. F. Portree",
"url": "https://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2015/06/empire-building-ford-aeronutronics-1963.html"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Forgotten Manned Mars Mission Plans",
"by": "The History Guy",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyBmcL2fx0U"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Early Manned Planetary-Interplanetary Roundtrip Expedition (1962)",
"by": "Retro Space HD",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh1KdtwmPLI"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950–2000",
"by": "David S. F. Portree (NASA History Division)",
"url": "https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/sp-4521.pdf"
}
]
},
{
"id": "boeing-mars",
"title": "Boeing’s Nuclear Mars Ship",
"doc": "Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft Concept Definition, Vol. 1 (NASA-CR-66558)",
"agency": "NASA · Boeing",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A nuclear Mars ship from six Saturn Vs",
"hook": "Boeing’s design for a nuclear-rocket Mars ship, assembled in orbit from six Saturn V launches.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19680009769",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Volume 1 of a concept definition (NASA-CR-66558) by Boeing’s Space Division, delivered to NASA in January 1968, for an integrated nuclear-rocket interplanetary spacecraft assembled in orbit from six Saturn V launches.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Boeing did the 14-month study for NASA’s Langley Research Center. NASA wanted to know whether one common set of hardware could fly a range of crewed missions to Mars and Venus between 1975 and 1990.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Boeing proposed a ship driven by five propulsion modules, each with a 195,000-pound-thrust Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) engine. It carried a mission module for living and lab space, an Apollo-shaped lander for three of the six crew members, and a biconic capsule for the fast return to Earth. Six launches of an uprated Saturn V would put it all in orbit. A sample schedule had a Venus mission in 1983 and a Mars landing in 1986.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No such mission was approved. NERVA development ended in 1973.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Flights to Mars, real and LEGO",
"by": "The Space Review",
"url": "https://thespacereview.com/article/4208/1"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Nuclear Propulsion in Space",
"by": "US National Archives",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDNX65d-FBY"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950–2000",
"by": "David S. F. Portree (NASA History Division)",
"url": "https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/sp-4521.pdf"
}
]
},
{
"id": "venus-flyby",
"title": "Manned Venus Flyby",
"doc": "Manned Venus Flyby (NASA-CR-114025)",
"agency": "NASA · Bellcomm",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A year-long crewed flyby of Venus",
"hook": "A plan to send astronauts on a year-long flyby of Venus using Apollo hardware.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19790072165",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Study NASA-CR-114025, produced by Bellcomm in February 1967, of a year-long crewed flyby of Venus using Apollo hardware.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Bellcomm, the AT&T subsidiary that did systems analysis for NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight, prepared the study to give the Apollo Applications Program, NASA’s planned follow-on to the Moon landings, a longer-range goal.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Three astronauts would launch on a single Saturn V in late 1973 and pass Venus in 1974. The ship combined an Apollo-like command and service module, an environmental support module in the adapter area, and the spent S-IVB upper stage, used as living space and as the mount for a solar-cell power system. The study focused on choosing systems that could run for the roughly 400-day trip.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The flyby was not flown. Apollo Applications shrank to Skylab, a space station built from an S-IVB stage.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Post-Apollo Human Mission to Venus",
"by": "The Vintage Space",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnplZ7SG1Qo"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Apollo Ends at Venus: A 1967 Proposal for Single-Launch Piloted Venus Flybys",
"by": "David S. F. Portree",
"url": "https://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2017/05/apollo-ends-at-venus-1967-proposal-for.html"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Apollo Goes To Venus: The Manned Venus Flyby",
"by": "Sea Lion Press",
"url": "https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/apollo-goes-to-venus-the-manned-venus-flyby"
}
]
},
{
"id": "lunar-flying-vehicle",
"title": "One-Man Lunar Flying Vehicle",
"doc": "Study of One Man Lunar Flying Vehicle, Final Report (NASA-CR-101944)",
"agency": "NASA · Bell Aerosystems",
"year": 1969,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A rocket platform for Moon hops",
"hook": "A one-person rocket platform that would let an astronaut hop across the Moon.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19690029820",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report NASA-CR-101944 by Bell Aerosystems, completed in July 1969, on a one-person rocket platform that would let an astronaut hop across the Moon.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Bell Aerosystems, the company behind the Army’s rocket belt, did the study for NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston and finished it just after Apollo 11. NASA wanted more range for astronauts on later Moon missions.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Bell’s design was an open frame on four folding legs, held up by two throttleable rocket engines that pivoted under the pilot’s handlebar controls. It weighed 235 pounds empty and could carry 370 pounds, including a second astronaut on a front pallet. Two flyers would ride folded on the lunar module’s descent stage and refuel from it. The report also covered changes for an emergency flight to orbit.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA chose the wheeled Lunar Roving Vehicle instead, which flew on Apollo 15, 16, and 17.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Rocket Belts and Rocket Chairs: Lunar Flying Units",
"by": "David S. F. Portree",
"url": "https://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2015/07/rocket-belts-and-rocket-chairs-lunar.html"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Apollo astronauts almost got to fly lunar jetpacks",
"by": "Astronomy",
"url": "https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/apollo-astronauts-almost-got-to-fly-lunar-jetpacks/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Bell Lunar Flying Vehicle",
"by": "Aerospace Projects Review",
"url": "https://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=3214"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Bell Lunar Flying Unit Prototype (1968)",
"by": "The Space Archive",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5g8pXigHUg"
}
]
},
{
"id": "lunar-escape-systems",
"title": "Lunar Escape Systems",
"doc": "Lunar Escape Systems (LESS) Feasibility Study (NASA-CR-1619)",
"agency": "NASA · North American Rockwell",
"year": 1970,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A bare rocket frame for lunar escape",
"hook": "If the lunar module couldn’t lift off, astronauts would strap onto a bare rocket frame and fly it to orbit by hand.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19700022470",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Summary of a feasibility study (NASA-CR-1619) by North American Rockwell for NASA, published in June 1970, on Lunar Escape Systems (LESS): bare rocket frames that astronauts would strap onto and fly to orbit by hand if the lunar module could not lift off.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. North American Rockwell’s Space Division in Downey, California, did the early feasibility study for NASA’s Langley Research Center. It addressed a weak point in Apollo: the lunar module’s ascent stage had a single engine, and if it failed, the crew had no way back.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study looked at simple, light vehicles that would draw propellant from the stranded lunar module’s ascent stage and carry both astronauts to the command module in orbit within three to four hours. It favored simplicity over redundancy and compared kinesthetic control, where the pilot steers by shifting body weight, with basic hardwired controls.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. LESS was not built. The Apollo landings ended in December 1972.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Apollo’s Lunar Escape Systems",
"by": "Hazegrayart",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuICrVI3jMI"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Space Escape: Flying a Chair to Lunar Orbit",
"by": "Hackaday",
"url": "https://hackaday.com/2018/01/19/space-escape-flying-a-chair-to-lunar-orbit/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Do Spaceship Escape Pods Actually Exist in Real Life?",
"by": "Today I Found Out",
"url": "https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2024/02/do-spaceship-escape-pods-actually-exist-in-real-life/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "skylab-spiders",
"title": "Skylab’s Spiders",
"doc": "MSFC Skylab Student Project Report (NASA-TM-X-64866)",
"agency": "NASA Marshall",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Spiders spinning webs in orbit",
"hook": "Results of 25 high-school experiments on Skylab, including Arabella and Anita, the spiders who learned to spin webs in zero gravity.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19740025164",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Marshall Space Flight Center report NASA-TM-X-64866, dated August 1974, on the 25 high-school student experiments flown on Skylab, America’s first space station.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. NASA and the National Science Teachers Association invited high-school students to propose Skylab experiments. Thousands entered, and 25 were picked as national winners.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Of the 25, 11 needed custom hardware, 8 used equipment already aboard, and 6 were paired with professional investigations. One came from Judith Miles, 17, of Lexington, Massachusetts, who asked whether spiders could build webs without gravity. Two European garden spiders, Arabella and Anita, flew on the second crewed Skylab mission in 1973. They were disoriented at first, but once they adapted both spun nearly Earth-like webs, which Miles compared with pre-flight webs by counting spirals and radials.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The experiments were flown as described. Anita died during the mission’s final week.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Skylab High School in Space",
"by": "US National Archives",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VtRbc3PTlU"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Arabella the Space Spider",
"by": "OkraJoe",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxEudbmuSeI"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Spiders in Space",
"by": "Smithsonian Education",
"url": "https://smithsonianeducation.org/students/secrets_of_the_Smithsonian/spiders_in_space.html"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Living and Working in Space: A History of Skylab",
"by": "W. David Compton and Charles D. Benson (NASA SP-4208)",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19840017669"
}
]
},
{
"id": "tektite",
"title": "Tektite II",
"doc": "Tektite 2 Habitability Research Program (NASA-CR-123496)",
"agency": "NASA · AiResearch",
"year": 1972,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Aquanauts living on the seafloor",
"hook": "NASA studied aquanauts living for weeks in a seafloor habitat, one crew all women, as a stand-in for a space station.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19720007419",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA contractor report NASA-CR-123496, prepared by AiResearch in 1972, on habitability research in Tektite II, a seafloor habitat studied as a stand-in for a space station.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Tektite II was a 1970 undersea research program off St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, run by the Department of the Interior. Ten crews, each of four scientists and one engineer, lived in the habitat on missions of 14 or 20 days while studying the reef; engineers on the 20-day missions stayed 30 days. One crew, led by marine biologist Sylvia Earle, was all women. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center paid AiResearch, a division of the Garrett Corporation, to treat the habitat as a stand-in for a spacecraft.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Researchers gave aquanauts personality and attitude tests, tracked their daily moods and leisure time, and held private debriefings. The most popular pastime was casual conversation, and the women adapted well. The report’s opening assumptions predicted bigger crews, mixed nationalities, and women in space as missions grew longer.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Not recorded in the available sources.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Tektite Habitat: U.S. Navy Saturation Diving Film",
"by": "PeriscopeFilm",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-EIz6hhb2U"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Tektite Program Overview",
"by": "St. John Historical Society",
"url": "https://stjohnhistoricalsociety.org/vol-x-no-4-january-2009-tektite-program-overview-by-bruce-schoonover/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Tektite",
"by": "The Mariners’ Museum",
"url": "https://exploration.marinersmuseum.org/watercraft/tektite/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans",
"by": "Sylvia A. Earle",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780449910658"
}
]
},
{
"id": "havoc",
"title": "HAVOC",
"doc": "High Altitude Venus Operational Concept",
"agency": "NASA Langley",
"year": 2015,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Airship cities in Venus’s clouds",
"hook": "Astronauts living in solar-powered airships in the clouds of Venus, where the air pressure is close to Earth’s.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160006329",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Internal NASA Langley Research Center concept study, presented in 2015, of the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), in which astronauts would live in solar-powered airships in the clouds of Venus.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Dale Arney and Chris Jones of Langley’s Space Mission Analysis Branch did the study and presented it at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2015 conference. About 50 kilometers above Venus, the air pressure is near one Earth atmosphere, gravity is about 90 percent of Earth’s, and the atmosphere overhead shields against radiation. The temperature is still around 75°C, and the clouds contain sulfuric acid.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study laid out five phases, from robotic probes to a permanent human presence. Its centerpiece was a 30-day crewed mission: a 129-meter helium airship, inflated after arrival, carrying a habitat for two astronauts and a rocket to return them to orbit. The full trip would take about 440 days.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. HAVOC remained a concept study.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Zeppelins of Mars - HAVOC on Venus: NASA’s New Planetary Airships",
"by": "Curious Droid",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oG7aclzD3o"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "NASA Vision for Venus: HAVOC Airships",
"by": "VideoFromSpace",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcHkWKp9e4Y"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "NASA Study Proposes Airships, Cloud Cities for Venus Exploration",
"by": "IEEE Spectrum",
"url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasa-study-proposes-airships-cloud-cities-for-venus-exploration"
}
]
},
{
"id": "titan-submarine",
"title": "Titan Submarine",
"doc": "Phase 1 Final Report: Titan Submarine (NASA/TM-2015-218831)",
"agency": "NASA NIAC · NASA Glenn",
"year": 2015,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A submarine for Titan’s seas",
"hook": "A robotic submarine to explore a sea of liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon Titan.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20150014581",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA technical memorandum NASA/TM-2015-218831, the Phase I final report from NASA Glenn Research Center on a robotic submarine to explore a sea of liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon Titan.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program funded the Phase I study in 2014. Steven Oleson of NASA Glenn led a team that included Titan scientist Ralph Lorenz of Johns Hopkins and engineers from Penn State.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The target was Kraken Mare, Titan’s largest sea, at about minus 178°C. The design was a 6-meter, roughly 1,400-kilogram submarine powered by two radioisotope Stirling generators, whose waste heat would keep its electronics warm. A winged lifting body based on the X-37B would deliver it, landing in 2047 during Titan’s summer so it could photograph shorelines and radio Earth directly. Diving and surfacing over a 90-day baseline mission, it would map the seabed with sonar, sample sediments, and study the weather.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NIAC funded a Phase II study in 2015.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Titan Submarine: Exploring the Depths of Kraken Mare",
"by": "NASA Glenn Research Center",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnKxbdpLP5E"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "NASA’s Crazy Plan to Send a Space Submarine to Titan",
"by": "Seeker",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYusz-MIJ4c"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Exploring the Depths of Titan’s Seas",
"by": "NASA",
"url": "https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/exploring-the-depths-of-titans-seas/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Titan Unveiled",
"by": "Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton",
"url": "https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691146331/titan-unveiled"
}
]
},
{
"id": "torpor",
"title": "Hibernating to Mars",
"doc": "Advancing Torpor Inducing Transfer Habitats for Human Stasis to Mars: Phase II",
"agency": "NASA NIAC · SpaceWorks",
"year": 2018,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Hibernating crews on the way to Mars",
"hook": "A plan to put Mars crews into a medically induced, hibernation-like sleep to save mass on the trip.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20180007195",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Phase II report, issued in 2018 by SpaceWorks Enterprises for NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, on putting Mars crews into a medically induced, hibernation-like sleep to save mass on the trip.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. SpaceWorks, an Atlanta engineering firm, proposed shrinking a Mars transit habitat by keeping most of the crew asleep. NIAC funded a Phase I study in 2013 and this Phase II study.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The method extends therapeutic hypothermia, a hospital treatment that cools patients a few degrees to slow metabolism. Core temperature would drop to about 32 to 34°C, with nutrition given by feeding tube or IV. Each astronaut would spend 10 to 14 days in torpor and then a few days awake, so someone was always alert. Phase II examined medical risks, including bone and muscle loss, and set out a research roadmap. Hospital use of the treatment had so far lasted up to about two weeks.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Not recorded in the available sources.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Enabling Human Hibernation for Space Travel",
"by": "Hello Tomorrow",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtgmarqLnFU"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "‘Hibernating’ Astronauts May Be Key to Mars Colonization",
"by": "Space.com",
"url": "https://www.space.com/33894-mars-colonization-hibernating-astronauts-torpor.html"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "‘Cryosleep’ May Open the Door to Deep Space. Here’s How",
"by": "NBC News",
"url": "https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/tech/cryosleep-may-be-key-deep-space-missions-here-s-how-ncna770961"
}
]
},
{
"id": "nuclear-light-bulb",
"title": "The Nuclear Light Bulb",
"doc": "Nuclear Studies of the Nuclear Light Bulb Rocket Engine (NASA-CR-1315)",
"agency": "NASA · United Aircraft Research Labs",
"year": 1969,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A uranium plasma rocket in a bulb",
"hook": "A rocket engine that holds glowing uranium plasma inside a quartz bulb and uses its light to heat hydrogen.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19690014077",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1969 contractor report (NASA-CR-1315) by United Aircraft Research Laboratories for NASA on the nuclear characteristics of the nuclear light bulb, a closed-cycle gas-core rocket engine.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. United Aircraft Research Laboratories, East Hartford, Connecticut, studied the engine for the joint Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)–NASA Space Nuclear Propulsion Office from the 1960s into the early 1970s. In the concept, fissioning uranium gas held in a swirling vortex would become hot enough to radiate mostly ultraviolet light. The light would pass through cooled fused-silica (quartz) walls and heat hydrogen flowing outside, while the fuel remained sealed inside.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report, by T. S. Latham, addressed the nuclear side of the design: the quantity of uranium-233 required for the engine to go critical, the behavior of its neutron population, and the neutron and gamma heating absorbed by its components. Laboratory work used radio-frequency-heated plasmas to simulate the core.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No engine was built.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Nuclear Light Bulb",
"by": "Eager Space",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB6WWFuhMPY"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why Nuclear Rockets Are Going To Change Spaceflight",
"by": "Scott Manley",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlKAMB71wT4"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Engine List 2: Lightbulbs",
"by": "Atomic Rockets",
"url": "https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#nlightbulb"
}
]
},
{
"id": "solar-satellite-weapons",
"title": "Solar Power Satellites as Weapons",
"doc": "Satellite Power System (SPS) Military Implications (NASA-CR-157436)",
"agency": "DOE / NASA · PRC Energy Analysis Company",
"year": 1978,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Solar power satellites as weapons",
"hook": "A 1978 study of whether a kilometers-wide orbiting solar power station could be used as a weapon or attacked by terrorists.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19790015329",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Study NASA-CR-157436, prepared in October 1978 by C. N. Bain of PRC Energy Analysis Company, on the military implications of the Satellite Power System (SPS), a kilometers-wide orbiting solar power station.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The study was done for the joint Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA evaluation of solar power satellites. It asked whether the reference design, a 5-gigawatt satellite beaming microwaves to a ground antenna, posed military risks or offered military uses.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study concluded that a power satellite could act as an electronic-warfare weapon and, with modification, as a marginally effective energy-beam weapon. It could also support the military by supplying energy and serving as a powered platform for other systems in orbit. Without hardening, security, and a self-defense system, it would be vulnerable to attack, terrorism, and sabotage, and military use of it could strain relations with other nations.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The study proposed follow-up work for fiscal 1979, including a detailed vulnerability analysis.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Air Force’s Secret Space Plane Is Part of a Plan to One Day Shoot Microwaves to Earth",
"by": "Defense One",
"url": "https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/05/air-forces-secret-space-plane-part-plan-one-day-shoot-microwaves-earth/165198/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "SBSP History",
"by": "European Space Agency",
"url": "https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/SOLARIS/SBSP_history"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "All You Need to Know About Space Based Solar Power",
"by": "Sabine Hossenfelder",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZPrIE5ZMZA"
}
]
},
{
"id": "world-circling-spaceship",
"title": "The World-Circling Spaceship",
"doc": "Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship (SM-11827)",
"agency": "U.S. Army Air Forces · Project RAND",
"year": 1946,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "RAND’s satellite, 11 years before Sputnik",
"hook": "Eleven years before Sputnik, the first RAND report designed a satellite and predicted the political shock it would cause.",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/special_memoranda/SM11827.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report SM-11827, dated May 2, 1946, the first report of Project RAND for the U.S. Army Air Forces, giving a preliminary design of an experimental Earth satellite 11 years before Sputnik.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In March 1946, Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, the Army Air Forces’ new deputy chief of staff for research and development, asked Project RAND, then part of Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, for an engineering analysis of an Earth satellite. He wanted it in time to match a Navy satellite study.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The editors, including Robert Salter and James Lipp, described a multistage rocket burning alcohol and liquid oxygen. The report argued that a satellite would be a powerful scientific tool and that its launch would cause a political shock comparable to the atomic bomb. It listed weather observation, reconnaissance, and communications as military uses.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No satellite was built then. RAND’s later studies led to the Air Force reconnaissance satellite program.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "A Brief History of the RAND Corporation",
"by": "RAND",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/about/history.html"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "A Father of National Reconnaissance, Robert Salter",
"by": "The Space Review",
"url": "https://thespacereview.com/article/1875/1"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age",
"by": "Walter A. McDougall",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780801857485"
}
]
},
{
"id": "military-lunar-base",
"title": "The Military Lunar Base",
"doc": "Military Lunar Base Program or S.R. 183 Lunar Observatory Study, Vol. I",
"agency": "USAF · Ballistic Missile Division",
"year": 1960,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "An Air Force spy base on the Moon",
"hook": "An Air Force plan for a crewed spy base on the Moon by 1969. It mentions a “Lunar Based Earth Bombardment System.”",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon03.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Volume I of an April 1960 study by the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division for a crewed intelligence base on the Moon by 1969.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The division issued the study under the classified title Military Lunar Base Program, with the cover title S.R. 183 Lunar Observatory Study. Its aim was a manned intelligence observatory on the Moon.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The plan ran from lunar probes in late 1964 through orbiters and soft landings to a first crewed landing in late 1967 and an operational base in June 1969. The base would be underground, as self-supporting as possible, and staffed by 21 people on tours of 7 to 9 months. The study put the cost of the permanent base at $7.726 billion. It mentioned a “Lunar Based Earth Bombardment System” and said the choice of strategic weapon systems could wait three to four years.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA’s lunar program made the plan moot.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Nuking the Site from Orbit: When the Air Force Wanted a Base on the Moon",
"by": "The Space Review",
"url": "https://thespacereview.com/article/3826/1"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Air Force Once Proposed Bombing Earth from the Moon",
"by": "Task & Purpose",
"url": "https://taskandpurpose.com/history/air-force-moon-base-earth-bombardment/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "America’s Forgotten Moon-Base Plans",
"by": "The History Guy",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp6xtAtNOkQ"
}
]
},
{
"id": "lunex",
"title": "LUNEX",
"doc": "Lunar Expedition Plan (LUNEX)",
"agency": "USAF · Systems Command",
"year": 1961,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A 21-person military Moon base",
"hook": "The Air Force’s rival to Apollo: a 21-person military base on the Moon by 1968.",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon04.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Lunar Expedition Plan (LUNEX), issued by Air Force Systems Command in May 1961, for a 21-person military base on the Moon by 1968, a rival to Apollo.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The plan appeared the same month President Kennedy asked Congress to commit to a Moon landing. It argued that beating the Soviet Union to the Moon would prove American technological strength, and that the lunar facility could later be expanded for military operations.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The plan centered on a three-person Lunex re-entry vehicle, with the first crewed landing and return in August 1967 and a permanent expedition the following year. It asked for approval and funding by July 1961. In the active expedition year the program would need about 6,000 personnel, plus an estimated 60,000 contractor workers.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Moon mission went to NASA’s Apollo program, and LUNEX went no further.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "LUNEX: Another Way to the Moon",
"by": "Popular Science (Vintage Space)",
"url": "https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/lunex-another-way-moon/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "America’s Forgotten Moon-Base Plans",
"by": "The History Guy",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp6xtAtNOkQ"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Nuking the Site from Orbit: When the Air Force Wanted a Base on the Moon",
"by": "The Space Review",
"url": "https://thespacereview.com/article/3826/1"
}
]
},
{
"id": "lunik",
"title": "The Kidnaping of the Lunik",
"doc": "The Kidnaping of the Lunik (Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 11 No. 1)",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The CIA borrows a Soviet spacecraft",
"hook": "CIA officers diverted a Soviet spacecraft from a touring exhibition, examined it overnight, and returned it unnoticed.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-11-no-1/the-kidnapping-of-the-lunik",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Article in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) classified journal Studies in Intelligence (Volume 11, Number 1, 1967) on the overnight examination of a Soviet Lunik spacecraft diverted from a touring exhibition.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The author, Sydney Wesley Finer, served on the 4-man factory-markings team. A touring Soviet exhibition, in a country the article does not name, displayed what appeared to be a model of the Lunik’s last stage. At an earlier stop, U.S. officers had about 24 hours with it and found it was a real production unit, stripped of its engine and most electronics.\n\n3. FINDINGS. At a later stop, CIA officers diverted the truck carrying the crate to a rented salvage yard. Overnight the team pried open the roof, photographed markings, and replaced a Soviet-sealed wire with a duplicate. The spacecraft was returned unnoticed. Analysts identified the probable manufacturer and 3 component suppliers and determined that it was the fifth unit built.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The CIA released the article in sanitized form in 1995.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Story Of How The CIA Stole & Returned A Soviet Spacecraft Before Being Noticed",
"by": "Scott Manley",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoE4m8RqOWs"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The CIA’s Bold Kidnapping of a Soviet Spacecraft",
"by": "Popular Science",
"url": "https://www.popsci.com/cias-bold-kidnapping-soviet-spacecraft/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Incredible Soviet Probe Space Heist",
"by": "Today I Found Out",
"url": "https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2026/03/the-incredible-soviet-probe-space-heist/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "antimatter-propulsion",
"title": "Antimatter Rockets",
"doc": "Antiproton Annihilation Propulsion (AFRPL-TR-85-034)",
"agency": "USAF (R. L. Forward)",
"year": 1985,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Antimatter as rocket fuel",
"hook": "An Air Force study of how to make, trap, and store antimatter as rocket fuel.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA160734",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical report AFRPL-TR-85-034, issued in September 1985 by the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (AFRPL), on how to make, trap, and store antimatter as rocket fuel.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Robert L. Forward, a physicist and science-fiction author, did the 212-page study for the laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base under a contract through the University of Dayton Research Institute. The work ran from April 1984 to January 1985.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Forward surveyed antiproton production at CERN, Fermilab, and the Soviet Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP), sketched a more efficient antimatter factory, and described turning antiprotons into antihydrogen, cooling it with lasers, freezing it, and levitating the ice in traps. In his engines, milligrams of antimatter would heat tons of propellant. He concluded the idea was feasible but expensive, and could pay off in space for missions nothing else could fly.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. CERN experiments first trapped antihydrogen atoms in 2010.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why Antimatter Engines Could Launch In Your Lifetime",
"by": "PBS Space Time",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA4X9P98ess"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Is The Anti-Matter Rocket The Ultimate Engine?",
"by": "Scott Manley",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhBwageJ75M"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics",
"by": "Robert L. Forward and Joel Davis",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780471628125"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Evolution of Antimatter Propulsion",
"by": "Centauri Dreams",
"url": "https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2016/08/02/the-evolution-of-antimatter-propulsion/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "stealth-equations",
"title": "The Stealth Equations",
"doc": "Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction (FTD-HC-23-259-71)",
"agency": "USAF · Foreign Technology Division",
"year": 1971,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The Soviet math behind stealth",
"hook": "A Soviet radar-scattering monograph the Air Force translated. Its equations are widely credited with enabling stealth aircraft.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0733203.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. English translation FTD-HC-23-259-71, released in 1971 by the Air Force Foreign Technology Division, of Pyotr Ufimtsev’s 1962 Soviet monograph on the method of edge waves in the physical theory of diffraction.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Ufimtsev, a physicist in Moscow, published the monograph openly in the Soviet Union in 1962. The Foreign Technology Division translated it into English.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The monograph showed how to calculate the radar waves scattered by the edges and corners of a conducting object, refining earlier physical-optics methods.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. In the mid-1970s engineers at Lockheed’s Skunk Works used Ufimtsev’s equations to write software that predicted the radar return of a shape built from flat panels. That work led to the Have Blue demonstrator and then the F-117 stealth fighter, whose faceted surfaces were designed so that radar cross-section could be computed. The equations are widely credited with enabling stealth aircraft. Ufimtsev later moved to the United States and taught at UCLA.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Skunk Works",
"by": "Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos",
"url": "https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ben-r-rich/skunk-works/9780316743006/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Insane Engineering of the F-117 Nighthawk",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zjcnnx7igc"
}
]
},
{
"id": "u-2-and-oxcart",
"title": "The U-2 and OXCART Programs",
"doc": "The CIA and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954–1974",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1992,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The CIA’s secret spy plane history",
"hook": "The CIA’s secret history of its spy planes, including early attempts to hide them from radar.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/1992-04-01A.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Classified 1992 history by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of its U-2 and OXCART reconnaissance aircraft programs, 1954–1974.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. CIA historians Gregory Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach wrote the history. It begins with the agency’s first payments to Lockheed in 1955.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The history follows the U-2 through its overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 shootdown of Francis Gary Powers, and later missions over China, Cuba, and elsewhere. It covers Project RAINBOW, a failed effort to reduce the U-2’s radar return that led the CIA toward a new aircraft. It then turns to OXCART, the Lockheed A-12, which first flew in 1962 and was retired in 1968 as the Air Force’s SR-71 took over its role.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A heavily redacted version of the U-2 chapters was published in 1998. A fuller release in 2013, obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), drew attention for its references to Area 51.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Faster, Higher And More Secret Than The SR-71 Blackbird - The A-12 Oxcart",
"by": "Scott Manley",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQSRMKzGbJo"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "A Look At the CIA’s A-12 Oxcart",
"by": "Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJHs2OzwIF8"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "U-2: All About America’s Secret Spy Plane",
"by": "Forces TV | BFBS Forces News",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ctWtvb7aA"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Skunk Works",
"by": "Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos",
"url": "https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ben-r-rich/skunk-works/9780316743006/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "mouse-trials",
"title": "The Mouse Trials",
"doc": "Computer-Aided Display Control, Final Report (NASA-CR-66111)",
"agency": "NASA Langley · SRI (Engelbart, English)",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "The mouse wins a user test",
"hook": "A NASA-funded test of the new computer mouse against a light pen, joystick, and knee control. Experienced users preferred it.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19660020914",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report NASA-CR-66111, written in July 1965 by Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for NASA Langley, on computer-aided display control and a comparison of screen-selection devices that included the mouse.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Douglas Engelbart, Bill English, and Bert Huddart wrote the report. The NASA contract funded research on how a person could compose and edit text on a computer-driven screen, and the report describes the on-line system SRI had built for that work.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Experiments timed people selecting words and characters on the screen with a light pen, a joystick, a Grafacon arm, a knee control, and the mouse, a device the group had developed for the comparison. The mouse, knee control, and light pen were the fastest and most accurate. Beginners did slightly better with the light pen, but experienced users rated the mouse best and found it less tiring.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A 1967 journal paper reported the results more widely.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Who Invented the Computer Mouse and Its Surprisingly Long Journey to Your Desk",
"by": "Today I Found Out",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdPN_QMjbCs"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Mouse",
"by": "Computer History Museum",
"url": "https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-output/14/350"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Time I Met Bill English, Co-Creator of the Mouse",
"by": "Cybercultural",
"url": "https://cybercultural.com/p/the-first-web-developer/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "What the Dormouse Said",
"by": "John Markoff",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780143036760"
}
]
},
{
"id": "sketchpad",
"title": "Sketchpad",
"doc": "Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System (TR-296)",
"agency": "MIT Lincoln Laboratory (I. Sutherland)",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "The first interactive drawing program",
"hook": "A light-pen drawing program that pioneered interactive computer graphics.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/tr/AD0404549/index.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. MIT Lincoln Laboratory Technical Report 296, published in 1963, presenting Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad, a light-pen drawing program for graphical communication between a person and a computer.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Sutherland wrote Sketchpad as his MIT doctoral thesis. The program ran on the laboratory’s TX-2 computer.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A user drew straight lines and circle arcs on the screen with a light pen and used push buttons to draw, move, or erase them. Sketchpad stored the structure of a drawing as well as its lines: moving a corner of a polygon moved the attached sides, and changing a master symbol updated every copy of it. Users could set constraints, such as making lines parallel, and the program enforced them. Every drawing in the report was made with Sketchpad.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The program started interactive computer graphics and influenced later computer-aided design and graphical interfaces. Sutherland received the 1988 Turing Award.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Ivan Sutherland Sketchpad Demo 1963",
"by": "Interface Studies",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orsmFndx_o"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Oral History of Ivan Sutherland, part 1 of 2",
"by": "Computer History Museum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjr7qLeyvlw"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Dream Machine",
"by": "M. Mitchell Waldrop",
"url": "https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine"
}
]
},
{
"id": "distributed-communications",
"title": "On Distributed Communications",
"doc": "On Distributed Communications: I. Introduction to Distributed Communications Networks (RM-3420-PR)",
"agency": "USAF · RAND (P. Baran)",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A network built to survive nuclear war",
"hook": "A design for a communications network that could survive a nuclear attack, and one origin of packet switching.",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. RAND Corporation memorandum RM-3420-PR, written by Paul Baran for the Air Force in August 1964, introducing distributed communications networks.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The memorandum was the first of an 11-part series describing a “distributed adaptive message block network” for military communications, designed to survive a nuclear attack.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Instead of routing traffic through a few central switching centers, which an attack could destroy, Baran proposed a mesh of many links and nodes. Messages would be cut into standard blocks, each routed separately along whatever paths still worked, then reassembled.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The network was never built. Donald Davies in Britain independently developed the same idea and called the blocks “packets.” When the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) planned the ARPANET in the late 1960s, the RAND study was part of its background. The official ARPANET history by Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) lists it among the network’s origins, and it is one origin of packet switching.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "An Evening with Paul Baran, in conversation with Henry Lowood",
"by": "Computer History Museum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZey878-Mp4"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Founding Father",
"by": "Wired",
"url": "https://www.wired.com/2001/03/baran/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet",
"by": "RAND",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2018/paul-baran-and-the-origins-of-the-internet.html"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Where Wizards Stay Up Late",
"by": "Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780684832678"
}
]
},
{
"id": "arpanet-history",
"title": "A History of the ARPANET",
"doc": "A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade (BBN Report 4799)",
"agency": "DARPA · BBN",
"year": 1981,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "The ARPANET’s first official history",
"hook": "BBN, which built the ARPANET’s switching computers, writes the network’s first official history, maps included.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/tr/ADA115440/index.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. BBN Report 4799, written by Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in April 1981, and the first official history of the ARPANET’s first decade.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. BBN had built the Interface Message Processors, the small computers that switched traffic between sites, and it ran and maintained the network afterward.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report traces the ARPANET from its origins, including Baran’s RAND study and early experiments in Britain and at Lincoln Laboratory, through the 1968 request for quotations, the first installations in 1969, the development of host protocols and Telnet, and the network’s transfer to the Defense Communications Agency in 1975. It also covers traffic growth, technical and social lessons, and a bibliography of BBN reports. An appendix reproduces a selection of the network’s logical maps, showing how it grew from a few nodes.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Not recorded in the available sources.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "ARPANET History: Origins of the Internet",
"by": "Computer History Museum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXVXtIqXXw4"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Larry Roberts, “The ARPANET and Computer Networks”",
"by": "Computer History Museum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkD4HVRnGJE"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Where Wizards Stay Up Late",
"by": "Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780684832678"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Inventing the Internet",
"by": "Janet Abbate",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780262511155"
}
]
},
{
"id": "perceptron",
"title": "The Mark I Perceptron Manual",
"doc": "Mark I Perceptron Operators' Manual (VG-1196-G-5)",
"agency": "ONR · Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory",
"year": 1960,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A Navy machine that learned shapes",
"hook": "The operators’ manual for the first hardware perceptron, a Navy-funded machine that learned to recognize shapes.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0236965.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Operators’ manual VG-1196-G-5, dated February 15, 1960, from Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory for the Office of Naval Research (ONR), explaining how to set up and run the Mark I Perceptron, the first perceptron, a machine that learned to recognize shapes.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Frank Rosenblatt’s team at Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo built the Mark I under Project PARA, an ONR contract. John Hay, Ben Lynch, and David Smith wrote the manual.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The Mark I took its input from a 20-by-20 grid of 400 photocells, wired at random through a plugboard to 512 association units, which fed 8 response units. The machine learned by adjusting its connection weights, stored in potentiometers turned by electric motors.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Rosenblatt’s claims drew wide press coverage. Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert’s 1969 book Perceptrons showed the limits of single-layer networks. The machine is now at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The First Neural Networks",
"by": "Asianometry",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5dVSygXbAE"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Perceptrons: The First Trainable Neural Networks",
"by": "Spanning Tree",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6RIHwi21c"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Professor’s perceptron paved the way for AI – 60 years too soon",
"by": "Cornell Chronicle",
"url": "https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/09/professors-perceptron-paved-way-ai-60-years-too-soon"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Genius Makers",
"by": "Cade Metz",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Genius_Makers.html?id=p-UlEAAAQBAJ"
}
]
},
{
"id": "shakey",
"title": "Shakey the Robot",
"doc": "Shakey the Robot (SRI Technical Note 323)",
"agency": "DARPA · SRI",
"year": 1984,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A robot that planned its own moves",
"hook": "A wheeled robot that planned its own actions. The project behind it produced the A* search algorithm.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/tr/ADA458918/index.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. SRI International Technical Note 323, edited by Nils Nilsson in 1984 for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), reprinting key parts of the hard-to-find reports on Shakey, a wheeled robot that planned its own actions.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Shakey was built at Stanford Research Institute’s Artificial Intelligence Center from 1966 to 1972 with funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). It carried a TV camera, a range finder, and bump sensors, and sent data by radio to a large computer, first an SDS-940 and later a PDP-10, which planned its moves through a set of rooms with doorways and boxes.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The project produced the A* pathfinding algorithm, published in 1968 by Peter Hart, Nilsson, and Bertram Raphael; the STRIPS planner of 1971; and advances in computer vision.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A* and STRIPS remain standard in computer science. Shakey is now at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Shakey the Robot: The First Robot to Embody Artificial Intelligence",
"by": "SRI",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bsEN8mwUB8"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Shakey: Experiments in Robot Planning and Learning (1972)",
"by": "Stanford University Libraries",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmU7SimFkpU"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "SRI’s Pioneering Mobile Robot Shakey Honored as IEEE Milestone",
"by": "IEEE Spectrum",
"url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/sri-shakey-robot-honored-as-ieee-milestone"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Quest for Artificial Intelligence",
"by": "Nils J. Nilsson",
"url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/quest-for-artificial-intelligence/32C727961B24223BBB1B3511F44F343E"
}
]
},
{
"id": "stanford-cart",
"title": "The Stanford Cart",
"doc": "Obstacle Avoidance and Navigation in the Real World by a Seeing Robot Rover (AIM-340)",
"agency": "DARPA · Stanford AI Lab (H. Moravec)",
"year": 1980,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A self-driving cart, one meter at a time",
"hook": "An ancestor of self-driving cars: a camera cart that moved about a meter every 10 to 15 minutes, thinking between moves.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA092604.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory report AIM-340 of 1980, prepared for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), presenting Hans Moravec’s PhD thesis on obstacle avoidance and navigation by the Stanford Cart, a seeing robot rover.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The card-table-sized cart was first built around 1960 by mechanical engineering student James Adams to study remote driving by video, with lunar rovers in mind. It was later adapted to follow a white line. Moravec spent most of the 1970s teaching it to navigate alone.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A TV camera on a sliding mount took pictures from several positions, and a remote computer used stereo vision to locate obstacles and plan a path. The cart moved about 1 meter every 10 to 15 minutes, computing between moves. Indoors it completed several 20-meter courses, each taking about 5 hours. Outdoors, harsh shadows confused it, and it hit an obstacle.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Moravec went on to Carnegie Mellon. The cart, an ancestor of self-driving cars, is now at the Computer History Museum.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Stanford’s Robotic History",
"by": "Stanford Magazine",
"url": "https://stanfordmag.org/contents/stanford-s-robotic-history"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Stanford Cart and the CMU Rover",
"by": "Hans Moravec",
"url": "https://publications.ri.cmu.edu/the-stanford-cart-and-the-cmu-rover"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Stanford Cart",
"by": "Computer History Museum",
"url": "https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/artificial-intelligence-robotics/13/293"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Mind Children",
"by": "Hans Moravec",
"url": "https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674576186"
}
]
},
{
"id": "strategic-computing",
"title": "Strategic Computing",
"doc": "Strategic Computing: New-Generation Computing Technology: A Strategic Plan",
"agency": "DARPA",
"year": 1983,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "DARPA’s battlefield AI plan",
"hook": "DARPA’s plan for machine intelligence: robot vehicles, a “pilot’s associate,” and battle-management AI.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA141982.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Strategic plan issued by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on October 28, 1983, launching its Strategic Computing program for new-generation computing technology.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. DARPA sought a new generation of “machine intelligence technology”: computers that could see, understand speech, reason, and plan.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The plan tied the research to faster parallel hardware and microelectronics and to three military projects: an autonomous land vehicle for the Army, a pilot’s associate for the Air Force, and a battle-management system for a Navy carrier group. It estimated that the first 5 years would cost about $600 million.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The program ran for about a decade and spent roughly $1 billion. It funded robot vehicle research, including the Autonomous Land Vehicle and Carnegie Mellon’s Navlab, and parallel computers. DARPA cut back its artificial intelligence (AI) spending in the late 1980s, after progress fell short of the plan’s goals.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983–1993",
"by": "Alex Roland and Philip Shiman",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Strategic_Computing.html?id=eD4taFgeTUYC"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "DARPA Tried to Build Skynet in the 1980s",
"by": "Gizmodo",
"url": "https://gizmodo.com/darpa-tried-to-build-skynet-in-the-1980s-1451000652"
}
]
},
{
"id": "hardiman",
"title": "Hardiman",
"doc": "Machine Augmentation of Human Strength and Endurance: Hardiman I Project",
"agency": "ONR · General Electric",
"year": 1971,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "An exoskeleton for 25× strength",
"hook": "A hydraulic exoskeleton with 30 joints, meant to multiply a sailor’s strength about 25 times.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/tr/AD0724797/index.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. May 1971 progress report by General Electric for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) on the Hardiman I project, a hydraulic exoskeleton to augment human strength and endurance.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. General Electric built Hardiman under a joint Army-Navy contract that began in November 1965. The exoskeleton had 30 joints and was meant to multiply a sailor’s strength about 25 times. The wearer stood inside a master frame strapped to his body, and a hydraulic outer frame copied his movements. Force feedback, scaled down 25 to 1, let him feel the loads the machine handled.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The full prototype had been assembled. One arm had lifted its 750-pound design load in tests, and the legs and girdle had been partly tested. The report also sketched uses such as loading bombs and cargo.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The whole suit never worked as a walking machine with a person inside. Later accounts say powering it up produced violent, uncontrolled motion, and the project ended without a working full-body system.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Story Behind the Real ‘Iron Man’ Suit",
"by": "GE News",
"url": "https://www.ge.com/news/reports/the-story-behind-the-real-iron-man-suit"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Do You Even Lift, Bro? Hardiman Was GE’s Muscular Take On The Human-Machine Interface",
"by": "GE News",
"url": "https://www.ge.com/news/reports/do-you-even-lift-bro-hardiman-and-the-human-machine-interface"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "G.E. Hardiman I Exoskeleton (1965–71)",
"by": "cyberneticzoo.com",
"url": "https://cyberneticzoo.com/man-amplifiers/1966-69-g-e-hardiman-i-ralph-mosher-american/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "walking-truck",
"title": "The GE Walking Truck",
"doc": "Quadruped Studies Project Files, 1960–1968",
"agency": "ARPA / U.S. Army · General Electric",
"year": 1960,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A four-legged truck driven by limbs",
"hook": "A four-legged truck whose driver moved its legs with his own arms and legs.",
"url": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/18252894",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Quadruped Studies project files, 1960–1968, in the National Archives, kept by the Advanced Engineering Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), on General Electric’s four-legged walking truck.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. General Electric engineer Ralph Mosher designed the walking truck, formally the Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine, for the Army Tank-Automotive Center and ARPA in the mid-1960s. The goal was a cargo carrier that could step over rough, muddy terrain where wheels and tracks got stuck.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The driver moved the machine’s legs with his own arms and legs. The hydraulic legs were powered through hoses from an outside supply, and force feedback let the operator feel what the legs touched. The files hold correspondence, progress reports from 1966, photos, sketches, and a 1968 publication titled “A Versatile Walking Truck.”\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Only one prototype was built. Operating it was so exhausting that drivers could run it only for short periods, and the Army dropped it. The machine survives at the U.S. Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, Virginia.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "GE’s Walking Truck - ca. 1965",
"by": "miSci - museum of innovation and science",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coNO9FpDb6E"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "General Electric Walking Truck: Test Footage",
"by": "PeriscopeFilm",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eAKESz5Fwg"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "AT-AT Boy! GE’s Walking Truck From The 1960s Mixed ‘Star Wars’ With Jules Verne",
"by": "GE News",
"url": "https://www.ge.com/news/reports/at-at-boy-ges-walking-truck-from-the-1960s-mixed-star-wars-with-jules-verne"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Feet: Pedipulator, Walking Truck",
"by": "Black Gate",
"url": "https://www.blackgate.com/2019/08/28/feet-pedipulator-walking-truck/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "rocket-belt",
"title": "The Bell Rocket Belt",
"doc": "Small Rocket Lift Device, Phase 1 (TREC TR 61-45)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · Bell Aerosystems",
"year": 1961,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A rocket belt for soldiers",
"hook": "An Army-funded jetpack: a hydrogen-peroxide rocket belt meant to fly soldiers over obstacles.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0253783.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report TREC TR 61-45, prepared by Bell Aerosystems for the Army in 1961, on Phase I of the Small Rocket Lift Device, a hydrogen-peroxide rocket belt meant to fly soldiers over obstacles.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Bell Aerosystems engineer Wendell Moore led the project under an Army Transportation Research Command contract.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report covers Phase I, from August to December 1960: design, fabrication, and ground testing. The belt was a fiberglass corset carrying hydrogen-peroxide tanks and two swiveling nozzles beside the pilot’s shoulders. The pilot steered with hand controls and body movement.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Phase II added tethered and then free flights. Harold Graham made the first untethered flight on April 20, 1961, near Niagara Falls, and later that year the belt was demonstrated for President Kennedy at Fort Bragg. It carried propellant for only about 20 seconds of flight, and the Army did not adopt it. Rocket belts later appeared in the James Bond film Thunderball and at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Strange History of the Jet Pack, and Where It’s Heading",
"by": "Smithsonian Channel",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNUppNTT9RI"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Rocket Belt",
"by": "Invention & Technology",
"url": "https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/rocket-belt-1"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Rise and Fall of the Jet Pack",
"by": "JSTOR Daily",
"url": "https://daily.jstor.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-jet-pack/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Jetpack Dreams",
"by": "Mac Montandon",
"url": "https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/jetpack-dreams/9780786726745"
}
]
},
{
"id": "flying-platform",
"title": "The Hiller Flying Platform",
"doc": "Stability Analyses of Flying Platform in Hovering and Forward Flight",
"agency": "ONR · Hiller Helicopters",
"year": 1956,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A fan platform steered by leaning",
"hook": "A one-man ducted fan that the pilot stood on and steered by leaning.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0116273",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of October 1956 from the Advanced Research Division of Hiller Helicopters for the Office of Naval Research (ONR), analyzing the stability of the Hiller flying platform in hovering and forward flight.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The platform began with National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) engineer Charles Zimmerman’s idea that a pilot could steer a lifting device by leaning, the way a rider balances a bicycle. ONR signed a classified contract with Hiller in September 1953. The first platform, a one-man craft the pilot stood on, with two counter-rotating propellers inside a 5-foot duct, made its first free flight on January 27, 1955.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report analyzed the platform’s stability in hovering and in forward flight.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army then ordered larger three-engine versions, designated VZ-1 Pawnee, but their extra weight made steering by leaning impractical. The Army found them slow and barely able to rise out of ground effect, and none went into production. Survivors are at the Hiller Aviation Museum and the Smithsonian.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Segway of Airplanes",
"by": "Smithsonian Channel",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aVIzyWO1HE"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Hiller Flying Platform",
"by": "Hiller Aviation Museum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANBeuGcZHBA"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Hovering in History",
"by": "Damn Interesting",
"url": "https://www.damninteresting.com/hovering-in-history/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Alternative Aviation: Rocket Men and Flying Platforms",
"by": "National Archives, The Unwritten Record",
"url": "https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2014/04/23/alternative-aviation-rocket-men-and-flying-platforms/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "flying-bedstead",
"title": "The Flying Bedstead",
"doc": "Design and Operational Characteristics of a Lunar-Landing Research Vehicle (NASA TN D-3023)",
"agency": "NASA Flight Research Center",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A jet frame for Moon landing practice",
"hook": "A jet-lifted frame that flew as if in lunar gravity. Neil Armstrong ejected from one in 1968.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19650023948",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Technical Note D-3023, a September 1965 report from the NASA Flight Research Center on the design and operational characteristics of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV), a jet-lifted frame that flew as if in lunar gravity.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The LLRV was a free-flying simulator for practicing the last stage of a moon landing. Bell Aerosystems built two, and the first flew at the Flight Research Center in October 1964.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Donald Bellman and Gene Matranga described the design, controls, telemetry, and safety features, including a seat that could eject at zero altitude. A jet engine mounted upright in a gimbal held up five-sixths of the craft’s weight, and hydrogen-peroxide rockets supplied the rest and controlled its attitude.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The vehicles went to Houston, where they and 3 later training versions prepared Apollo commanders for landing the lunar module. Neil Armstrong ejected from one of the vehicles in 1968. LLRV-2 is displayed at the Air Force Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "How Neil Armstrong Trained to Land the Lunar Module",
"by": "Smithsonian Channel",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNlZXso0-I4"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Early Lunar Landing Research Vehicle Test Flight",
"by": "NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3wkhywEAxA"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Unconventional, Contrary, and Ugly: The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle",
"by": "Gene J. Matranga, C. Wayne Ottinger and Calvin R. Jarvis (NASA History)",
"url": "https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/sp-4535.pdf"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Crazy Contraption That Almost Killed Neil Armstrong",
"by": "HistoryNet",
"url": "https://www.historynet.com/lunar-landing-research-vehicle-nasas-flying-bedstead/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "paresev",
"title": "Paresev",
"doc": "Preliminary Flight Evaluation of Two Unpowered Manned Paragliders (NASA TN D-1826)",
"agency": "NASA Flight Research Center",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A NASA glider behind the hang glider",
"hook": "A glider NASA built in-house to test landing space capsules under a Rogallo wing, and an ancestor of the hang glider.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19630004553",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Technical Note D-1826, an April 1963 preliminary flight evaluation from the NASA Flight Research Center of the Paresev, an unpowered manned paraglider NASA built in-house to test a Rogallo wing for landing space capsules.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In the early 1960s NASA considered landing returning spacecraft under a steerable Rogallo wing instead of a parachute. To learn how such a wing handled, engineers at the Flight Research Center at Edwards built the Paresev: a steel-tube frame with a seat and a fabric delta wing that the pilot tilted to steer. It was towed aloft behind a car or light airplane and released to glide.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Garrison Layton and test pilot Milt Thompson covered early towed and free flights. They found tilting the wing gave adequate control for flight, flare, and landing.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA chose parachutes and ocean landings for Gemini and ended the paraglider work in the mid-1960s. The Paresev is an ancestor of the hang glider. One is displayed at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Paresev: The Homemade Flying Tricycle Pilots Built",
"by": "The Vintage Space",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYJZ4Fozrzw"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Paresev Air Tow from Rogers Dry Lake",
"by": "NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs0Xd3R1Fy4"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Gemini’s wing and a prayer (part 1): Rogallo Wings, the Paresev, and crashes in the desert",
"by": "The Space Review",
"url": "https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5056/1"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Gemini’s wing and a prayer (part 2): Parachutes, paragliders, and more crashes in the desert",
"by": "The Space Review",
"url": "https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5059/1"
}
]
},
{
"id": "inflatoplane",
"title": "The Inflatable Airplane",
"doc": "Wind-Tunnel Investigation of the Goodyear Inflatoplane (NACA RM L58E09)",
"agency": "NACA Langley",
"year": 1958,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Goodyear’s inflatable airplane",
"hook": "Goodyear’s inflatable airplane, tested in a wind tunnel at speeds high enough to buckle its wings.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930090147",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Research memorandum RM L58E09 of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a 1958 Langley report by Bennie Cocke on wind-tunnel tests of the Goodyear Inflatoplane, an inflatable airplane.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Goodyear built the Inflatoplane, a one-seat airplane made largely of rubberized fabric, under an Office of Naval Research contract. It was meant to be packed into a small container and dropped to a pilot downed behind enemy lines, who would inflate it and fly himself out. It first flew in 1956.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The prototype was tested in the Langley Full-Scale Tunnel. It was stable and controllable at low speed, but its wings twisted as speed rose. Just over 70 mph, the inboard wing buckled and folded up against the engine. Changes to the wing bracing cables raised the load it could take.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army later evaluated Inflatoplanes, but none entered service. Several survive in museums.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Inflatable Airplanes Were A Bad Idea",
"by": "Mustard",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ-4uWwQ5HA"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Goodyear’s Inflatable Rubber Aircraft",
"by": "HistoryNet",
"url": "https://www.historynet.com/the-inflatable-rubber-aircraft/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Goodyear Inflatoplane (GA468)",
"by": "National Air and Space Museum",
"url": "https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/goodyear-inflatoplane-ga468/nasm_A19740156000"
}
]
},
{
"id": "flying-flapjack",
"title": "The Flying Flapjack",
"doc": "Full-Scale Tunnel Investigation of a 1/3-Scale Model of the Chance Vought XF5U-1 (NACA RM L6I19)",
"agency": "U.S. Navy · NACA Langley",
"year": 1946,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The Navy’s round fighter plane",
"hook": "Wind-tunnel tests of the Navy’s round fighter plane, which looked like a flying saucer.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20050019375",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Research memorandum RM L6I19 of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), an October 1946 Langley report for the Navy on tests of a one-third-scale model of the Chance Vought XF5U-1, a round fighter known as the Flying Flapjack.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Charles Zimmerman designed the aircraft for Chance Vought. Its nearly circular wing, which gave it the look of a flying saucer, had a large propeller at each wingtip, meant to let a fighter take off and land very slowly yet still fly fast. A lightweight demonstrator, the V-173, flew during World War II, and the Navy ordered the XF5U-1 fighter version.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Roy Lange, Bennie Cocke, and Anthony Proterra tested the model in Langley’s Full-Scale Tunnel. They measured lift, stability, control, and propeller performance, with and without the propellers turning.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Navy cancelled the program in March 1947 as jets took over, and the XF5U-1 was scrapped without making a true flight. The V-173 survives in the Smithsonian collection.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Flying Pancake",
"by": "Found And Explained",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZoMMt1e2MM"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The ‘Flying Flapjack’ that Never Flew: The Story of the Vought XF5U",
"by": "The Aviationist",
"url": "https://theaviationist.com/2024/12/15/flying-flapjack-vought-xf5u/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Vought XF5U Flying Flapjack",
"by": "Old Machine Press",
"url": "https://oldmachinepress.com/2017/02/05/vought-xf5u-flying-flapjack/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "oblique-wing",
"title": "The Scissor-Wing Jet",
"doc": "Flight Characteristics of the AD-1 Oblique-Wing Research Aircraft (NASA TP-2223)",
"agency": "NASA Ames-Dryden",
"year": 1985,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A jet with a pivoting wing",
"hook": "A small jet whose whole wing pivoted like scissors, testing a design for fuel-efficient supersonic airliners.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19870009137",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Technical Paper 2223, a 1985 report from NASA Ames-Dryden by Alex Sim and Robert Curry on the flight characteristics of the AD-1 oblique-wing research aircraft.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. NASA aerodynamicist Robert T. Jones argued that a single wing pivoting on the fuselage could make supersonic transports far more fuel efficient. The AD-1, a small jet whose whole wing pivoted like scissors, tested the idea at low speed and small scale. Designed by Burt Rutan and built by Ames Industrial Corporation, it was powered by two small turbojets. Flown from NASA’s Dryden center, it made 79 flights between December 1979 and August 1982, eventually swinging the wing to 60 degrees.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report describes effects peculiar to the oblique wing, such as sideforce changing with angle of attack and the trailing wing stalling first. Pilots rated handling satisfactory up to 30 degrees of sweep and worse beyond.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The AD-1 is now at the Hiller Aviation Museum.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "NASA’s Weirdest Experimental Plane",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpiMXHgItHg"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Oblique Wing Flights",
"by": "NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWrEPzeHCBg"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Thinking Obliquely: Robert T. Jones, the Oblique Wing, NASA’s AD-1 Demonstrator, and its Legacy",
"by": "Bruce I. Larrimer (NASA)",
"url": "https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/thinking-obliquely/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "flying-wing-freighter",
"title": "The Flying-Wing Freighter",
"doc": "Design of a Large Span-Distributed Load Flying-Wing Cargo Airplane (NASA TM X-74031)",
"agency": "NASA Langley · Vought",
"year": 1977,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A cargo plane with freight in its wing",
"hook": "A design for a giant cargo plane that would carry its freight inside the wing.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770016145",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Technical Memorandum X-74031, an April 1977 design study by NASA Langley and Vought of a large span-distributed-load flying-wing cargo airplane.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Lloyd Jernell of NASA Langley and Baptiste Quartero of Vought studied a “span-loader”: a flying wing that carries cargo spread along the span, so the cargo’s weight offsets the wing’s lift and reduces bending loads. The specification called for 600,000 pounds of cargo in 8-by-8-foot containers, carried 3,200 nautical miles and loaded through the wingtips.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The resulting design had a 290-foot span, 6 turbofans, a cruise lift-to-drag ratio of nearly 19, and a structure weighing only 18 percent of maximum gross weight. The authors estimated it would be about 50 percent more fuel efficient than the best freighters of the day.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA and industry studied several span-loaders in the 1970s, but none was built.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Perspective on the span-distributed-load concept for application to large cargo aircraft design",
"by": "Allen H. Whitehead Jr., NASA Langley",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19760005976"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Boeing Spanloader",
"by": "Scott Lowther, The Unwanted Blog",
"url": "https://up-ship.com/blog/?p=2224"
}
]
},
{
"id": "wingship",
"title": "Wingship Investigation",
"doc": "Wingship Investigation, Volume 1: Final Report",
"agency": "ARPA",
"year": 1994,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Giant craft skimming the sea",
"hook": "A post-Cold War ARPA study of giant water-skimming craft like the Soviet “Caspian Sea Monster.”",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA294979.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Volume 1 final report of the Wingship Investigation, dated September 30, 1994, from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), on whether the military needed wing-in-ground-effect craft.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Congress directed ARPA to study wing-in-ground-effect craft, which fly a few meters above water to reduce drag, and to report whether the military needed them. ARPA program manager Col. Michael Francis assembled government and industry experts, who drew on Russian designers’ experience with the ekranoplans the Soviet Union had built since the 1960s, among them the “Caspian Sea Monster.”\n\n3. FINDINGS. The team concluded that a wingship efficient enough for strategic heavy lift would need about 10 times the gross weight of any existing one, and about 5 times what most experts would recommend building with current technology. It judged the cost and risk of such a craft unacceptable, though it saw possible military uses for wingships of 400 to 1,000 tons.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No U.S. wingship was built.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Soviet Superplane That Rattled America",
"by": "Real Engineering",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hv2dsVkA38"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "What Happened To Giant Ekranoplans?",
"by": "Mustard",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVdH_dYlVB8"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "DARPA Wants a Better, Badder Caspian Sea Monster",
"by": "IEEE Spectrum",
"url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/darpa-liberty-lifter"
}
]
},
{
"id": "overland-train",
"title": "The Overland Train",
"doc": "Project OTTER, Pretest Report (TR 3-588)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · Waterways Experiment Station",
"year": 1961,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A 572-foot road-free cargo train",
"hook": "Desert test planning for the Army’s 572-foot Overland Train, built to haul cargo where there are no roads.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0402257",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical report TR 3-588 of the Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, a December 1961 pretest report for Project OTTER on desert test planning for the Army’s Overland Train.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Overland Train was R. G. LeTourneau’s design for a cargo carrier for places without roads: a control car leading a string of cargo and power cars on huge tires, each wheel driven by its own electric motor. The Army’s version, the TC-497, was 572 feet long and was delivered for desert trials in 1962.\n\n3. FINDINGS. John Shamburger and Charles Kolb mapped and selected test courses at the Yuma Test Station in Arizona and classified their terrain by slope, relief, soil, and vegetation. They compared the courses with other world deserts so that results at Yuma could predict performance elsewhere.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army did not adopt the train. Its control cab is preserved at Yuma Proving Ground.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The World’s Largest Overland Vehicles - LeTourneau’s Land Trains",
"by": "Calum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abGyX2uwXsw"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "True Story of the US Army’s Earth-Shaking Land Trains",
"by": "The Drive",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huV3mKUBHIc"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Incredible Story of the US Army’s Earth-Shaking, Off-Road Land Trains",
"by": "The Drive",
"url": "https://www.thedrive.com/news/33645/the-incredible-story-of-the-us-armys-earth-shaking-off-road-land-trains"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "TC-497 Overland Mark 2",
"by": "Overland Trains",
"url": "https://overlandtrains.com/letourneaus-overland-trains/tc-497-overland-mkii/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "marsh-screw",
"title": "The Marsh Screw Amphibian",
"doc": "Trafficability Tests with the Marsh Screw Amphibian (WES TR 3-641)",
"agency": "ARPA · Waterways Experiment Station",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A vehicle that drove on giant screws",
"hook": "A vehicle that drove on two giant rotating screws instead of wheels.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0450621.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical report TR 3-641 of the Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, issued in 1964 for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), on trafficability tests of the Marsh Screw Amphibian, a vehicle that drove on two rotating screws instead of wheels.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Chrysler Corporation built the vehicle for the Navy’s Bureau of Ships, with requirements and funds from ARPA. It rode on two foam-filled aluminum cylinders wrapped in spiral blades. Turning them in opposite directions drove it forward or back; turning them the same way moved it sideways, though it then could not steer. It weighed about 2,860 pounds and used a Chrysler six-cylinder car engine.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The station tested the vehicle near Vicksburg, Mississippi, from August to October 1963 and compared it with an M29C Weasel tracked vehicle. It crossed wet, extremely soft soil that had stopped every vehicle tested before, but it struggled in sand, bogged down in sticky clay without free water, and crossed dikes poorly.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Not recorded in the available sources.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "New American Swamp Vehicle - The Marsh Screw Amphibian (1964)",
"by": "British Pathé",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f_7Weam6q8"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Screw-Propelled Vehicles: Surprising Advantages in Warfare",
"by": "Megaprojects",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cJADEgnEik"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Video: The 1964 Chrysler Marsh Screw Amphibian",
"by": "Mac’s Motor City Garage",
"url": "https://macsmotorcitygarage.com/video-the-1964-chrysler-marsh-screw-amphibian/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "timation",
"title": "Timation I",
"doc": "The Timation I Satellite",
"agency": "Naval Research Laboratory",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "The clock satellite behind GPS",
"hook": "A 1967 satellite that tested navigation by precise clocks, the core idea behind GPS.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0394799",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) report, dated November 1968 and originally classified Confidential, describing the equipment of Timation I, a 1967 satellite that tested navigation by precise clocks.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Timation, short for time navigation, was an NRL program that grew from a 1964 proposal to the Navy’s Bureau of Naval Weapons for a passive-ranging navigation satellite. Timation I launched on May 31, 1967, sponsored by the Naval Air Systems Command.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The satellite carried a temperature-controlled 5 MHz quartz crystal oscillator. A receiver with a synchronized clock could time the signal’s arrival, convert the delay to distance, and fix its position from two such measurements. NRL used the satellite to navigate fixed and moving vehicles and to transfer precise time between distant sites.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Later Timation satellites carried atomic clocks. In 1973 the program was merged with an Air Force effort to form the Global Positioning System (GPS), which rests on the same idea of navigation by precise clocks.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Who invented the Global Positioning System?",
"by": "Richard Easton, The Space Review",
"url": "https://www.thespacereview.com/article/626/1"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "TIMATION: GPS Predecessor Program",
"by": "eoPortal",
"url": "https://www.eoportal.org/other-space-activities/timation"
},
{
"type": "podcast",
"title": "STP133 - Unsung Heroes: Roger Easton - The Man Behind Vanguard 1 and GPS - with Richard Easton",
"by": "Space and Things",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JGa3iWqY2M"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds",
"by": "Greg Milner",
"url": "https://wwnorton.com/books/Pinpoint"
}
]
},
{
"id": "atmosphere-ignition",
"title": "Ignition of the Atmosphere",
"doc": "Ignition of the Atmosphere with Nuclear Bombs (LA-602)",
"agency": "Los Alamos (Konopinski, Marvin, Teller)",
"year": 1946,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "Could the bomb ignite the sky?",
"hook": "The calculation of whether an atomic bomb could set Earth’s atmosphere on fire. The answer was no.",
"url": "https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00329010.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Los Alamos report LA-602 of August 14, 1946, by Emil Konopinski, Cloyd Marvin, and Edward Teller on whether an atomic bomb could ignite Earth’s atmosphere.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Teller raised the question in 1942, before the Los Alamos laboratory opened: whether the heat of a fission bomb could start a runaway fusion reaction in the nitrogen of the air. Hans Bethe and others concluded that it could not, and the Trinity test proceeded in July 1945. In 1946 the 3 authors wrote up the formal analysis.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The authors found that the heated air would always lose energy to radiation faster than fusion reactions could replace it, so a self-sustaining reaction could not start with the bombs then under consideration. The answer to the question was no. The safety margin shrank only at temperatures that bombs far larger than those under consideration could reach, and even then they found a chain reaction impossible. Because the argument was complex and lacked experimental foundations, they called further work highly desirable.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report remained classified until the 1970s.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Oppenheimer’s “Terrible Possibility” - Atmospheric Ignition",
"by": "Kyle Hill",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QI88aLyaOs"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Oppenheimer’s Apocalypse Math",
"by": "Welch Labs",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD-Dco7xSSU"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Day Oppenheimer Feared He Might Blow Up the World",
"by": "Philip Ball, Nautilus",
"url": "https://nautil.us/the-day-oppenheimer-feared-he-might-blow-up-the-world-355603/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Making of the Atomic Bomb",
"by": "Richard Rhodes",
"url": "https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb.html?id=2G2TlJOhGI8C"
}
]
},
{
"id": "los-alamos-primer",
"title": "The Los Alamos Primer",
"doc": "The Los Alamos Primer (LA-1)",
"agency": "Los Alamos (R. Serber)",
"year": 1943,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "How to build an atomic bomb",
"hook": "The lecture notes given to new Manhattan Project scientists on how to build an atomic bomb.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4396412",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1943 Los Alamos technical report (LA-1), the Primer, compiled from lectures by Robert Serber to new Manhattan Project scientists on how to build an atomic bomb.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Serber, a physicist and longtime collaborator of J. Robert Oppenheimer, gave 5 lectures in April 1943 to the scientists arriving at the new Los Alamos laboratory. Edward Condon took notes, which became the 24-page Primer, the laboratory’s first technical report.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The Primer set out what was then known: fission, critical mass, the use of a tamper to hold the core together, expected damage, efficiency, and the risk of predetonation, along with the gun method of firing one piece of material into another.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A total of 36 copies were printed. The Primer was fully declassified in 1965. In 1992 the University of California Press published Serber’s annotated edition, with an introduction by Richard Rhodes.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Los Alamos Primer",
"by": "Robert Serber",
"url": "https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-los-alamos-primer/paper"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Revisiting The Los Alamos Primer",
"by": "Physics Today",
"url": "https://physicstoday.aip.org/features/revisiting-the-los-alamos-primer"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Building the First Atomic Bomb",
"by": "NMPBS Originals",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QxsehUI0rY"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Making of the Atomic Bomb",
"by": "Richard Rhodes",
"url": "https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Making-of-the-Atomic-Bomb/Richard-Rhodes/9781451677614"
}
]
},
{
"id": "project-sunshine",
"title": "Project Sunshine",
"doc": "Worldwide Effects of Atomic Weapons: Project Sunshine",
"agency": "AEC · RAND",
"year": 1953,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Collecting human bones to track fallout",
"hook": "A fallout study that led to collecting human bones worldwide to measure strontium-90, often without families’ consent.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4346140",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1953 study by Project RAND for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on the worldwide effects of atomic weapons, which gave rise to Project Sunshine, a program to measure fallout strontium-90 in human bone.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The RAND study examined the long-term effects of fallout from repeated nuclear tests. Strontium-90 behaves like calcium and settles in growing bone, so the program set out to measure it in human remains, especially those of children. In January 1955 AEC commissioner Willard Libby told colleagues the work needed more samples from children and joked about the value of “body snatching.”\n\n3. FINDINGS. Researchers collected more than 1,500 samples worldwide, from countries including Britain and Australia, many of them from babies and young children. Remains were often taken without parents’ knowledge or consent.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The program was secret until 1956. The full extent of the collection emerged only decades later, through U.S. disclosures in the 1990s and later investigations in Britain and Australia.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Project Sunshine’s dark secret",
"by": "The Globe and Mail",
"url": "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/project-sunshines-dark-secret/article1031823/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Bayou City Body Snatchers",
"by": "Houston Press",
"url": "https://www.houstonpress.com/news/bayou-city-body-snatchers-6560440/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "World Wakes Up to Horrific Scientific History",
"by": "ABC News",
"url": "https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80970"
}
]
},
{
"id": "pacer",
"title": "PACER",
"doc": "PACER Program, FY-1974 LASL Activity (LA-5754-MS)",
"agency": "Los Alamos",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Steam power from repeated H-bombs",
"hook": "A power plant that would set off small H-bombs, one after another, in an underground cavern to make steam.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4235453",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1974 Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) report (LA-5754-MS) on the laboratory’s fiscal year 1974 activity on PACER, a concept for a power plant driven by nuclear explosions in an underground cavern.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Los Alamos studied PACER in the early to mid-1970s as a way to generate electricity from nuclear explosions.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report covers the laboratory’s PACER work in fiscal 1974. In the concept’s early form, about 2 thermonuclear devices of 50 kilotons each would be detonated per day in a water-filled cavern roughly 1,000 feet across, dissolved out of a salt dome. The resulting steam would drive turbines producing around 2 gigawatts of electricity.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A 1975 outside review found that the economics depended on the price of the explosives, judged the program very unlikely to be developed even if its technical problems were solved, and warned that it would be controversial. Funding was cancelled in 1975. The idea survived only in later papers, such as Ralph Moir’s 1988 “PACER Revisited.”",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "PACER",
"by": "Ralph Moir",
"url": "https://www.ralphmoir.com/pacer/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Seabed caverns and nuclear fracking",
"by": "UCL STS Observatory",
"url": "https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/sts-observatory/2015/04/21/seabed-caverns-and-nuclear-fracking/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "carryall",
"title": "Project Carryall",
"doc": "Preliminary Design Studies in a Nuclear Excavation – Project Carryall",
"agency": "AEC",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "An interstate cut by nuclear blasts",
"hook": "A plan to blast a cut for Interstate 40 through the Mojave Desert with about 22 nuclear devices.",
"url": "https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/hrr/1964/50/50.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1963 preliminary design study by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the California Division of Highways, and the Santa Fe Railway for Project Carryall, a nuclear excavation of a cut for Interstate 40 through the Mojave Desert.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The 3 sponsors proposed the project in 1963 as part of the AEC’s Plowshare program. Its purpose was to cut a pass through the Bristol Mountains near Amboy for both the highway and a realigned rail line.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The plan called for 22 buried devices of 20 to 200 kilotons, fired in 2 salvos. The cut would be about 11,000 feet long and up to 360 feet deep. A separate shot would dig a crater to catch runoff. Planners estimated $13.8 million for the nuclear method, against $50 million for conventional construction.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The highway dropped out in 1966 because it could not wait for the AEC’s test program, and the railroad quietly abandoned the plan in 1970. Interstate 40 was built conventionally about a mile north.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Plans to Nuke a Desert Highway",
"by": "The Drive",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO4IgPecM50"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Caltrans History: Project Carryall",
"by": "Caltrans",
"url": "https://dot.ca.gov/ctnews/archive/2019-03/news/ct-news-2019-03-10-project-carryall"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The U.S. once considered using 23 nuclear bombs to blast out a highway",
"by": "Gizmodo",
"url": "https://gizmodo.com/the-u-s-once-considered-using-23-nuclear-bombs-to-blas-1638145994"
}
]
},
{
"id": "nuclear-canal",
"title": "The Nuclear Canal",
"doc": "Seiche and Tsunami Effects from Nuclear Excavation of an Interoceanic Canal (NVO-99-24)",
"agency": "AEC · John A. Blume & Associates",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A second Panama Canal, dug by nukes",
"hook": "An assessment of whether nuclear blasts used to dig a second Panama Canal could send tsunamis onto nearby coasts.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4510408",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1968 report (NVO-99-24) by John A. Blume & Associates for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on seiche and tsunami effects from nuclear excavation of an interoceanic canal, a second canal across Central America.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1964 Congress created the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission to determine whether to build a sea-level canal across Central America and whether nuclear explosives could dig it. The AEC’s Plowshare program ran cratering tests in Nevada in support of the study, and contractors examined side effects.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Blume, a San Francisco engineering firm, assessed whether the large blasts needed along a canal route could set off seiches and tsunamis on nearby coasts.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. In December 1970 the commission reported that nuclear excavation of a sea-level canal was not then feasible and was unlikely to become so in Panama. It recommended a conventionally dug canal near the existing one instead. That canal was never built. Panama later added larger locks to its existing canal; they opened in 2016.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Nuclear Canal: When Scientists Thought H-Bombs Would Make Awesome Earthmovers",
"by": "KQED",
"url": "https://www.kqed.org/science/710956/the-nuclear-canal-when-scientists-thought-h-bombs-would-make-awesome-earthmovers"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Excavating with Nuclear Explosives (1968)",
"by": "Nuclear Vault",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYeKH6i3ESs"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Plowshare Program",
"by": "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory",
"url": "https://st.llnl.gov/news/look-back/plowshare-program"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Plowshare",
"by": "U.S. Department of Energy",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcuBULDI-RM"
}
]
},
{
"id": "ketch",
"title": "Project Ketch",
"doc": "Project Ketch: A Feasibility Study on Creating Natural Gas Storage with Nuclear Explosions (PNE-1200)",
"agency": "AEC / Columbia Gas",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A nuclear gas cavern under Pennsylvania",
"hook": "A plan to set off a nuclear device under Pennsylvania to hollow out a cavern for storing natural gas.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4321824",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. July 1967 feasibility study (PNE-1200) for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Plowshare program and Columbia Gas on creating natural gas storage under Pennsylvania with a nuclear explosion.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Columbia Gas and the AEC began discussing Project Ketch in 1964 under Plowshare, the AEC’s program for peaceful nuclear explosions. The study was prepared with the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and the U.S. Bureau of Mines.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study proposed lowering a 24-kiloton device about 3,300 feet down a borehole in Sproul State Forest, south of Renovo in Clinton County, Pennsylvania. The blast would leave an underground cavity for storing gas.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The plan became public in February 1967 and drew opposition from residents of Renovo and State College concerned about radiation and safety. Columbia withdrew in 1968, the site lease was never negotiated, and the shot did not take place. Plowshare itself lost its funding in 1975.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Spectacular Ideas in Marginal Landscapes: Project Plowshare in Pennsylvania",
"by": "John Krygier",
"url": "https://krygier.owu.edu/krygier_html/ketch.html"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The plan to nuke Pennsylvania",
"by": "PennLive.com",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4BULIdLSYA"
}
]
},
{
"id": "place-of-honor",
"title": "Not a Place of Honor",
"doc": "Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (SAND92-1382)",
"agency": "DOE · Sandia",
"year": 1993,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "Warnings meant to last 10,000 years",
"hook": "Markers to warn people off buried nuclear waste for 10,000 years: spike fields and “this place is not a place of honor.”",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10117359",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1993 Sandia National Laboratories report (SAND92-1382) for the Department of Energy (DOE) on expert judgment regarding markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. WIPP is a DOE repository for transuranic waste from nuclear weapons production, mined into salt beds about 2,150 feet below the desert near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Federal rules required warnings that would deter digging there for 10,000 years. In 1991 Sandia convened an expert panel, the Marker Development Panel, which worked as 2 teams, with members from fields such as linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, and materials science, to design them.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report, by K. M. Trauth, S. C. Hora, and R. V. Guzowski, collects the teams’ work, including spike fields and the message “this place is not a place of honor.” The panel set out principles: mark the site, tell the truth, repeat the message in several forms, use materials with little scrap value, and keep records worldwide. It expected markers to lose effectiveness over time.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. WIPP began receiving waste in 1999.",
"more": [
{
"type": "podcast",
"title": "Ten Thousand Years",
"by": "99% Invisible",
"url": "https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "How to Make a Warning Last 10,000 Years",
"by": "SciShow",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj1oITXzqyg"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "This Place is Not a Place of Honor",
"by": "Damn Interesting",
"url": "https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Signs of Danger: Waste, Trauma, and Nuclear Threat",
"by": "Peter C. van Wyck",
"url": "https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816637638/signs-of-danger/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "atomic-priesthood",
"title": "The Atomic Priesthood",
"doc": "Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia (BMI/ONWI-532)",
"agency": "DOE (T. Sebeok)",
"year": 1984,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "A priesthood to guard nuclear waste",
"hook": "A linguist’s proposal for a priesthood that would pass down nuclear-waste warnings through myth and ritual.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6705990",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1984 report (BMI/ONWI-532) by linguist Thomas Sebeok for the Department of Energy (DOE) on communication measures to bridge 10 millennia, proposing a priesthood to pass down nuclear-waste warnings through myth and ritual.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1980 the DOE formed the Human Interference Task Force to find ways of keeping people out of sealed nuclear waste repositories for about 10,000 years. Sebeok, a linguist and semiotician at Indiana University, wrote the report for the task force through Battelle’s Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Sebeok argued that no single language or symbol could be relied on to last that long. He recommended a relay system in which the warning would be periodically renewed and re-recorded, combining pictures, signs, and text with heavy redundancy. The priesthood was his proposed keeper of the relay: a self-perpetuating group of experts that would hold the knowledge and spread it through invented legends and rituals.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Critics noted that such a group could gain power of its own.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why danger symbols can’t last forever",
"by": "Vox",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOEqzt36JEM"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Thomas Sebeok, Umberto Eco and the Semiotics of Nuclear Waste",
"by": "Progressive Geographies",
"url": "https://progressivegeographies.com/2025/02/02/thomas-sebeok-umberto-eco-and-the-semiotics-of-nuclear-waste/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "FAQ: “Nuclear priests”, “radiation cats” and field of thorns",
"by": "BASE (German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management)",
"url": "https://www.base.bund.de/en/repository/preservation-of-knowledge/faq/atomic-semiotics-nuclear-priests-radiation-cats.html"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Future Generations Need to Know Our Nuclear Waste Is Deadly. How Can We Tell Them?",
"by": "The Nation",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUXwrWMS-x8"
}
]
},
{
"id": "nuclear-waste-into-space",
"title": "Nuclear Waste into Space",
"doc": "Feasibility of Space Disposal of Radioactive Nuclear Waste (NASA-TM-X-2911)",
"agency": "NASA Lewis",
"year": 1973,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Launching nuclear waste into space",
"hook": "A NASA study of launching nuclear waste off Earth on rockets, for good.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19740006420",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. December 1973 technical memorandum (NASA-TM-X-2911) from NASA’s Lewis Research Center on the feasibility of launching radioactive nuclear waste into space.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) asked NASA to examine launching radioactive waste into space, and the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland produced the study.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study focused on the long-lived isotopes and weighed existing and planned rockets, trajectories, hazards, and destinations, including sending waste out of the solar system permanently. It concluded that the idea was feasible and that transport would add less than 5 percent to the cost of electricity, although by 2000 it would require more than 100 space shuttle launches a year.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA and the Department of Energy studied the idea again from 1978 to 1983 as a possible complement to underground burial. The United States chose deep geologic disposal instead, and no waste was launched.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why Don’t We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space?",
"by": "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us2Z-WC9rao"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Can We Launch Nuclear Waste Into the Sun?",
"by": "Fraser Cain",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aovpjmaBdw"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "What If Nuclear Waste Hit the Sun?",
"by": "Kyle Hill",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EeOSuYR-DE"
}
]
},
{
"id": "plutonium-heart",
"title": "The Plutonium Heart",
"doc": "Nuclear-Powered Artificial Heart Prototype System Development Program (COO-3043-14)",
"agency": "AEC · Westinghouse",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A plutonium-powered artificial heart",
"hook": "A fully implantable artificial heart powered by plutonium-238.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4286529",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1974 report (COO-3043-14) by Westinghouse for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on development of a prototype system for a fully implantable artificial heart powered by plutonium-238.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Two federal programs sought between 1967 and 1977 to build heart devices powered by the decay heat of plutonium-238. The AEC aimed for a fully implantable replacement heart and in 1971 contracted with Westinghouse’s Astronuclear Laboratory to develop it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The design used about 60 grams of plutonium-238 to run a Stirling engine, subcontracted to Philips, that drove a blood pump developed with Willem Kolff’s team at the University of Utah. The report covers the conceptual design of an intermediate system.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The prototype was too large, heavy, and inefficient, and animal implants planned for 1974 did not take place. Public concern about radioactive implants grew, and after a critical 1974 review AEC chair Dixy Lee Ray announced a phase-out. Support for atomic hearts had ended by 1977.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Atomic hearts: A decade of US government-sponsored development",
"by": "Physics Today",
"url": "https://physicstoday.aip.org/features/atomic-hearts-a-decade-of-us-government-sponsored-development"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Plans fizzled for nuclear-powered artificial heart",
"by": "Science News",
"url": "https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plans-fizzled-nuclear-powered-artificial-heart"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The True Story of the Government Programs That Tried to Build an Atomic Heart",
"by": "Nextgov",
"url": "https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2013/03/true-story-government-programs-tried-build-atomic-heart/62035/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "west-ford",
"title": "Project West Ford",
"doc": "Project West Ford Payload Telemetry System (TR-343)",
"agency": "USAF · MIT Lincoln Laboratory",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Copper needles in orbit for radio",
"hook": "An Air Force experiment that put hundreds of millions of copper needles in orbit to reflect radio signals.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0602928.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical report TR-343, issued in January 1964 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory for the U.S. Air Force, on the payload telemetry system of Project West Ford, which put hundreds of millions of copper needles in orbit to reflect radio signals.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The experiment was proposed by Walter Morrow and Harold Meyer to show that long-range military communications could be made reliable and hard to disrupt. A belt of orbiting dipoles, each 0.7 inch long, would act as an artificial ionosphere, scattering radio signals between ground stations.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The first launch, in October 1961, failed to release its dipoles. The second, in May 1963, worked, and voice, data, and teletype passed between Millstone Hill in Massachusetts and Camp Parks in California. The report describes the telemetry canister that tracked the dispenser.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Astronomers had protested since the plan was announced in 1960. Most dipoles were swept from orbit by early 1966, as designed, but clumps that never separated are still in orbit.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Why Earth Once Had An Artificial Ring Made From 500 Million Needles: Project West Ford",
"by": "RealLifeLore2",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMgZgw1WqjU"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "NASA: On millions of teeny-tiny copper hairs and orbital debris",
"by": "Network World",
"url": "https://www.networkworld.com/article/746896/nasa-on-millions-of-teeny-tiny-copper-hairs-and-orbital-debris.html"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "That Time the U.S. Military Launched a Half a Billion Needles to Space",
"by": "Today I Found Out",
"url": "https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2019/10/that-time-the-u-s-military-launched-a-half-a-billion-needles-to-space-for-reasons/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "starfish-prime",
"title": "Starfish Prime",
"doc": "Operation Dominic, Fish Bowl Series, Project 8A.2",
"agency": "Defense Atomic Support Agency · EG&G",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Artificial auroras from a nuclear test",
"hook": "Photographs of high-altitude nuclear tests, which lit artificial auroras across the Pacific.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA995489.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1962 Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) report, Operation Dominic, Fish Bowl Series, Project 8A.2, on the photography of high-altitude nuclear bursts, including Starfish Prime.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Operation Fishbowl was the high-altitude series within Operation Dominic. Starfish Prime was a 1.4-megaton test shot, launched on a Thor rocket from Johnston Island and detonated about 400 kilometers up on July 9, 1962, after an attempt in June failed.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report, by project officer D. F. Hansen and colleagues at Edgerton, Germeshausen & Grier, describes the optical and photographic coverage of all 5 Fishbowl bursts, which lit artificial auroras across the Pacific.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. About 900 miles away in Hawaii, the electromagnetic pulse from Starfish Prime knocked out some 300 streetlights and set off burglar alarms. Electrons trapped in a new artificial radiation belt damaged or disabled several satellites, including Telstar 1. The public version of the report is a 1985 extract of the classified original.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Big Problem That Happened After We Nuked Space",
"by": "Astrum",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPq5fGZdUJo"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "A Brief History of the Starfish Prime Nuclear Test",
"by": "Plainly Difficult",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXC9-sBoLEU"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The 50th Anniversary of Starfish Prime: The Nuke that Shook the World",
"by": "Discover Magazine",
"url": "https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-50th-anniversary-of-starfish-prime-the-nuke-that-shook-the-world-238"
}
]
},
{
"id": "argus",
"title": "Operation Argus",
"doc": "Operation ARGUS 1958 (DNA 6039F)",
"agency": "Defense Nuclear Agency",
"year": 1982,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Nuclear blasts to make radiation belts",
"hook": "Secret nuclear blasts above the South Atlantic in 1958, meant to create artificial radiation belts around Earth.",
"url": "https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_Rpt_Atm/1958_DNA_6039F.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1982 Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) history (DNA 6039F) of Operation Argus, a series of secret nuclear blasts above the South Atlantic in 1958 intended to create artificial radiation belts around Earth.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Operation Argus tested a concept of Livermore physicist Nicholas Christofilos: that electrons released by a nuclear blast high above Earth would be trapped by the planet’s magnetic field, forming a belt that might disrupt radar, radio, and incoming warheads. A Navy task force carried it out in secret.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The task force fired 3 low-yield warheads on X-17A rockets from the missile ship USS Norton Sound on August 27, August 30, and September 6, 1958. The Explorer 4 satellite and other instruments detected the resulting belts, which faded within weeks.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The New York Times revealed the tests in March 1959. The 1982 history is one of a series the DNA produced to document the military personnel who took part in U.S. atmospheric nuclear tests.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Burning the Sky: Operation Argus and the Untold Story of the Cold War Nuclear Tests in Outer Space",
"by": "Mark Wolverton",
"url": "https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/burning-the-sky_9781468314175/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Oldies and Oddities: Homebuilt Radiation Belt",
"by": "Air & Space Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/oldies-amp-oddities-homebuilt-radiation-belt-27097974/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Operation Argus",
"by": "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory",
"url": "https://st.llnl.gov/news/look-back/operation-argus"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Operation Argus (1958) Atmospheric Nuclear Tests",
"by": "Nuclear Vault",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUM3PDVnk7M"
}
]
},
{
"id": "acoustic-kitty",
"title": "Acoustic Kitty",
"doc": "Views on Trained Cats for [redacted] Use",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Cats wired by the CIA to eavesdrop",
"hook": "The CIA’s verdict on cats wired to eavesdrop: “a remarkable scientific achievement,” but impractical.",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/st27.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Heavily redacted Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memorandum of March 1967, “Views on Trained Cats for [redacted] Use,” recording the end of Acoustic Kitty, an effort to turn a house cat into a mobile eavesdropping device.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology ran the program in the 1960s. According to former officers, technicians implanted a microphone and transmitter in a cat and tried to train it to approach and stay near targeted conversations. Their accounts of how the field tests ended differ.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The memo called the work “a remarkable scientific achievement,” praised the people who ran it, and credited them with showing that cats can be trained to move short distances. It concluded that environmental and security factors made the method impractical in a real foreign operation.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The program ended in 1967. The National Security Archive obtained the memo and published it in 2001 in a collection on the CIA’s science directorate.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The CIA Experimented On Animals in the 1960s Too. Just Ask ‘Acoustic Kitty’",
"by": "Smithsonian Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cia-experimented-animals-1960s-too-just-ask-acoustic-kitty-180964313/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Cat’s out of the Bag, So Declassify it Already",
"by": "National Security Archive (Unredacted)",
"url": "https://unredacted.com/2013/10/11/the-cats-out-of-the-bag-so-declassify-it-already/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The CIA Plan to Use Cats as Spies (and the Taxi That Ruined It)",
"by": "Mental Floss",
"url": "https://www.mentalfloss.com/animals/cats/cia-plan-use-cats-spies-and-taxi-ruined-it"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Acoustic Kitty: The CIA’s Plan to Spy... with Cats",
"by": "Megaprojects",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQhQLtQPnpQ"
}
]
},
{
"id": "azorian",
"title": "Project Azorian",
"doc": "Project AZORIAN: The Story of the Hughes Glomar Explorer",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1985,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Lifting a sunken Soviet submarine",
"hook": "The CIA and Howard Hughes built a fake deep-sea mining ship to lift a sunken Soviet submarine off the Pacific floor.",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb305/index.htm",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Internal Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) history, from the fall 1985 issue of Studies in Intelligence, of Project AZORIAN, the operation to raise a sunken Soviet submarine with the Hughes Glomar Explorer.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Soviet missile submarine K-129 sank with its entire crew in March 1968, about 1,560 miles northwest of Hawaii. The CIA located the wreck and, with Howard Hughes, built the Hughes Glomar Explorer to raise it from the Pacific floor with a giant claw. Publicly, the ship was a Hughes venture to mine manganese nodules.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The lift began in August 1974. The submarine broke apart on the way up, and only a forward section was recovered. The remains of 6 Soviet sailors were buried at sea; in 1992 the CIA gave Russia a film of the ceremony.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Reporters exposed the operation in 1975, and the CIA’s refusal to confirm or deny it became known as the Glomar response. The history was declassified in 2010.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "How the CIA Stole a Russian Submarine",
"by": "fern",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGsVo0uIJVs"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation",
"by": "David H. Sharp",
"url": "https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700622511/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Project Azorian: The Secret US Mission to Recover a Soviet Submarine",
"by": "Megaprojects",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqGTd3zQSqk"
}
]
},
{
"id": "northwoods",
"title": "Operation Northwoods",
"doc": "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba",
"agency": "Joint Chiefs of Staff",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Staged attacks to justify war on Cuba",
"hook": "The Joint Chiefs proposed staged attacks to blame on Cuba as a pretext for war. The Kennedy administration rejected it.",
"url": "https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/2022-10/Joint-Chiefs-pretexts-to-invade-Cuba-March-1962_0.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff dated March 13, 1962, “Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba,” proposing staged attacks to be blamed on Cuba as a pretext for war.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Joint Chiefs drafted the memo as part of Operation Mongoose, the Kennedy administration’s covert campaign against Fidel Castro. Chairman Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer sent it to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Its proposals included faking the shootdown of a civilian airliner, blowing up a U.S. ship at Guantanamo Bay, sinking boats of Cuban refugees, and staging a terror campaign in Miami and Washington.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. President Kennedy rejected the proposals, and none was carried out. The document remained secret until the Assassination Records Review Board declassified it in November 1997. James Bamford’s 2001 book Body of Secrets brought it wide attention.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962",
"by": "National Security Archive",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Operation Northwoods Conspiracy, Explained",
"by": "Johnny Harris",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHOgvsno5Q"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Body of Secrets",
"by": "James Bamford",
"url": "https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/8094/body-of-secrets-by-james-bamford/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba",
"by": "ABC News",
"url": "https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662"
}
]
},
{
"id": "skyhook",
"title": "Skyhook and Operation Coldfeet",
"doc": "Robert Fulton's Skyhook and Operation Coldfeet (Studies in Intelligence)",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1995,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Snatching men off an ice station",
"hook": "A balloon and a line let a low-flying B-17 snatch two men off an abandoned Soviet ice station.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-38-no-5/robert-fultons-skyhook-and-operation-coldfeet/",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1995 Studies in Intelligence article by historian William Leary on Robert Fulton Jr.’s Skyhook pickup system and its first operational use, Operation Coldfeet, in which a low-flying B-17 retrieved 2 men from an abandoned Soviet ice station.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Fulton, an inventor, developed Skyhook with support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the 1950s. The person on the ground wore a harness and sent up a balloon on a line; an aircraft with a forked catcher on its nose snagged the line and winched the person aboard. The first human pickup took place on August 12, 1958.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Operation Coldfeet took place in 1962. Air Force Maj. James Smith and Navy Lt. Leonard LeSchack parachuted onto NP-8, a Soviet drifting ice station abandoned in haste. On June 2 a B-17 from Intermountain Aviation, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) proprietary company, picked them up.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The documents and equipment the men brought back showed that Soviet polar research was ahead of American work.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "How to Yeet a Spy - Operation Coldfeet",
"by": "Dark Docs",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXmRYYjyKfE"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Skyhook",
"by": "Damn Interesting",
"url": "https://www.damninteresting.com/the-skyhook"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Rescue, James Bond Style",
"by": "Air & Space Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/rescue-james-bond-style-260599/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "aquiline",
"title": "Aquiline",
"doc": "Project Aquiline document collection",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "A CIA spy drone disguised as a bird",
"hook": "The CIA’s first spy drone, disguised as a bird, built to photograph the Soviet Union unnoticed.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/aquiline",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Collection of 40 declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reading-room documents, from the 1960s to 1971, on Project Aquiline, the agency’s first spy drone, disguised as a bird to photograph the Soviet Union unnoticed.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The CIA’s Office of Research and Development started Aquiline in 1965, and Douglas Aircraft, later McDonnell Douglas, won the contract to build it. Planned payloads included cameras, nuclear sensors, and electronic-intelligence recorders; the agency also envisioned it supporting agents in the field.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The first prototype had an 8.5-foot wingspan, weighed about 105 pounds, and ran on a 3.5-horsepower chainsaw engine. Five prototypes were built, and 3 were destroyed in testing. Flight tests showed a range of about 130 miles and high-resolution photography. A practical long-range system would have cost about $35 million and taken 2 to 3 more years.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The CIA cancelled the project on November 1, 1971.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The CIA’s Bird-Shaped Aquiline Drones Could Still Be Caged Up At Area 51",
"by": "The War Zone",
"url": "https://www.twz.com/40966/the-cias-bird-shaped-aquiline-drones-could-still-be-caged-up-at-area-51"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "CIA Publishes Documents on ‘Aquiline’ Drone Program",
"by": "ExecutiveGov",
"url": "https://www.executivegov.com/articles/cia-publishes-documents-on-aquiline-drone-program"
}
]
},
{
"id": "harp",
"title": "Project HARP",
"doc": "HARP 5-Inch and 16-Inch Guns at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona (BRL MR-1825)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · BRL / McGill",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Naval guns firing at the upper sky",
"hook": "A U.S.-Canadian project that fired instrument packages into the upper atmosphere from 16-inch naval guns.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0654123.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report BRL MR-1825 of the U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratories (BRL), issued in February 1967 by C. H. Murphy and Gerald Bull, on the High Altitude Research Project (HARP) 5-inch and 16-inch guns at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. HARP, a U.S.-Canadian project, used large guns, including 16-inch naval guns, to fire instrumented projectiles into the upper atmosphere. It was a joint effort of McGill University’s Space Research Institute, led by engineer Gerald Bull, and BRL. The Army funded it from 1962, and Canada shared the cost from 1964. Its first 16-inch gun fired straight up from Barbados.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report covers a second 16-inch Navy gun set up at Yuma, where payloads could be recovered on land. In 1966 that gun set a record altitude of 111 miles, about 180 kilometers, and its shots measured upper-atmosphere winds.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The project ended in 1967. Bull was assassinated in Brussels in 1990 while designing a supergun for Iraq.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "HARP Space Gun: Gerald Bull’s High Altitude Research Project and the Martlet Launch Vehicles",
"by": "Polyus",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEKpA8ITDLE"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Project HARP Space Gun",
"by": "Atlas Obscura",
"url": "https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/project-harp-space-gun-barbados"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Project Babylon: Gerald Bull’s Downfall",
"by": "Damn Interesting",
"url": "https://www.damninteresting.com/project-babylon-gerald-bulls-downfall"
}
]
},
{
"id": "satellite-power-system",
"title": "The Satellite Power System",
"doc": "Satellite Power System: Reference System Report (DOE/ER-0023)",
"agency": "DOE / NASA",
"year": 1978,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Solar power beamed down from orbit",
"hook": "A fleet of kilometers-wide solar satellites beaming power to Earth as microwaves.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19790013367",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Reference system report DOE/ER-0023, issued in October 1978 by the Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA, defining a fleet of kilometers-wide solar satellites beaming power to Earth as microwaves.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1977 DOE and NASA began a joint program, planned to run through August 1980, to decide whether solar power satellites deserved development. The report defined the reference design that the program’s environmental, economic, and social assessments would evaluate.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Each satellite would carry about 55 square kilometers of silicon or gallium-aluminum-arsenide solar cells and use a 1-kilometer microwave antenna to send 5 gigawatts to a receiving antenna on the ground. Crews at construction bases in space would build each one in geostationary orbit in six months. The planning case assumed two satellites a year from 2000 to 2030.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The evaluation program ended in 1980. In 1981 a National Research Council committee recommended committing no development funds for the next decade.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Peter Glaser at MIT - Space Solar Power - 1999 MA Space Grant Consortium Public Lecture",
"by": "MIT Video Productions",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03x_Q4DGfeI"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "All you need to know about space based solar power",
"by": "Sabine Hossenfelder",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZPrIE5ZMZA"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Staring at the Sun",
"by": "W. Patrick McCray",
"url": "https://patrickmccray.com/leaping-robot/2014/06/06/staring-at-the-sun"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Visioneers",
"by": "W. Patrick McCray",
"url": "https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691139838/the-visioneers"
}
]
},
{
"id": "effects-of-nuclear-weapons",
"title": "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons",
"doc": "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1962 edition)",
"agency": "DoD / AEC (S. Glasstone)",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Blast, heat, and fallout explained",
"hook": "The government’s public encyclopedia of blast, heat, and fallout.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/972902",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. February 1964 printing of the 1962 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, the Department of Defense (DoD) and Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) public reference on blast, heat, and fallout, edited by Samuel Glasstone.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Glasstone, a chemist and author of many textbooks, edited the book for the DoD and the AEC. It began as The Effects of Atomic Weapons in 1950, took its current title in 1957, and was revised in 1962. Its aim was to inform the public as fully as security allowed.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Drawing on U.S. test data, the book covers blast, heat, initial radiation, and fallout, along with their effects on buildings and people. From the 1962 edition on, copies came with a pocket holding the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer, a circular slide rule from the Lovelace Foundation that estimated 28 effects of a burst.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A third edition, with Philip Dolan, followed in 1977. The Office of Scientific and Technical Information holds that printing.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Nuclear Bomb Computer Slide Rule",
"by": "Kyle Hill",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C06yW0232Bc"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The trouble with airbursts",
"by": "Alex Wellerstein, Restricted Data",
"url": "https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/12/06/trouble-airbursts/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Whole World on Fire",
"by": "Lynn Eden",
"url": "https://cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801435782/whole-world-on-fire/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "pigeon-guided-missiles",
"title": "Pigeon-Guided Missiles",
"doc": "Development of the NRL ORCON Tactical Missile Simulator",
"agency": "Naval Research Laboratory",
"year": 1948,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Missiles steered by pigeons",
"hook": "The Navy revived B. F. Skinner’s idea of training pigeons to steer missiles by pecking at a target on a screen.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/trecms/AD1216369/index.html",
"status": "partial",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) report, about 1948–53, on the development of the ORCON tactical missile simulator, which tested pigeons as the guidance element of a homing missile.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. During World War II, psychologist B. F. Skinner trained pigeons to steer a glide bomb by pecking at the target’s image on a screen in its nose. The military cancelled that work, Project Pigeon, in October 1944. After the war the Navy asked for a review of Skinner’s results, which found that in restricted situations the birds could act as the sensing element of a homing system, and NRL revived the idea as ORCON, short for “organic control.”\n\n3. FINDINGS. NRL built the simulator under problem R13-07 to test whether a pigeon could pick out and follow a specified target and steer a missile toward it under simulated tactical conditions.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. ORCON ran from about 1948 until 1953, when electronic guidance had proven reliable. Skinner recounted both programs in his 1960 article “Pigeons in a Pelican.”",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Project Orcon",
"by": "B. F. Skinner Foundation",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP1hJLepOhw"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The WW2 experiment to make pigeon-guided missiles",
"by": "BBC Global",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GdmfDuzQvM"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "B.F. Skinner’s Pigeon-Guided Rocket",
"by": "Smithsonian Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/bf-skinners-pigeon-guided-rocket-53443995/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "spy-pigeons",
"title": "Spy Pigeons",
"doc": "Feasibility Research on a System to Provide High Resolution Photography Over Denied Areas (TACANA)",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1978,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Pigeons with cameras over Soviet shipyards",
"hook": "A Top Secret study of photographing Soviet shipyards with camera-carrying pigeons. Appendices cover pigeon care.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/06527327",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Top Secret feasibility study of 1978 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) on TACANA, a program to photograph Soviet targets with homing pigeons.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. ORD ran TACANA in the 1970s. It built a camera small enough to strap to a pigeon’s breast; it could start on release or after a delay and took pictures at set intervals as the bird flew home. Pigeons fly hundreds of feet up, so their photos could show far more detail than aircraft or satellite images, and the birds blended in with local flocks. The CIA ran test flights in the mid-1970s, including over a prison and the Washington Navy Yard.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The study judged that pigeons had a good chance of meeting photo requirements around Leningrad, including the Sudomekh shipyard. Its appendices cover pigeon care.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The CIA released the study in 2019. How many real missions flew, if any, remains classified.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The Debrief: Behind the Artifact – Spy Pigeon",
"by": "Central Intelligence Agency",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJvEzjk7I_A"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "When the CIA Spied on American Citizens—Using Pigeons",
"by": "Atlas Obscura",
"url": "https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cia-cold-war-pigeon-spies"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Pigeon Camera",
"by": "CIA Museum",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/artifact/pigeon-camera/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "avian-delivery",
"title": "Avian Delivery System",
"doc": "Operator's Manual: Avian Delivery System",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Training ravens for delivery missions",
"hook": "A field manual for training a raven to drop off and pick up small objects on buildings.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/06527437",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Undated, 75-page Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operator’s manual for the Avian Delivery System, in which a trained raven carried a small package to a windowsill or ledge on a building and later brought it back.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The CIA wanted birds that could place, move, or recover surveillance equipment in spots people could not easily reach. A related proposal for avian operational support, dated August 1974, noted that only one raven had been available for work that season.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The manual tells handlers how to keep and work the raven. It covers caring for the bird and running the system, walks through a hypothetical operation, and warns that it does not replace hands-on training. Press reports on the release put the raven’s payload at up to 40 grams.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The CIA released the documents in September 2019, along with records of its pigeon and dolphin programs.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "How the CIA uses animals to spy",
"by": "fern",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sX2oL2N1Iw"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The CIA’s Most Highly-Trained Spies Weren’t Even Human",
"by": "Smithsonian Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-cias-most-highly-trained-spies-werent-even-human-20149/"
},
{
"type": "podcast",
"title": "Birds Of A Feather Spy Together",
"by": "NPR All Things Considered",
"url": "https://www.npr.org/2013/10/13/233354052/birds-of-a-feather-spy-together"
}
]
},
{
"id": "deep-ops",
"title": "Project Deep Ops",
"doc": "Deep Object Recovery with Pilot and Killer Whales (NUC TP 306)",
"agency": "U.S. Navy · Naval Undersea Center",
"year": 1972,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Whales trained to recover torpedoes",
"hook": "The Navy trained orcas and pilot whales to dive and attach recovery gear to lost torpedoes.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0754396",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Naval Undersea Center report NUC TP 306, dated November 1972, on Project Deep Ops, in which killer whales and a pilot whale were trained to attach recovery gear to lost torpedoes and other objects.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Deep Ops began in 1969 at the Naval Undersea Center’s laboratory in Hawaii. The Navy lost test ordnance on its ocean ranges, and divers could work only to about 300 feet. Researchers trained two killer whales, Ahab and Ishmael, and a pilot whale, Morgan, to find objects fitted with acoustic pingers and attach recovery gear carried in their mouths.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The whales learned to follow boats and wear harnesses with radio packs. The orcas placed practice grabbers at depths of 500 and 850 feet, and Morgan at 1,654 feet. Using a hydrazine gas lift, Morgan helped raise a dummy Mk 46 torpedo from 500 feet. Ishmael swam off during an open-ocean exercise and was never seen again.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report recommended continuing the work with pilot whales.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "A Technical Film Report on Project Deep Ops",
"by": "US National Archives",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isyO5tQfeqM"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Playing Fetch with Pilot Whales: The Navy’s Project Deep Ops",
"by": "The Unwritten Record (National Archives)",
"url": "https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2015/10/14/playing-fetch-with-pilot-whales-the-navys-project-deep-ops"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program: Pilot Whale Torpedo Recovery",
"by": "PeriscopeFilm",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asw5CBd5LEU"
}
]
},
{
"id": "bat-bomb",
"title": "The Bat Bomb",
"doc": "Project X-Ray",
"agency": "U.S. Army Air Forces / U.S. Navy",
"year": 1942,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Bats carrying tiny firebombs",
"hook": "A plan to drop bats carrying tiny firebombs on Japanese cities. Escaped test bats set an air base on fire.",
"url": "https://www.army.mil/article/6993/bats_over_tokyo",
"status": "partial",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Records of Project X-Ray, a 1942–44 Army Air Forces, Navy, and Marine Corps effort to drop bats carrying small incendiary bombs on Japanese cities.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Lytle S. Adams, a Pennsylvania dentist, proposed the bat bomb in a letter dated January 12, 1942. Through his connection to Eleanor Roosevelt the idea reached President Roosevelt, who called it worth looking into. Adams’s team found caves near Bandera, Texas, holding millions of Mexican free-tailed bats.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Chemist Louis Fieser, working for the National Defense Research Committee, designed a 17.5-gram napalm incendiary with a timed igniter for each bat. Hibernating bats would be packed into crates that opened under parachutes over Japan, so the bats would wake and roost in buildings before the bombs went off. In a 1943 test, bats that escaped burned down most of the buildings at Carlsbad Auxiliary Army Airfield in New Mexico.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army dropped the project, and the Navy cancelled it in 1944.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Bat Bomb: World War II’s Other Secret Weapon",
"by": "Jack Couffer",
"url": "https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292718722/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Bat Bombers",
"by": "Air & Space Forces Magazine",
"url": "https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1090bats/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Almost Perfect World War II Plot To Bomb Japan With Bats",
"by": "Atlas Obscura",
"url": "https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-almost-perfect-world-war-ii-plot-to-bomb-japan-with-bats"
}
]
},
{
"id": "robertson-panel",
"title": "The Robertson Panel",
"doc": "Report of Meetings of Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1953,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The CIA’s plan to debunk UFOs",
"hook": "A CIA panel of scientists recommended “debunking” UFOs, with help from Walt Disney cartoons and amateur astronomers.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp79b00752a000300100010-4",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of the January 1953 meetings of a scientific advisory panel on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), convened by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Office of Scientific Intelligence and chaired by Caltech physicist H. P. Robertson.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The panel met to review the Air Force’s UFO files. Members included Luis Alvarez, Samuel Goudsmit, Lloyd Berkner, and Thornton Page. Over several days they studied case reports and films shot at Tremonton, Utah, and Great Falls, Montana.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The panel found no evidence that UFOs posed a direct threat to national security or were anything beyond known phenomena. It was concerned instead that floods of reports could clog military communications during an attack, and it recommended “debunking” the subject through public education, with help from Walt Disney cartoons and amateur astronomers, to strip it of its mystery. It also suggested that civilian UFO groups be watched.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report stayed classified for years. UFO researchers later pointed to it as the start of official debunking.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–90",
"by": "Gerald K. Haines, Studies in Intelligence",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/cia-role-study-UFOs.pdf"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects",
"by": "Edward J. Ruppelt",
"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17346"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "After the Flying Saucers Came",
"by": "Greg Eghigian",
"url": "https://global.oup.com/academic/product/after-the-flying-saucers-came-9780190869878?cc=us&lang=en&"
}
]
},
{
"id": "project-sign",
"title": "Project Sign",
"doc": "Unidentified Aerial Objects: Project SIGN",
"agency": "USAF · Air Materiel Command",
"year": 1949,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The Air Force’s first UFO study",
"hook": "The Air Force’s first official UFO study. One appendix weighs whether visitors could come from Mars or Venus.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/ProjectSIGN",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. U.S. Air Force Air Materiel Command report of February 1949, “Unidentified Aerial Objects: Project SIGN,” summarizing the Air Force’s first formal investigation of flying saucers.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Air Materiel Command set up Project Sign at Wright Field, Ohio, at the end of 1947, after a wave of sightings that summer.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report summarizes the project’s review of 243 sightings. It concluded that no definite evidence yet proved or disproved that the objects were real aircraft of unknown design, and it recommended continued investigation. Its appendices included a letter from James Lipp of the RAND Corporation weighing whether visitors could come from other planets, such as Mars or Venus; Lipp found the idea unlikely.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. By the time the report was issued, the project had been renamed Grudge, which treated sightings as misidentifications, delusions, or hoaxes. Project Blue Book replaced it in 1952.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects",
"by": "Edward J. Ruppelt",
"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17346"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "After the Flying Saucers Came",
"by": "Greg Eghigian",
"url": "https://global.oup.com/academic/product/after-the-flying-saucers-came-9780190869878?cc=us&lang=en&"
}
]
},
{
"id": "roswell-case-closed",
"title": "Roswell: Case Closed",
"doc": "The Roswell Report: Case Closed",
"agency": "USAF",
"year": 1997,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The Roswell aliens were crash dummies",
"hook": "The Air Force’s explanation that the Roswell “alien bodies” were crash-test dummies dropped from balloons.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA326147",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. U.S. Air Force report of 1997, “The Roswell Report: Case Closed,” by Capt. James McAndrew, on later stories of alien bodies connected with the 1947 Roswell incident.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In July 1947 the Army Air Forces base at Roswell, New Mexico, announced it had recovered a “flying disc,” then said it was a weather balloon. In response to a General Accounting Office inquiry, the Air Force reported in July 1994 that the debris came from Project Mogul, a classified program that flew balloon-borne microphones to detect Soviet nuclear tests. This report was a follow-up to that finding.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report concluded that witnesses were probably remembering anthropomorphic test dummies dropped from high-altitude balloons in the 1950s, along with aircraft and balloon accidents that injured or killed Air Force crews. Because those events came years after 1947, the report suggested that memories had compressed them in time.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report appeared in June 1997, just before the incident’s 50th anniversary.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Reel America: “The Roswell Reports” - 1997 U.S. Air Force Film",
"by": "C-SPAN’s American History TV",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7rVSri-7es"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Case Closed: Reflections on the 1997 Air Force Roswell Report",
"by": "Bernard D. Gildenberg and David E. Thomas, Skeptical Inquirer",
"url": "https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1998/05/22164918/p31.pdf"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "In 1947, A High-Altitude Balloon Crash Landed in Roswell. The Aliens Never Left",
"by": "Smithsonian Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/in-1947-high-altitude-balloon-crash-landed-roswell-aliens-never-left-180963917/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "ufo-hypothesis",
"title": "UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions",
"doc": "UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Preparing to survive real UFOs",
"hook": "An NSA staff paper asking how humanity should prepare to survive if UFOs turn out to be real.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/13/2002761377/-1/-1/0/UFO_HYPOTHESIS.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. National Security Agency (NSA) staff paper of about 1968, “UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions,” on how humanity should prepare to survive if unidentified flying objects (UFOs) prove real.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The paper was written at NSA. The author’s name is redacted, and the surviving draft carries footnotes and handwritten comments.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The paper reviews the usual explanations for UFOs, such as hoaxes, hallucinations, and natural phenomena, and rejects the claim that they can account for every sighting. It then sets aside the question of what UFOs are and asks what their reality would mean for human survival, sorting the possibilities by whether humans discover an alien intelligence or it discovers us.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NSA later released the paper under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and posts it among its declassified UFO records.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Secretive History of the NSA’s UFO Studies in the Sixties",
"by": "The Debrief",
"url": "https://thedebrief.org/the-secretive-history-of-the-nsas-ufo-studies-in-the-sixties/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "After the Flying Saucers Came",
"by": "Greg Eghigian",
"url": "https://global.oup.com/academic/product/after-the-flying-saucers-came-9780190869878?cc=us&lang=en&"
}
]
},
{
"id": "extraterrestrial-messages",
"title": "Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages",
"doc": "Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages (H. Campaigne)",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 1969,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Codebreaking practice with alien messages",
"hook": "The answer key to mock messages from aliens that an NSA mathematician wrote as a codebreaking exercise.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/13/2002761374/-1/-1/0/KEY_TO_ET_MESSAGES.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Article by mathematician Howard Campaigne in the Winter 1969 issue of the classified National Security Agency (NSA) Technical Journal, giving the answer key to mock messages from aliens that he wrote as a codebreaking exercise.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In the 1960s NSA cryptologists treated contact with aliens as a codebreaking problem. Lambros Callimahos, one of the agency’s senior cryptanalysts, wrote about communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence in the Winter 1966 issue of the journal. In the Spring 1966 issue Campaigne, a veteran of wartime codebreaking, published a set of invented messages written as if they came from space and challenged readers to work them out without any shared language.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The article explains how each message was built and how it could be decoded. The puzzles were training exercises; no actual signal was involved.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NSA later declassified the articles, along with the rest of the Technical Journal, and posted them online.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The NSA and Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence",
"by": "Inside The Black Vault",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHUgTLfiEpI"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication",
"by": "Douglas A. Vakoch (ed.), NASA History Series",
"url": "https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-resources/nasa-history-series/archaeology-anthropology-and-interstellar-communication/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "voynich",
"title": "The Voynich Manuscript",
"doc": "The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma (M. E. D'Imperio)",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 1978,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The NSA studies the Voynich manuscript",
"hook": "An NSA cryptologist’s survey of the Voynich manuscript, an illustrated book in a script no one has deciphered.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA070618",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1978 National Security Agency (NSA) survey by cryptologist Mary D’Imperio, The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma, on an illustrated book in a script that has not been deciphered.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. D’Imperio wrote the survey to give future researchers a single starting point. The manuscript holds about 240 vellum pages of an unknown script with drawings of unidentified plants, star charts, and nude women in pools. It is named for Wilfrid Voynich, the book dealer who bought it in 1912, and has been at Yale’s Beinecke Library, as MS 408, since 1969.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The survey reviews the manuscript’s history, the many proposed decipherments, and statistical studies of the text, including work by codebreaker William Friedman, whose study group transcribed it onto IBM punch cards.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Radiocarbon tests in 2009 dated the vellum to the early 1400s. No proposed solution has won acceptance.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The world’s most mysterious book - Stephen Bax",
"by": "TED-Ed",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NS4CbBJQ84"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The World’s Most Mysterious Manuscript",
"by": "Smithsonian Magazine",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-worlds-most-mysterious-manuscript-43738146/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Voynich Manuscript",
"by": "Raymond Clemens (ed.), Yale University Press",
"url": "https://yalebooks.yale.edu/9780300217230/the-voynich-manuscript"
},
{
"type": "podcast",
"title": "Podcast: Voynich Manuscript",
"by": "The Atlas Obscura Podcast",
"url": "https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-voynich-manuscript"
}
]
},
{
"id": "gamblers-ruin",
"title": "Gambler’s Ruin",
"doc": "Gambler's Ruin With Soft-Hearted Adversary (T. Lehrer and R. E. Fagen)",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 1957,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Tom Lehrer’s math paper for the NSA",
"hook": "A math paper for the NSA co-written by the satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer, with a joke citation slipped in.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/14/2002762807/-1/-1/0/GAMBLERS-RUIN.PDF/GAMBLERS-RUIN.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. January 1957 National Security Agency (NSA) paper by Tom Lehrer and R. E. Fagen, “Gambler’s Ruin With Soft-Hearted Adversary,” on a variant of the classic probability problem.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Lehrer, a Harvard-trained mathematician, worked at the NSA while serving in the Army in the mid-1950s, before he became known for his satirical songs.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The bibliography lists 6 sources, but the text cites only 5. The extra entry, a joke citation, credits Lobachevsky, the subject of Lehrer’s 1953 song of that name, with an unpublished paper on the topology of Riemannian manifolds that does not exist.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A reader found the joke in 2016, and NSA historians said they had never heard of it. The NSA has since posted the paper publicly.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Citing Lobachevsky",
"by": "Dan Q",
"url": "https://danq.me/2025/07/29/citing-lobachevsky"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Lobachevsky",
"by": "Tom Lehrer",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCr-vUHanQM"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The man who fooled the NSA – on the death of Tom Lehrer",
"by": "heise online",
"url": "https://heise.de/-10502206"
}
]
},
{
"id": "controlled-offensive-behavior",
"title": "Controlled Offensive Behavior",
"doc": "Controlled Offensive Behavior – USSR (ST-CS-01-169-72)",
"agency": "DIA",
"year": 1972,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Soviet mind-control research",
"hook": "A survey of Soviet mind-control research: hypnosis, telepathy, psychokinesis, and teleportation.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001300010001-7",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report ST-CS-01-169-72, “Controlled Offensive Behavior – USSR,” dated July 1972, surveying Soviet research that might be used to influence or alter human behavior.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Capt. John D. LaMothe of the Army Medical Service Corps wrote the report while working in the medical intelligence office of the Army’s Office of the Surgeon General, using information gathered through January 1972. Reports like this reflected U.S. concern that the Soviets were ahead in psychic research.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Its sections cover hypnosis, conditioning through suggestion, propaganda and mass media, psychoactive drugs, the effects of odors on behavior, and parapsychology, including telepathy, psychokinesis, and teleportation. It summarized Soviet work in psychology, physiology, and biophysics and did not test any of the claims.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was declassified with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Stargate records.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "DIA worried the Soviets might try to “Incept” them",
"by": "MuckRock",
"url": "https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/mar/23/dia-worried-soviets-might-try-incept-them/"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "In the ’70s, the U.S. Government thought almost everything was Soviet mind control",
"by": "MuckRock",
"url": "https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/sep/29/plane-fiction/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Phenomena",
"by": "Annie Jacobsen",
"url": "https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/annie-jacobsen/phenomena/9780316349352/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "uri-geller",
"title": "Uri Geller at SRI",
"doc": "Experiments – Uri Geller at SRI, August 4–11, 1973",
"agency": "CIA · SRI",
"year": 1973,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Uri Geller tested in a shielded room",
"hook": "The write-up concluding that Uri Geller, tested in a shielded room, “demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability.”",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00791r000100480003-3",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Appendix to an SRI report for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on experiments with the performer Uri Geller from August 4 to 11, 1973.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1972 the CIA began funding physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff at SRI, the California research institute, to test people who claimed psychic abilities. Geller was an Israeli performer known for apparently bending spoons.\n\n3. FINDINGS. In the main series, someone in another room drew a target picture while Geller, sealed in a double-walled shielded room built for electroencephalography research, tried to reproduce it. Targets included a firecracker, a bunch of grapes, a horse, and the solar system. The write-up concluded that Geller “demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability.”\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Targ and Puthoff published the drawing experiments in Nature in October 1974, where the journal added an editorial noting reviewers’ reservations. Magicians and skeptics, among them James Randi, argued that Geller could have used ordinary tricks.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Watch the video that sparked a CIA debate over psychic phenomenon",
"by": "MuckRock",
"url": "https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/09/cia-uri-geller-video/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Unforgettable Uri Geller Appearance",
"by": "Johnny Carson",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD7OgAdCObs"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Spark That Started CSICOP",
"by": "Skeptical Inquirer",
"url": "https://skepticalinquirer.org/2025/12/the-spark-that-started-csicop/"
},
{
"type": "book",
"title": "Phenomena",
"by": "Annie Jacobsen",
"url": "https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/annie-jacobsen/phenomena/9780316349352/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "simple-sabotage",
"title": "Simple Sabotage Field Manual",
"doc": "Simple Sabotage Field Manual",
"agency": "OSS",
"year": 1944,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "How to sabotage with meetings",
"hook": "Advice for citizen saboteurs that reads like office satire: hold endless meetings and refer everything to committees.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/wp-content/uploads/SimpleSabotage.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Field manual issued by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on January 17, 1944, on simple sabotage by citizens of German-occupied Europe.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The OSS, the wartime forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), issued the manual under its director, William J. Donovan. OSS officers abroad were to use it to train ordinary people as citizen-saboteurs, carrying out small acts that would be hard to trace.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The manual covers physical sabotage, such as damaging tools, wasting fuel, and setting fires, and what it calls general interference with organizations and production: misunderstanding orders, insisting on proper channels, haggling over the wording of documents, holding endless meetings, referring everything to committees, and reopening decisions already made.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The CIA declassified the manual in 2008 and posted it online, where its advice on obstructing meetings found a wide audience among office workers.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Art of Simple Sabotage",
"by": "CIA",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "The CIA’s Manual on How to be Annoying",
"by": "Half as Interesting",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-fdGvQNeKg"
},
{
"type": "article",
"title": "A 1944 US Espionage Guide to Disrupting Organizations",
"by": "Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker",
"url": "https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/a-1944-us-espionage-guide-to-disrupting"
}
]
},
{
"id": "alternate-futures",
"title": "Alternate Futures for 2025",
"doc": "Alternate Futures for 2025: Security Planning to Avoid Surprise",
"agency": "USAF · Air University",
"year": 1996,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "Six possible worlds for 2025",
"hook": "The Air Force imagined six possible worlds for 2025, including one ruled by corporations.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA319867",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Air University (U.S. Air Force) volume of 240 pages, “Alternate Futures for 2025: Security Planning to Avoid Surprise,” published in 1996, describing six possible worlds that U.S. air and space forces might face in 2025.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The volume was part of Air Force 2025, a 1996 study, ordered by Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman, of what air and space forces the U.S. would need 30 years later. Air University ran the study at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The team picked three drivers of change: America’s willingness to engage abroad, the pace and spread of technology, and how economic, political, and military power is distributed. Combining the drivers produced the scenarios. They include Zaibatsu, a world run by corporations; Gulliver’s Travails, where the U.S. is stretched thin policing a chaotic world; and King Khan, where an Asian power eclipses a weakened America.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The authors stressed that the futures were demanding planning cases, not predictions of the likely future.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Air Force 2025",
"by": "Air & Space Forces Magazine",
"url": "https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1296study/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "planetary-defense",
"title": "Planetary Defense",
"doc": "Planetary Defense: Catastrophic Health Insurance for Planet Earth",
"agency": "USAF · Air Command and Staff College",
"year": 1996,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "A military mission to stop asteroids",
"hook": "Air Command and Staff College officers argue for a military mission to stop asteroids before they hit Earth.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA392673",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper by six officers at the Air Command and Staff College, Air University, presented on June 17, 1996, arguing for a military mission to stop asteroids before they hit Earth.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The paper was written for Air Force 2025, a study ordered by the Air Force chief of staff on what the service would need to stay dominant in air and space. The authors’ preface states that they laughed when first given the topic.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The paper reviewed impact frequency, likely damage, and legal questions, then proposed a three-tier planetary defense system. It called for better detection, including a Sky Eyes deep-space sentry concept, and weighed deflection by kinetic impactors, mass drivers, solar sails, and nuclear explosives. It noted that planetary defense was not an assigned military mission.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA set up its Planetary Defense Coordination Office in 2016, and its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft shifted an asteroid’s orbit in 2022.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Defenders of the Planet",
"by": "Air & Space Magazine (Smithsonian)",
"url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/fight-against-killer-asteroids-180967109/"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "DARTing Forward in Planetary Defense",
"by": "Lindley Johnson, TEDx Talks",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTLy9gvhN5c"
},
{
"type": "video",
"title": "DART - The First Planetary Defense Mission",
"by": "Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory",
"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoLH3ruxDsY"
}
]
},
{
"id": "climate-engineering",
"title": "Climate Engineering",
"doc": "Technology Assessment: Climate Engineering: Technical Status, Future Directions, and Potential Responses (GAO-11-71)",
"agency": "GAO",
"year": 2011,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Geoengineering, judged not ready",
"hook": "Congress’s auditors assessed sulfate aerosols, brightened clouds, and mirrors in orbit, and found none of them ready.",
"url": "https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-71",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. July 2011 technology assessment (GAO-11-71) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of climate engineering, the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. GAO prepared the assessment for the ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. It reviewed the peer-reviewed literature and government reports, consulted experts convened with the help of the National Academy of Sciences, and surveyed 1,006 adults.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report grouped proposals as carbon dioxide removal or solar radiation management: iron fertilization of the ocean, capturing carbon dioxide from the air, injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, brightening marine clouds, placing reflectors in Earth orbit or at the L1 Lagrange point, and light-colored roofs. GAO found the technologies immature, many with potentially negative consequences, and not a viable response to climate change. Some studies indicated stratospheric aerosols might sharply reduce summer precipitation over India and northern China.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. GAO had recommended a coordinated federal approach in 2010; the Office of Science and Technology Policy neither agreed nor disagreed. The report was issued on July 28, 2011."
},
{
"id": "project-cirrus",
"title": "Project Cirrus",
"doc": "History of Project Cirrus (RL-756)",
"agency": "U.S. Army / ONR · General Electric",
"year": 1952,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Dry ice dropped into a hurricane",
"hook": "The history of the first military cloud-seeding program, which dropped 80 pounds of dry ice into a hurricane in 1947.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/historyofproject00have",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. July 1952 report (RL-756) compiled for the General Electric Research Laboratory, a history of Project Cirrus, the first large American program of cloud-seeding research.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Vincent Schaefer made snow fall from a supercooled cloud over Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on November 13, 1946, by dropping dry ice from a rented aircraft. General Electric, concerned about liability for weather damage, continued seeding only under government sponsorship. Project Cirrus was established on February 28, 1947, under an Army Signal Corps contract, sponsored jointly with the Office of Naval Research and flown by Air Force crews and aircraft.\n\n3. FINDINGS. On October 13, 1947, two B-17s and a B-29 seeded a hurricane east of Florida, dispensing 80 pounds of solid carbon dioxide along a 110-mile track at 19,200 feet. Observers reported about 300 square miles of modified cloud and no convective buildup afterward.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The storm turned west and came ashore near Savannah, Georgia. Threats of lawsuits followed, although later analysis found the turn had begun before the seeding. The last contract ended on September 30, 1952."
},
{
"id": "stormfury",
"title": "Project Stormfury",
"doc": "Project Stormfury Annual Report, 1969",
"agency": "ESSA / U.S. Navy",
"year": 1970,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Seeding a hurricane to weaken it",
"hook": "The year Navy aircraft seeded Hurricane Debbie with silver iodide to test whether a hurricane could be weakened.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0717498",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. May 1970 annual report by the Naval Weather Service Command and the National Hurricane Research Laboratory on Project Stormfury, a program of experiments on modifying tropical storms and hurricanes.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Stormfury was established in 1962 as an interdepartmental program of the Navy and the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA), with Air Force participation and support from the National Science Foundation. Its hypothesis was that silver iodide dispensed from pyrotechnics outside the radius of maximum winds would disturb the storm’s energy exchange and reduce its peak winds.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Hurricane Debbie was seeded five times on each of August 18 and August 20, 1969; of thirteen aircraft available, five carried the pyrotechnics. Maximum winds at 12,000 feet fell 31 percent on the 18th and 15 percent on the 20th, and the storm reintensified between the two days. The report held the decrease well established but the cause unproven, since natural variations of that size occur.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Emphasis shifted toward hurricane research in the 1970s, and Stormfury ended in 1983 with the hypothesis untested."
},
{
"id": "dynamite-rainmakers",
"title": "The Dynamite Rainmakers",
"doc": "Report of the Agent of the Department of Agriculture for Making Experiments in the Production of Rainfall (Senate Executive Document, 52d Congress, 1st Session)",
"agency": "USDA (R. G. Dyrenforth)",
"year": 1892,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Dynamite blasts to make rain",
"hook": "Congress paid a special agent to set off dynamite over Texas from balloons, kites, and mortars to force rain from the sky.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/letterfromsecret00unit_24",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. February 1892 report to the Senate by Robert G. Dyrenforth, special agent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on experiments in producing rainfall by concussion.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The belief that heavy cannonading brings rain was pressed on Congress by the writer Edward Powers and Senator Charles Farwell, who obtained appropriations of $2,000 and then $7,000 credited to the Department of Agriculture. Dyrenforth was appointed special agent on February 27, 1891.\n\n3. FINDINGS. At the C Ranch near Midland, Texas, in August 1891, the party exploded balloons filled with hydrogen and oxygen, charges of dynamite and rackarock in prairie-dog holes and on kites, and about sixty mortars improvised from well tubing. Further trials followed at El Paso and at San Diego, Texas. Rain fell after several firings. Dyrenforth wrote that the experiments gave insufficient data for definite conclusions, but inferred that concussion could shake moisture from a cloud that would otherwise pass.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. About $9,000 of government money was spent. Scientific observers judged the results inconclusive, 1892 trials produced little, and the work was abandoned."
},
{
"id": "carbon-dioxide-appendix",
"title": "The Carbon Dioxide Appendix",
"doc": "Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, Appendix Y4: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide",
"agency": "President’s Science Advisory Committee",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "An early climate warning to a president",
"hook": "The appendix that warned a president about carbon dioxide, and proposed spreading reflective particles on the sea to offset it.",
"url": "https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Document%202_0.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. November 1965 report of the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, whose Appendix Y4 treats carbon dioxide.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The panel was chaired by John W. Tukey and reported to President Lyndon Johnson, who released it for publication on November 5, 1965. Appendix Y4 came from a subpanel chaired by Roger Revelle with Wallace Broecker, Harmon Craig, Charles D. Keeling, and Joseph Smagorinsky.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The appendix identified fossil fuel combustion as the only major new source of carbon dioxide, projected the atmospheric increase by the year 2000 at about 25 percent, and said this might be enough to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate. It urged that countervailing changes be explored, chiefly raising the Earth’s albedo by spreading small buoyant reflecting particles over large ocean areas. A 1 percent change in reflectivity might be had for about $500 million a year.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No such program was undertaken. Daniel Moynihan attached the report to a 1969 White House memorandum, and the file was later published by the National Security Archive."
},
{
"id": "popeye",
"title": "Operation Popeye",
"doc": "Weather Modification in North Vietnam and Laos (Project Popeye), memorandum from Kohler to Rusk (FRUS 1964–1968, Vol. XXVIII, Doc. 274)",
"agency": "State Department",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Seeding clouds to flood a supply trail",
"hook": "A State Department memo weighing a secret program to seed clouds over the Ho Chi Minh Trail and keep the roads muddy.",
"url": "https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v28/d274",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum of January 13, 1967, from Deputy Under Secretary of State Foy Kohler to Secretary of State Dean Rusk on Project Popeye, a proposal to seed clouds over North Vietnam and southern Laos.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Department of Defense asked State to approve an operational phase. A test phase had been run in October 1966 over the Lao panhandle, without consulting Lao authorities. The object was to extend rainfall along infiltration routes until trucks could not move.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The memo reports more than 50 seeding experiments in the test phase, rain from 82 percent of the clouds seeded, and one case in which the rain crossed into Vietnam and dropped nine inches on a U.S. Special Forces camp in four hours. Kohler wrote that the tests were almost too successful, since neither the volume of rain nor the area affected could be predicted.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Kohler recorded serious doubts. Rusk approved operations in five limited areas on a strictly experimental basis. Seeding missions ran from 1967 into 1972 and became public in 1971 and 1972."
},
{
"id": "human-radiation-experiments",
"title": "Human Radiation Experiments",
"doc": "Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments",
"agency": "Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments",
"year": 1995,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Thirty years of radiation experiments",
"hook": "The federal inquiry into thirty years of radiation experiments on hospital patients, prisoners, and institutionalized boys.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/advisorycommitte00unit",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. October 1995 final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments on radiation experiments and intentional environmental releases of radiation sponsored by the U.S. government between 1944 and 1974.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. President Clinton created the committee on January 15, 1994, after press reports on plutonium injections. Its fourteen members reported to a cabinet-level interagency working group and were directed to uncover the history and recommend safeguards.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The committee compiled records of about 4,000 experiments. From 1945 through 1947 Manhattan Project researchers injected eighteen hospital patients with plutonium, five with polonium, and six with uranium; no subject was expected to benefit. At the Fernald State School, researchers fed radioactive iron and calcium to boys in the school’s science club; doses were low and harm unlikely, but the information given to parents was at best incomplete. Prisoners in Oregon and Washington were irradiated.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The committee recommended an individual apology and compensation where secrecy had denied subjects the chance to pursue grievances. President Clinton accepted the report and apologized on October 3, 1995."
},
{
"id": "poison-squad",
"title": "The Poison Squad",
"doc": "Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health, I: Boric Acid and Borax (Bulletin 84, Part I)",
"agency": "USDA · Bureau of Chemistry",
"year": 1904,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Clerks who ate borax for science",
"hook": "Twelve government clerks ate borax-laced meals for months while chemists weighed them and recorded the headaches.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/influenceoffoodp84wile",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1904 report (Bulletin 84, Part I) by Harvey W. Wiley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry on the effects of boric acid and borax on digestion and health.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Congress authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to investigate proposed food preservatives and coloring matters in the appropriation act for fiscal year 1903. Wiley selected twelve young men from the civil service for a hygienic table at the Bureau. Each pledged to eat and drink nothing but what was served, and not to hold the Department responsible for any illness. Weight, temperature, pulse, and excreta were recorded by physicians.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Doses up to half a gram a day produced no notable immediate effect. Larger or prolonged doses reduced appetite and brought pain in the stomach, nausea, and persistent headache; four grams a day was set as the limit a normal man could take. The report concluded that the preservative should be restricted and labeled.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The trials drew press attention and helped build support for the Food and Drugs Act of 1906."
},
{
"id": "mkultra",
"title": "Project MKULTRA",
"doc": "Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification (joint hearing, August 3, 1977)",
"agency": "U.S. Senate",
"year": 1977,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "The CIA’s mind-control drug program",
"hook": "The Senate hearing on the CIA’s drug and behavior program, held after seven boxes of its records turned up misfiled.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/jointhearing_project-mkultra_1977",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Record of a joint hearing held on August 3, 1977, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a Senate health subcommittee, on Project MKULTRA, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) program of research in behavioral modification.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. MKULTRA ran from 1953 to 1964 as an umbrella project funding sensitive subprojects on drugs and behavior. Most files were destroyed in 1973 on the order of a retiring CIA office chief. An employee answering Freedom of Information Act requests found seven boxes of records misfiled with budget papers at a records center.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Director Stansfield Turner testified that the material identified 149 subprojects, 185 non-government researchers, and 80 institutions, among them 44 colleges and universities and 3 penal institutions. Unwitting drug testing had been run from safehouses in San Francisco and New York. Frank Olson, an Army civilian given LSD without his knowledge in 1953, died a week later.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Unwitting testing was discontinued after a 1963 Inspector General report. The CIA withheld the names of individuals; the committees pressed for institutions to be notified."
},
{
"id": "subway-germ-test",
"title": "The Subway Germ Test",
"doc": "A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents (Miscellaneous Publication 25)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · Fort Detrick",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "A germ test in the New York subway",
"hook": "The Army released a harmless bacterial simulant in the New York subway and measured how far trains carried it.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/a-study-on-the-vulnerability-of-subway-passengers-to-covert-attack-with-bilogica",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. January 1968 report (Miscellaneous Publication 25) by the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland, on the vulnerability of New York City subway passengers to covert biological attack.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The trials were run in June 1966 on three north-south lines within about two square miles of mid-Manhattan, between Lexington Avenue and Eighth Avenue. Releases in a city were considered necessary because a built-up area’s effect on a cloud was unknown. Passengers were not told, and no consent was sought.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The test used a bacterial simulant then believed harmless. Trains dispersed it rapidly through tunnels, stations, and cars, where it persisted an hour or more. The report concluded that a comparable release of a pathogen at peak hours could expose large numbers of passengers.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army disclosed its open-air simulant testing to the Senate in 1977, where the subway test was examined. Later research questioned whether the organism used was as harmless as assumed. The report was subsequently released."
},
{
"id": "criticality-accidents",
"title": "A Review of Criticality Accidents",
"doc": "A Review of Criticality Accidents, 2000 Revision (LA-13638)",
"agency": "Los Alamos",
"year": 2000,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Every accidental chain reaction",
"hook": "Los Alamos’s catalog of every known accidental chain reaction, including the two hand-stacked assemblies that killed their operators.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/758324",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. May 2000 report (LA-13638) by Los Alamos National Laboratory, with Russian co-authors, reviewing sixty accidental criticality excursions in process plants and critical experiment facilities.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The first edition was issued in 1967 by William R. Stratton of the Los Alamos critical experiments group, and a revision followed in 1989. This revision added thirteen Russian process accidents, documented through cooperation with the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering at Obninsk.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Of 22 process accidents, 21 involved fissile material in solution or slurry, 18 occurred in manned unshielded facilities, and nine were fatal. Two Los Alamos accidents used the same 6.2-kilogram plutonium core. On August 21, 1945, a tungsten carbide brick slipped onto the assembly and the lone experimenter died 28 days later. On May 21, 1946, a beryllium shell held apart by a screwdriver closed during a demonstration; eight people were exposed and the demonstrator died nine days later.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Printing was delayed to add the September 30, 1999, accident at the JCO plant in Tokai-mura, Japan. The report remains a standard reference."
},
{
"id": "gaither-report",
"title": "The Gaither Report",
"doc": "Deterrence & Survival in the Nuclear Age (NSC 5724)",
"agency": "ODM · Security Resources Panel",
"year": 1957,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "Fallout shelters for every American",
"hook": "A secret panel told Eisenhower that fallout shelters for every American would save perhaps fifty million lives.",
"url": "https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v19/d158",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report to the President of November 7, 1957, by the Security Resources Panel of the Office of Defense Mobilization (ODM) Science Advisory Committee, circulated to the National Security Council as NSC 5724.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The panel, chaired by H. Rowan Gaither, Jr., was one of several studies the Council authorized in April 1957 on a federal shelter program and other civil defense proposals. Over ninety people took part. It was asked to weigh active and passive measures against their cost, and to judge the deterrent value of U.S. retaliatory forces.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The panel found existing defenses inadequate, urged dispersal and hardening of Strategic Air Command bases, and recommended a nationwide fallout shelter program as the measure most likely to save lives for the money: about $25 billion, saving nearly half the casualties, perhaps fifty million people. It did not recommend building blast shelters.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. On January 16, 1958, the Council adopted the fallout shelter concept but declined to begin the proposed program. The report was declassified in 1973 and printed by Congress in 1976."
},
{
"id": "gasbuggy",
"title": "Project Gasbuggy",
"doc": "Gasbuggy Preliminary Postshot Summary Report (PNE-1003)",
"agency": "AEC · Lawrence Radiation Laboratory",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Fracking with a nuclear bomb",
"hook": "A 26-kiloton device fired 4,200 feet under New Mexico to shake natural gas loose; the gas came up radioactive.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA382460",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. January 1968 report (PNE-1003) by the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, on early results from Project Gasbuggy, a nuclear explosion fired to stimulate natural gas production.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Gasbuggy was a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Plowshare program, the El Paso Natural Gas Company, and the Bureau of Mines, in the Carson National Forest of Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, 55 miles east of Farmington. The device, of nominally 26-kiloton yield, was fired on December 10, 1967, below the gas-bearing Pictured Cliffs Sandstone.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The explosion vaporized rock and the cavity collapsed into a rubble-filled chimney. A reentry well struck a void at 3,907 feet, connecting with the chimney. Xenon-133 was measured in gas flared at the site, and water from the casing carried tritium at about three times natural background.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Production testing ran from July 1968 to October 1969 and produced 213 million cubic feet of gas, all flared. The gas held radioactive constituents and a lower heat value. Testing ended in 1976 and the site was decommissioned in 1978."
},
{
"id": "goldsboro-revisited",
"title": "Goldsboro Revisited",
"doc": "Goldsboro Revisited, or: How I Learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb",
"agency": "Sandia (P. F. Jones)",
"year": 1969,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "One switch from an H-bomb blast",
"hook": "Sandia’s weapons safety supervisor concluded that one low-voltage switch kept a hydrogen bomb from going off over North Carolina.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/796426-goldsboro-revisited-pp-1-2-copy",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1969 internal memorandum by Parker F. Jones, supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia Laboratories, on a published account of the 1961 Goldsboro bomber accident.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. On January 23, 1961, a B-52 broke up in flight near Goldsboro, North Carolina, and its two Mk 39 Mod 2 hydrogen bombs fell. Jones wrote to answer a passage in Ralph Lapp’s book Kill and Overkill, which he judged inaccurate.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Jones corrected the account point by point: the bombs were not jettisoned but released as the aircraft came apart, and the weapon had four interlocks rather than six, one tripped by the fall and two made ineffective by the breakup. One switch remained. He concluded that the Mk 39 Mod 2 lacked adequate safety for the airborne alert role, that the ready-safe switch was its only effective safing device, and that a short to an arming line in a mid-air breakup could have given a nuclear burst.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The memorandum was declassified, released under the Freedom of Information Act, and published in 2013."
},
{
"id": "nuclear-war-survival-skills",
"title": "Nuclear War Survival Skills",
"doc": "Nuclear War Survival Skills (ORNL-5037)",
"agency": "Oak Ridge National Laboratory",
"year": 1979,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "A DIY guide to surviving nuclear war",
"hook": "A national laboratory’s do-it-yourself manual for surviving a nuclear attack, with plans for a homemade fallout meter.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/814213",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. September 1979 handbook (ORNL-5037) by Cresson H. Kearny of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, giving untrained citizens instructions meant to improve their chances of surviving a nuclear attack.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Atomic Energy Commission authorized a civil defense project at Oak Ridge in 1964 under the physicist Eugene P. Wigner, who recruited Kearny and wrote the foreword. The book compiles measures developed there over fourteen years and field-tested in six states, under Department of Energy sponsorship.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Chapters cover warning, evacuation, shelter, ventilation and cooling, water, cooking whole grains and legumes, sanitation, care without doctors, improvised clothing, and minimum preparations. Appendices give tested plans for six earth-covered expedient fallout shelters, a homemade shelter-ventilating pump, and the Kearny Fallout Meter, a radiation instrument made from household materials. The emphasis falls on preparations that could be made in the last days of a crisis.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The text was arranged so sections could be excerpted and reproduced widely. Kearny revised it after retiring, and the laboratory reissued it with a 2003 preface on materials no longer sold."
},
{
"id": "operation-cue",
"title": "Operation Cue",
"doc": "Cue for Survival: Operation Cue, A.E.C. Nevada Test Site, May 5, 1955",
"agency": "Federal Civil Defense Administration",
"year": 1955,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "A mannequin town beside an A-bomb",
"hook": "A built town of houses, cars, food, and dressed mannequins, set out beside an atomic bomb and then inspected.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA395954",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1955 report by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) on Operation Cue, the civil defense part of the atomic test program at the Nevada Test Site.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Operation Cue was the fourth civil defense participation in a Nevada test. The device, of about 30 kilotons, was fired from a 500-foot tower on Yucca Flat on May 5, 1955, with 48 civil effects projects and over 200 companies. The program had three parts: observers, a volunteer field exercise, and the technical tests.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Houses of wood frame, brick, concrete, and masonry block were built in pairs at 4,700 and 10,500 feet from ground zero and furnished with furniture, clothed mannequins, and food; trailers and emergency vehicles were also exposed. At 4,700 feet the frame and brick houses were demolished; the concrete and block houses stood with repairable damage. Fallout fell short of what the radiological projects required.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. About 500 observers watched the shot, and 29 volunteers took it from trenches 10,500 feet away without casualties. Some houses still stand on the site."
},
{
"id": "operation-doorstep",
"title": "Operation Doorstep",
"doc": "Operation Doorstep: A Preliminary Report",
"agency": "Federal Civil Defense Administration",
"year": 1953,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "Mannequin families near an A-bomb",
"hook": "The civil defense report on two houses, furnished and set with mannequin families, placed near a 1953 atomic test.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/operationdoorstep_1953",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Preliminary report by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) on Operation Doorstep, a 1953 test of houses, home shelters, and cars exposed to an atomic explosion at Yucca Flat, Nevada.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The FCDA attached its program to Annie, a 16-kiloton Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) tower shot on March 17, 1953, watched by more than 600 civil defense observers and reporters. It built two identical two-story frame houses 3,500 and 7,500 feet from the tower, furnished them with surplus furniture, and placed store mannequins in rooms and basement shelters. Eight backyard shelters and cars of 1936 to 1953 models were also exposed.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The nearer house collapsed, and the mannequin families in its living and dining rooms were buried in debris. The farther house was judged habitable under emergency conditions. The basement shelters were intact, and all but one backyard shelter were undamaged, including one 1,250 feet from the tower.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The FCDA repeated the house tests in Operation Cue in May 1955."
},
{
"id": "nuclear-subterrene",
"title": "The Nuclear Subterrene",
"doc": "A Preliminary Study of the Nuclear Subterrene (LA-4547)",
"agency": "AEC · Los Alamos",
"year": 1971,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A reactor that melts tunnels in rock",
"hook": "A Los Alamos proposal for a reactor-heated borer that would melt its way through rock and leave a glass-lined tunnel.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4687637",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report LA-4547, issued by the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) in April 1971, proposing the Nuclear Subterrene, a rock-melting tunneling machine heated by a compact nuclear reactor.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. LASL invented the rock-melting drill in 1960 and patented the method. An ad hoc committee of staff reviewed the idea in 1970 and recommended a development program under the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).\n\n3. FINDINGS. Heat pipes would carry reactor heat to a refractory penetrator that melted rock, leaving a self-supporting glass lining; molten rock would be forced into cracks in the bore wall instead of being hauled out. The report outlined three types: a tunneler of 2 meters or more in diameter, a unit for hot geothermal rock, and a one-way borer to depths of tens of kilometers. Spent units might be left buried underground. It projected a working nuclear version within 10 to 15 years.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. LASL built and field-tested electrically heated Subterrene prototypes. No nuclear version was built, and development ended in 1976."
},
{
"id": "project-gnome",
"title": "Project Gnome",
"doc": "Project Gnome: The Environment Created by a Nuclear Explosion in Salt (PNE-107F)",
"agency": "AEC · Lawrence Radiation Laboratory",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A walk-in cavern made by a nuke",
"hook": "A report on the first Plowshare test, a nuclear explosion in salt near Carlsbad that left a cavern scientists walked into.",
"url": "https://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/CRA/2009_CRA/references/Others/Rawson_et_al_1965_Project_Gnome_the_Environment_Created_by_a_Nuclear_Explosion_in_Salt_PNE107F.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report PNE-107F, issued by the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in September 1964, describing the cavity and rock damage left by Project Gnome, an underground nuclear explosion in bedded salt.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Gnome was the first experiment of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Plowshare program on peaceful uses of nuclear explosives. A 3.1-kiloton device was fired 361 meters underground near Carlsbad, New Mexico, on December 10, 1961. Its aims included studying explosions in salt, recovering radioisotopes, and testing whether heat stored in the melted salt could generate electricity.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The explosion melted about 3.2 million kilograms of salt and left a cavity of about 27,200 cubic meters, with a radioactive puddle of melt at its base under rubble. Close-in stemming failed, and steam and gaseous fission products escaped at low pressure. Investigators entered the cavity in May 1962.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A follow-on test, Coach, was canceled. The site was cleaned up in 1968–69, 1977–79, and 2002–03, and is monitored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management."
},
{
"id": "davy-crockett",
"title": "The Davy Crockett",
"doc": "Project Management of the Davy Crockett Weapons System, 1958–1962",
"agency": "U.S. Army · Weapons Command",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A nuclear gun for the front line",
"hook": "The Army’s history of the Davy Crockett, a recoilless gun built to fire a small nuclear warhead from the front line.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA470429",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Historical monograph by the Historical Branch of the U.S. Army Weapons Command, Rock Island Arsenal, written in 1964, on the management of the Davy Crockett weapons system from 1958 to 1962.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In late 1957 the Atomic Energy Commission announced a light, sub-kiloton warhead. The Chief of Ordnance asked for delivery systems that could carry a 35-pound warhead with a yield of 0.01 to 0.1 kilotons, for use by small front-line units. Picatinny Arsenal led development, and Rock Island managed the program.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The monograph traces the choice of portable recoilless rifles, the XM28 and XM29, and the program’s schedules, funding, and organization. Spotting rounds used depleted uranium, which prompted safety tests. The project office disposed of most of its records in September 1961, leaving the author few sources.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A Davy Crockett was fired with a live W54 warhead at the Nevada Test Site in July 1962. The weapon, which could also be launched from jeeps, was deployed from 1961 to 1971."
},
{
"id": "sac-target-list",
"title": "SAC’s 1959 Target List",
"doc": "SAC Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959",
"agency": "USAF · Strategic Air Command",
"year": 1956,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "SAC’s 1959 nuclear targets",
"hook": "Strategic Air Command’s 1956 list of nuclear targets for 1959, which marked “population” as a target in every city.",
"url": "https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear-Target-List-Declassified-First-Ever/",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Study produced by the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in June 1956 listing the nuclear targets it planned to strike in a war with the Soviet bloc in 1959.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. SAC prepared the study, of roughly 800 pages, under Joint Chiefs of Staff guidance. Journalist Michael Dobbs requested it from the National Archives in 2006; it was declassified in 2014, and the National Security Archive published excerpts in December 2015.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The top priority was “Air Power,” more than 1,100 airfields and related sites, to be hit with surface-burst hydrogen bombs of about 1.7 to 9 megatons, spreading fallout over nearby populations, including friendly ones. A second phase, “Systematic Destruction,” covered more than 1,200 cities, with 179 designated ground zeros in Moscow, 145 in Leningrad, and 91 in East Berlin. Every city included a target category for “population.” Weapon allocations remained excised.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The lists were not final, and SAC expected to refine them. The first Single Integrated Operational Plan followed in 1960."
},
{
"id": "x-ray-laser-audit",
"title": "The X-Ray Laser Audit",
"doc": "Strategic Defense Initiative Program: Accuracy of Statements Concerning DOE’s X-Ray Laser Research Program (GAO/NSIAD-88-181BR)",
"agency": "GAO",
"year": 1988,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Was the X-ray laser oversold?",
"hook": "The GAO’s review of whether Edward Teller and Lowell Wood oversold Livermore’s bomb-powered X-ray laser to top officials.",
"url": "https://www.gao.gov/products/nsiad-88-181br",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Briefing report GAO/NSIAD-88-181BR, issued by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on June 30, 1988, on statements about the Department of Energy’s X-ray laser research for the Strategic Defense Initiative.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was developing an X-ray laser powered by a nuclear explosion. Roy Woodruff, LLNL’s associate director for defense systems, resigned in October 1985 and charged that Edward Teller and Lowell Wood had given senior officials overly optimistic and technically incorrect statements. Representative George E. Brown, Jr., requested the review.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The GAO examined Teller’s 1983 and 1984 letters to science adviser George Keyworth, arms negotiator Paul Nitze, and national security adviser Robert McFarlane, and Wood’s 1985 briefing to CIA Director William Casey. It found that LLNL’s official channel, including Woodruff, had made similar statements, and that LLNL scientists disagreed about their accuracy. At director Roger Batzel’s preference, Woodruff’s clarifying letters were never sent.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. This is the unclassified version of a classified February 1988 briefing. No X-ray laser was deployed."
},
{
"id": "tactical-nukes-vietnam",
"title": "Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam",
"doc": "Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia (Study S-266)",
"agency": "DoD · JASON",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "Should the U.S. nuke Vietnam?",
"hook": "A JASON study by Freeman Dyson and three other physicists of what using tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam would achieve.",
"url": "https://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/dyson67.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Study S-266, published in March 1967 by the JASON Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), on the military consequences of a U.S. decision to use tactical nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Physicists Freeman Dyson, Robert Gomer, Steven Weinberg, and S. Courtenay Wright wrote the study under a Department of Defense contract. They excluded strategic strikes and called their conclusions tentative.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The authors found few suitable targets while enemy troops moved in small groups under forest cover. Blowdown of trees could block trails for about a month, and fallout could not form a lasting barrier without endangering civilians up to 200 miles away. A nuclear version of the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign would need about 3,000 weapons a year. U.S. bases would be vulnerable to retaliation, and use could encourage guerrillas elsewhere to seek nuclear weapons.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Nuclear weapons were not used. The Nautilus Institute obtained the study under the Freedom of Information Act, and it was made public in early 2003."
},
{
"id": "atomic-beverages",
"title": "Beer at Ground Zero",
"doc": "The Effect of Nuclear Explosions on Commercially Packaged Beverages (WT-1213)",
"agency": "FDA / Federal Civil Defense Administration",
"year": 1956,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Beer and soda beside atomic blasts",
"hook": "A civil defense test that set beer and soft drinks near two atomic blasts in Nevada and found them safe to drink.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4333346",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report WT-1213, dated March 1956, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) on canned and bottled beer and soft drinks exposed to nuclear explosions.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The work was part of Project 32.2 of Operation Teapot at the Nevada Test Site in 1955, a study of packaged food. Beverages were added as a ready source of water after an attack. A first lot was bought locally and exposed to a shot of about 20 kilotons; a second lot was exposed during Operation Cue, the FCDA’s program for a shot about 50 percent larger.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Most containers survived, some as close as 1,270 feet from ground zero. Failures came mainly from flying debris, crushing, or falls from shelves. Containers showed some induced radioactivity, but none passed to the contents. Taste panels found some change in flavor, more in beer, but not enough to rule out use as emergency drinking water.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was issued in January 1957."
},
{
"id": "bear",
"title": "BEAR",
"doc": "A Linear Accelerator in Space: The Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (LA-UR-90-3441)",
"agency": "SDIO · Los Alamos",
"year": 1990,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A particle beam fired in space",
"hook": "A Los Alamos paper on BEAR, a particle accelerator launched on a rocket in 1989 that fired a neutral hydrogen beam in space.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6515124",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Conference paper LA-UR-90-3441 by Los Alamos National Laboratory, presented at the 1990 Linear Accelerator Conference in Albuquerque, on the Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Neutral particle beams were a candidate weapon for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and BEAR was the first test in space of their low-energy accelerator technology. Los Alamos designed the accelerator; McDonnell Douglas, Grumman Aerospace, and Westinghouse Electric built major parts. The Aries booster limited it to 700 kilograms.\n\n3. FINDINGS. BEAR was launched on July 13, 1989. The accelerator was designed to produce a 1 MeV neutral hydrogen beam in 50-microsecond pulses at 5 per second, from an ion source, a radio-frequency quadrupole, and a xenon gas cell that neutralized the beam. Its systems were running 127 seconds after launch, and the beam was fired into space a second later. Divergence in flight matched the best ground results.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The accelerator was recovered and operated again in the laboratory. No space-based particle-beam weapon was deployed."
},
{
"id": "laser-sail-roadmap",
"title": "A Roadmap to the Stars",
"doc": "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight (NIAC Phase I Final Report, NNX15AL91G)",
"agency": "NASA NIAC · UC Santa Barbara",
"year": 2016,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Laser-pushed probes to the stars",
"hook": "A NASA-funded plan to push gram-scale probes on wafers to a quarter of light speed with a giant laser array.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20190001185",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report, dated January 2016, by physicist Philip Lubin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, for a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I study on interstellar flight.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Lubin’s group had earlier proposed DE-STAR, a modular phased array of lasers, for deflecting asteroids. The study applied it to propulsion, arguing that conventional rockets could not reach even the nearest stars within 10,000 years.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report proposed spacecraft built on a single wafer, weighing about a gram, carried on light sails and pushed by a laser array. The largest array, DE-STAR 4, about 10 kilometers across and 50 to 70 gigawatts, could accelerate such a probe to about 26 percent of light speed in about 10 minutes, reaching Alpha Centauri in about 20 years. The same array could push a 100-kilogram payload to about 2 percent of light speed.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NIAC funded a Phase II study in 2016. The privately funded Breakthrough Starshot program, announced in April 2016, adopted the approach."
},
{
"id": "interstellar-precursor",
"title": "An Interstellar Precursor",
"doc": "An Interstellar Precursor Mission (JPL Publication 77-70, NASA-CR-156152)",
"agency": "NASA JPL",
"year": 1977,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A probe 1,000 AU from the Sun",
"hook": "A JPL study of a probe launched around 2000 to fly 1,000 AU out of the solar system as a rehearsal for a trip to a star.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19780013230",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. JPL Publication 77-70, issued by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on October 30, 1977, on a spacecraft mission beyond the solar system as a precursor to a flight to another star.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. L. D. Jaffe and seven JPL colleagues wrote the study under NASA contract. They concluded that a flight to a star launched around 2000 would take more than 10,000 years, so a precursor could gather science and test technology first.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The probe would travel 500 to 1,000 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, studying the heliopause, the interstellar medium, cosmic rays, and stellar distances by parallax, with a possible Pluto encounter. The mission would last 20 years, extendable to 50. The baseline used one or two stages of nuclear electric propulsion; ultralight solar sails and laser sailing were the main alternatives. The critical needs were a 50-year spacecraft lifetime and a long-life propulsion system.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No such mission was launched. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, crossed the heliopause in August 2012."
},
{
"id": "apollo-10-transcript",
"title": "Apollo 10’s Stray Turd",
"doc": "Apollo 10 Onboard Voice Transcription, Recorded on the Command Module Onboard Recorder Data Storage Equipment (DSE)",
"agency": "NASA Manned Spacecraft Center",
"year": 1969,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A floating turd on Apollo 10",
"hook": "The transcript of the Apollo 10 crew’s onboard recordings, in which a turd floats through the cabin and no one claims it.",
"url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20230112142249/https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/mission_trans/AS10_CM.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Transcription, dated June 1969, of voice recordings made aboard the Apollo 10 command module by its onboard data storage equipment, prepared by the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Apollo 10 flew from May 18 to May 26, 1969, as a rehearsal for the first Moon landing, with Thomas P. Stafford as commander, John W. Young as command module pilot, and Eugene A. Cernan as lunar module pilot. Tapes of the dumped onboard recordings were transcribed under David M. Goldenbaum of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The transcript runs to more than 500 pages. On the sixth day, the commander asked for a napkin because a turd was floating through the air. Each crewman denied it was his, and the exchange turned to jokes about a full waste compartment.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The transcript was later declassified and posted by NASA’s Johnson Space Center history office."
},
{
"id": "brilliant-pebbles",
"title": "Brilliant Pebbles",
"doc": "Brilliant Pebbles (UCRL-101292)",
"agency": "SDIO · Lawrence Livermore",
"year": 1989,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Swarms of missile-ramming satellites",
"hook": "Lowell Wood’s case for thousands of small, self-guided satellites that would destroy missiles by ramming them in flight.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/7138932",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper UCRL-101292 by Lowell Wood and Walter Scott of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, presented at the Strategic Defense Initiative Technical Achievements Symposium in June 1989.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Wood’s group at Livermore originated the concept, and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) began funding its research in 1987.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The paper sketched a defense made of nothing but identical small spacecraft in low Earth orbit, each with the equivalent of eyes, brains, and legs, able to detect and hunt ballistic missiles over thousands of kilometers without outside guidance and destroy them by collision. The authors estimated each would cost much less than $1 million and that fewer than 10,000 would provide a stand-alone strategic defense. Tests in space compliant with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty were planned for the next two years.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Brilliant Pebbles became a baseline element of SDIO’s architecture in 1990 and was kept in the scaled-back Global Protection Against Limited Strikes plan. The Clementine mission tested its technology. Work was discontinued in 1994."
},
{
"id": "moon-disaster",
"title": "In Event of Moon Disaster",
"doc": "Memorandum from Speechwriter William Safire to President Nixon (“In Event of Moon Disaster”)",
"agency": "Nixon White House",
"year": 1969,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "Nixon’s speech if Apollo 11 failed",
"hook": "The statement Nixon was to read if Armstrong and Aldrin were stranded on the Moon, written two days before the landing.",
"url": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6922351",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum from White House speechwriter William Safire to chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, dated July 18, 1969, containing a statement for President Richard Nixon in case the Apollo 11 astronauts could not return from the Moon.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Safire wrote the memo two days after Apollo 11 launched and two days before the landing. It is held in Haldeman’s files at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The two-page memo gives the statement Nixon would read, mourning Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin as men who knew there was no hope of recovery. It also sets out procedure: before the statement, the President was to telephone each of the widows-to-be; after NASA ended communications with the men, a clergyman was to commend their souls as in a burial at sea, ending with the Lord’s Prayer.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The statement was never used. Apollo 11 returned on July 24, 1969. The memo became public in 1999."
},
{
"id": "lunar-crater-telescope",
"title": "Lunar Crater Radio Telescope",
"doc": "Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the Far-Side of the Moon: NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase 2 Report",
"agency": "NASA NIAC · NASA JPL",
"year": 2023,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A telescope in a far-side crater",
"hook": "A JPL design for a radio telescope made by stretching a wire-mesh dish across a crater on the far side of the Moon.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250001334",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Phase II final report, dated March 2023, by Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay and colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, on the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Radio waves longer than 10 meters, which carry signals from the early universe, cannot be observed from Earth or Earth orbit because the ionosphere absorbs and reflects them. The Moon’s far side is also shielded from Earth’s radio noise. JPL won $500,000 for the Phase II study in 2021. The earlier proposal called for a reflector more than 1 kilometer wide, built by wall-climbing DuAxel robots.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The Phase II design placed a wire mesh in a far-side crater 1.3 kilometers in diameter to form a parabolic reflector 350 meters across, larger than the former Arecibo telescope, observing at wavelengths of 6 to 64 meters.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. LCRT remains a concept study."
},
{
"id": "mach-effect-drive",
"title": "The Mach Effect Drive",
"doc": "Mach Effects for In Space Propulsion: Interstellar Mission (NIAC Award NX17AJ78G)",
"agency": "NASA NIAC · Space Studies Institute",
"year": 2018,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "A propellant-free drive to Proxima b",
"hook": "A NASA-funded study of a probe to Proxima b driven by a disputed thruster said to push without propellant.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20190000915",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report, dated February 2018, by Heidi Fearn of California State University, Fullerton, and colleagues at the Space Studies Institute, for a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I study awarded in 2017.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drive is based on a theory proposed by physicist James F. Woodward in 1990. It uses stacks of piezoelectric crystals driven by electricity and is claimed to produce thrust without ejecting propellant. NASA described it as at the earliest technology readiness level.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report designed a probe carrying 400 kilograms of payload to Proxima b, powered by a fission reactor of about 1.5 megawatts electric. It would accelerate for about 10 years to roughly 42 percent of light speed, decelerate for about 10 more, and orbit the planet, returning data by laser. The report also covered laboratory results, theory, and shielding.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NIAC awarded a Phase II study, led by Woodward, in 2018. The physics of the drive is disputed."
},
{
"id": "manned-orbiting-laboratory",
"title": "The Manned Orbiting Laboratory",
"doc": "The DORIAN Files Revealed: A Compendium of the NRO’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory Documents",
"agency": "NRO",
"year": 2015,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "An Air Force spy space station",
"hook": "The NRO’s declassified record of an Air Force space station whose crews were to photograph the Soviet Union.",
"url": "https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/history/csnr/programs/docs/MOL_Compendium_August_2015.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 2015 compendium by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), an Air Force space station with a classified reconnaissance mission.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced MOL in December 1963, in the release that cancelled the X-20 Dyna-Soar. The Air Force built the station and a modified Gemini capsule for the crew; the NRO ran the reconnaissance mission under the security compartment DORIAN.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Eastman Kodak developed the DORIAN camera to exceed the resolution of the first Gambit satellites. Crews were to check targets for cloud before photographing them, retarget in orbit, and repair the camera on missions of up to 60 days. The compendium reprints Carl Berger’s program history and indexes some 20,000 pages of released records.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No crew flew. Citing cost, the Vietnam War, and improved unmanned satellites, the Nixon administration cancelled MOL in June 1969 after $1.56 billion had been spent. Seven MOL crew members later joined NASA."
},
{
"id": "mycotecture",
"title": "Mycotecture Off Planet",
"doc": "“Mycotecture off Planet” Phase II Final Report",
"agency": "NASA NIAC · NASA Ames",
"year": 2024,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Habitats grown from fungus",
"hook": "A NASA Ames study of growing habitats on the Moon and Mars from fungus, with mycelium bricks tested in a planetary simulator.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250001059",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Phase II final report of a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) study, led by Lynn Rothschild of NASA Ames Research Center, on growing Moon and Mars habitats from fungal mycelium.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The team, including architect Chris Maurer and researchers at Brown, Stanford, and McMaster universities, won Phase II in 2021 after a Phase I study. The aim was to cut launch mass by shipping a light shell and growing the structure on site.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The team grew mycelium on sand and regolith simulants. Fungus raised the stiffness of lunar regolith simulant by about 41 percent. In a planetary simulator, ultraviolet light and cycling to −196 °C damaged the fungal filaments. A fungal hydrogel prototype needed less than 1 percent of its final mass shipped from Earth. Designs centered on inflatable enclosures for a 500-day stay at the Apollo 15 site.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA posted the report in 2025. It outlines Phase III work; whether that was funded is not recorded in the available sources."
},
{
"id": "sea-dragon",
"title": "Sea Dragon",
"doc": "Sea Dragon Concept: Feasibility and Cost Study, Vol. II (LRP 297; NASA-CR-50839)",
"agency": "NASA Marshall · Aerojet",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A 500-foot rocket launched from the sea",
"hook": "Aerojet’s study for NASA of a 500-foot rocket that would float upright in the ocean and lift 550 tons to orbit.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19630034440",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Volume II of a February 1963 Aerojet-General study for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center describing Sea Dragon, a very large two-stage rocket launched from the sea.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Marshall’s Future Projects Office sponsored the 4-month study under Contract NAS8-2599 with Space Technology Laboratories, with Aerojet as major subcontractor. Earlier studies had suggested that sea launch could make very large boosters simpler and cheaper.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The final design, Configuration 135, was 75 feet in diameter and 500 feet long and weighed about 40 million pounds at liftoff. It would carry about 1,100,000 pounds to a 300-nautical-mile orbit. Stages would be towed to a lagoon, assembled afloat, ballasted upright at sea, and ignited underwater. Pressure-fed engines avoided turbopumps. The first stage would return under an inflatable drag flare for reuse, and an Apollo-type command module would provide guidance.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No Sea Dragon was built."
},
{
"id": "solar-gravity-lens",
"title": "The Solar Gravity Lens",
"doc": "Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens Mission (NIAC Phase I Final Report)",
"agency": "NASA NIAC · NASA JPL",
"year": 2018,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Using the Sun as a telescope lens",
"hook": "A JPL study of a telescope sent 550 times Earth’s distance from the Sun to use the Sun’s gravity as a lens on an exoplanet.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20180006788",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. February 2018 final report of a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I study, led by Slava Turyshev of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), on using the Sun’s gravity as a lens to image a planet around another star.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Sun’s gravity bends passing light to a focus beginning about 548 astronomical units (AU) away. The team, from JPL, The Aerospace Corporation, and several universities, studied whether a spacecraft could operate there with the needed precision.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A 1-meter telescope with a coronagraph there could image an Earth-like planet up to 100 light-years away with kilometer-scale resolution, scanning the planet’s image, compressed into a region about 1.3 kilometers wide, one pixel at a time. The team compared a single probe, a “string of pearls,” and a swarm of small spacecraft, found no fundamental limitation, and estimated about 30 years to reach the region.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The concept later received Phase II funding and, in April 2020, a $2 million Phase III award."
},
{
"id": "space-weapons",
"title": "Space Weapons, Earth Wars",
"doc": "Space Weapons, Earth Wars (MR-1209-AF)",
"agency": "USAF · RAND",
"year": 2002,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "Tungsten rods dropped from orbit",
"hook": "A RAND study for the Air Force of weapons based in orbit, including 100-kilogram tungsten rods dropped onto targets below.",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1209.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 2002 monograph by RAND Project AIR FORCE on the characteristics, limits, legality, and uses of space-based weapons.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The United States Air Force sponsored the research. The 5 authors, led by Robert Preston, wrote to inform public debate and did not argue for or against space weapons or estimate the costs of specific programs.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report covered lasers, kinetic-energy interceptors against missiles, kinetic-energy weapons against surface targets, and conventional munitions delivered from orbit. One example was a tungsten rod about 1 m long and 100 kg, able to penetrate about 1.5 m of steel. About 6 such weapons in high orbit per target could strike within 2 to 3 hours. The authors judged them of little interest to the United States, but noted that a few dozen could threaten U.S. naval forces and were within reach of countries such as India and China.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. RAND published the report openly in 2002."
},
{
"id": "hitler-profile",
"title": "The Hitler Profile",
"doc": "A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend",
"agency": "OSS",
"year": 1943,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "An OSS psychological profile of Hitler",
"hook": "An OSS psychoanalytic profile of Hitler that judged suicide his most plausible end if Germany faced defeat.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78-02646r000600240001-5",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Wartime psychological study of Adolf Hitler prepared in 1943 for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) by psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Langer, a consultant to the OSS Morale Operations Branch, worked with Henry Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, Ernst Kris, and Bertram Lewin. With little direct material, he relied on informants who had known Hitler and acknowledged that the method was not entirely satisfactory scientifically.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The 176-page report described Hitler as he saw himself, as the German people saw him, and as his associates knew him, then offered a psychoanalytic reconstruction. A closing section weighed 8 possible ends, from natural death and flight to assassination and capture. It called suicide “the most plausible outcome.”\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Hitler killed himself in Berlin in April 1945. Langer published the study as The Mind of Adolf Hitler in 1972."
},
{
"id": "assassination-plots",
"title": "Alleged Assassination Plots",
"doc": "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report (S. Rep. No. 94-465)",
"agency": "U.S. Senate · Church Committee",
"year": 1975,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "U.S. plots against foreign leaders",
"hook": "The Church Committee’s report on U.S. plots against foreign leaders, including cigars treated with botulinum toxin for Castro.",
"url": "https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/sites-default-files-94465.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Interim report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, issued November 20, 1975, on U.S. involvement in plots to kill foreign leaders.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church of Idaho, examined cases involving Fidel Castro of Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, and General René Schneider of Chile.\n\n3. FINDINGS. U.S. officials initiated plots to assassinate Castro and Lumumba, but no foreign leader was killed as a result of them. Officials encouraged or knew of coup plots that ended in the deaths of Trujillo, Diem, and Schneider. Against Castro, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used underworld figures, treated a box of his favorite cigars with botulinum toxin in 1960, and prepared a diving suit contaminated with a fungus and tuberculosis bacteria.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The committee concluded that the United States should not engage in assassination and recommended a statute forbidding it."
},
{
"id": "hexagon-recovery",
"title": "An Underwater Ice Station Zebra",
"doc": "An Underwater Ice Station Zebra: Recovering a Secret Spy Satellite Capsule from 16,400 Feet Below the Pacific Ocean",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 2012,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Spy film fished from 16,400 feet down",
"hook": "A CIA history of the Navy’s deep dives to retrieve a spy-satellite film capsule from 16,400 feet down in the Pacific.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/static/An-Underwater-Ice-Station-Zebra.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 2012 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) booklet reprinting David Waltrop’s Quest article on the attempt to recover a HEXAGON satellite film capsule from 16,400 feet below the Pacific.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The first HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite launched in June 1971 with 4 film return capsules, or buckets. On July 10 the third bucket’s main parachute failed and it sank north of Hawaii. The CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Navy planned a salvage with the bathyscaphe Trieste II, using a Scripps search team as cover.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A search ship photographed the bucket on the seabed on October 20, 1971. Equipment failures and storms defeated dives that November and December. On April 25–26, 1972, in the deepest underwater salvage then attempted, Trieste II found the film stacks and lifted them in a hooked grapple. During the ascent the film broke apart, leaving only unusable shreds.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Eastman Kodak concluded the impact had broken the film. Redesigned parachutes worked on the second HEXAGON mission in January 1972."
},
{
"id": "corona",
"title": "CORONA",
"doc": "CORONA: America’s First Satellite Program",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1995,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Spy satellite film caught in midair",
"hook": "A CIA collection on the first U.S. spy satellites, whose film capsules were caught in midair by planes trailing hooks.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/corona.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1995 volume in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Cold War Records Series, edited by Kevin C. Ruffner of the CIA History Staff, collecting newly declassified documents and imagery from the CORONA reconnaissance satellite program.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. CORONA photographed the Soviet Union, China, and other areas from 1960 to 1972 under the cover name DISCOVERER. Film capsules descended by parachute, and aircraft caught the chute with a trapeze-like hook. On August 19, 1960, a C-119 caught the DISCOVERER XIV capsule at 8,506 feet, the first film returned from orbit.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The volume reprints Kenneth Greer’s 1973 history from Studies in Intelligence and documents on targeting, security, and photo interpretation. Camera resolution improved from about 40 feet to 5 feet. CORONA imaged every Soviet medium-, intermediate-, and intercontinental-range missile complex.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The 145th and final launch flew in 1972. President Clinton ordered the imagery declassified in February 1995, and the volume was published that May."
},
{
"id": "havana-sounds",
"title": "The Havana Sounds",
"doc": "Acoustic Signals and Physiological Effects on U.S. Diplomats in Cuba",
"agency": "State Department · JASON",
"year": 2018,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The Havana attacks were crickets",
"hook": "A JASON study for the State Department that matched recordings of the Havana “sonic attacks” to a cricket’s call.",
"url": "https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/jason/havana.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Rapid-response study by the JASON scientific advisory group for the State Department, completed in November 2018, on sounds recorded and injuries reported by U.S. diplomats in Havana.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. U.S. personnel in Cuba had reported loud, shrill sounds along with symptoms later called Havana syndrome. Sounds had been recorded on at least 8 occasions; JASON analyzed in detail 2 cellphone videos made by an embassy employee, which were linked to a later clinical evaluation.\n\n3. FINDINGS. JASON concluded that the most likely source of the recorded sound was the call of the Indies short-tailed cricket, Anurogryllus celerinictus, and with high confidence that the recordings were consistent with biological noise. It judged microwaves and ultrasound highly unlikely, found that no single energy source could produce both the recordings and the injuries, and said psychogenic effects might explain important parts of the injuries.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. BuzzFeed News obtained a heavily redacted copy under the Freedom of Information Act and reported it in September 2021."
},
{
"id": "hitler-in-colombia",
"title": "Hitler in Colombia",
"doc": "General – Operational; Specific – Adolph Hitler (with attachments)",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1955,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "A CIA tip that Hitler was alive",
"hook": "A CIA station dispatch passing on an informant’s claim that Hitler was alive in Colombia, with a photograph dated 1954.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/node/2072328",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Dispatch of October 3, 1955, from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acting chief of station to headquarters, forwarding a report that Adolf Hitler was alive in South America.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The source, code-named CIMELODY-3, was approached in September 1955 by a former subordinate living in Maracaibo, Venezuela, who said a former German SS trooper, Phillip Citroen, claimed to have met Hitler about once a month in Colombia. Press coverage identified the station as Caracas.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Citroen claimed that Hitler had left Colombia for Argentina around January 1955 and could no longer be prosecuted because 10 years had passed since the war. The friend obtained a photograph of Citroen beside the man he called Hitler, labeled on the back “Adolf Schrittelmayor, Tunga, Colombia, 1954.” The station copied the photograph and stated that neither it nor its source could evaluate the report.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Hitler had died in Berlin in April 1945. The 3-page dispatch drew wide press coverage in 2017."
},
{
"id": "gunman",
"title": "Project GUNMAN",
"doc": "Learning from the Enemy: The GUNMAN Project",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 2012,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Soviet bugs in embassy typewriters",
"hook": "An NSA history of finding Soviet bugs in the U.S. Moscow embassy’s IBM Selectric typewriters by X-raying the machines.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/13/2002761779/-1/-1/0/LEARNINGFROMTHEENEMYGUNMAN.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. History by Sharon A. Maneki of the National Security Agency (NSA) Center for Cryptologic History, first published in 2012, of Project GUNMAN, which found Soviet bugs in typewriters at the U.S. embassy in Moscow.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In August 1983 a friendly government warned of a Soviet bug in its own embassy equipment. NSA planned to replace and examine every piece of electronic equipment in the Moscow embassy, and President Reagan authorized the effort in February 1984. About 10 tons of equipment went in that spring and 11 tons came out.\n\n3. FINDINGS. On July 23, 1984, a technician X-raying returned equipment found an extra coil on a typewriter’s power switch and circuits hidden in a metal bar. Sixteen bugged Selectric typewriters were found in Moscow and Leningrad, the first shipped in 1976. Magnets and sensors detected each keystroke, and the bug sent stored characters out in short radio bursts.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. CBS News reported the bugging in March 1985. NSA issued a second edition in 2018."
},
{
"id": "tesla-file",
"title": "The Tesla File",
"doc": "Nikola Tesla (FBI File 100-2237)",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1943,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The FBI’s file on Nikola Tesla",
"hook": "The FBI’s file on Nikola Tesla, whose papers federal officials seized after his death amid talk of a “death ray.”",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/nikola-tesla",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file 100-2237 on the inventor Nikola Tesla, chiefly concerning his papers after his death in January 1943.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The file opens with a September 1940 letter to Director J. Edgar Hoover enclosing a New York Times article on Tesla’s “teleforce,” a beam weapon he offered the government, described in the press as a death ray. Tesla died at the Hotel New Yorker.\n\n3. FINDINGS. FBI teletypes reported that Tesla’s nephew and others opened the safe in his room soon after his death, and that on January 9 the Office of Alien Property seized about 2 truckloads of his belongings. An informant warned that his notes could reach people unfriendly to the war effort. Because the alien property office was handling the matter, the FBI made no inquiries of its own.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Engineer John G. Trump of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined the papers that month and reported nothing that would be a hazard in unfriendly hands."
},
{
"id": "secret-writing",
"title": "Secret Writing",
"doc": "Secret Writing document collection",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1917,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "World War I invisible ink",
"hook": "Six World War I papers on invisible ink and opening sealed letters, which stayed classified until 2011.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/secret-writing",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Collection of 6 documents from 1917 and 1918 on secret writing, declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2011 as the U.S. government’s oldest classified documents.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The papers, held at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, were believed to be the only classified documents remaining from World War I. Their originating offices are not recorded in the available sources. One is an October 30, 1917, memorandum from a Bureau of Standards chemist to Frank V. Martenek.\n\n3. FINDINGS. One document describes chemicals and techniques for secret ink and a method of opening sealed letters without detection. A June 14, 1918, memorandum in French gives the formula for a German secret ink and the solutions used to make it appear. The Bureau of Standards memorandum sends 7 ink samples, noting that some would corrode steel pens and require a quill.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. CIA Director Leon Panetta announced the release in April 2011, saying that recent advances in technology had made it possible."
},
{
"id": "tempest",
"title": "TEMPEST",
"doc": "TEMPEST: A Signal Problem",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 1972,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Cipher machines leaking their secrets",
"hook": "An NSA history of leaking cipher machines, starting with a wartime Bell device whose signals revealed plaintext 80 feet away.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jun/30/2002752863/-1/-1/0/TEMPEST.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Article from the National Security Agency (NSA) classified journal Cryptologic Spectrum, Summer 1972, on compromising emanations from communications and cryptographic equipment, code-named TEMPEST.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. During World War II a Bell Telephone researcher testing the 131-B2 mixer, used to encipher Army and Navy teletype traffic, noticed that each step of the machine put a spike on a distant oscilloscope, and that he could read the plaintext from it. The Signal Corps doubted the threat and asked for proof.\n\n3. FINDINGS. From across Varick Street in New York, 80 feet from a Signal Corps cryptocenter, Bell engineers recorded signals for an hour and recovered about 75 percent of the plaintext. The Signal Corps rejected Bell’s encased machine and told commanders to control a zone around their communications centers. In 1951 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) rediscovered the problem, reading plaintext a quarter mile down a signal line.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NSA approved the article for release in 2007 with later sections redacted."
},
{
"id": "dyna-soar",
"title": "Dyna-Soar",
"doc": "The X-20 (Dyna-Soar) Progress Report",
"agency": "USAF · Aeronautical Systems Division",
"year": 1963,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "An Air Force spaceplane, the X-20",
"hook": "An Air Force progress report on the X-20, a piloted spaceplane meant to ride a Titan III to orbit and land on a runway.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19720063747",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Progress report on the X-20 Dyna-Soar piloted orbital glider by C. B. Hargis Jr. of the Air Force Aeronautical Systems Division, presented at the Second Manned Space Flight Meeting in Dallas in April 1963.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The program began in November 1957 as a joint Air Force and NASA effort to extend the X-15’s research to orbital speeds. Boeing’s glider and Martin’s booster won a 1958–59 competition. Booster plans moved from the Titan I to the Titan II and then the Titan III.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The glider weighed 12,250 pounds, was 35.3 feet long, and had a radiation-cooled metal structure. Single-orbit flights would launch from Cape Canaveral and land at Edwards Air Force Base after a 50-minute reentry. The first air launch was scheduled for January 1965 and the first piloted launch for May 1966.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara cancelled the X-20 in December 1963, before any flight, and announced the Manned Orbiting Laboratory in its place."
},
{
"id": "berlin-tunnel",
"title": "The Berlin Tunnel",
"doc": "Clandestine Services History: The Berlin Tunnel Operation, 1952–1956 (CS Historical Paper No. 150)",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "A CIA tunnel to tap Soviet cables",
"hook": "The CIA’s internal history of the tunnel it dug into East Berlin to tap Soviet cables, which a mole had betrayed before digging began.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/01225490",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Clandestine Services Historical Paper No. 150, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) internal history of PBJOINTLY, a tunnel dug under the Berlin sector border to tap Soviet military cables. It was published in June 1968 in 2 copies.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The project began in 1952 with the British, who had tapped Soviet cables through tunnels near Vienna. Digging began in August 1954 from a warehouse in the American sector; the 1,476-foot tunnel was finished in February 1955, and 3 cables were tapped between May and August 1955.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The taps reached about 1,200 channels. In London, 368,000 Soviet conversations were fully transcribed, and processing through September 1958 produced 1,750 reports. The project cost $6,700,000.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Soviet forces uncovered the tunnel on April 21, 1956, after 11 months of operation. A 1956 CIA analysis blamed heavy rain and a failing cable. The history adds that George Blake, an MI6 officer working for the Soviets, had betrayed the plan in late 1953. The CIA declassified the history in 2007."
},
{
"id": "dematerialization",
"title": "Dematerialization and Antigravity",
"doc": "A Postulated Mechanism That Leads to Materialization and Dematerialization of Matter and to Antigravity (SAM-D 76-1)",
"agency": "U.S. Army",
"year": 1975,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "An Army theory of antigravity",
"hook": "An Army Missile Command technical report proposing a mechanism by which matter could dematerialize and craft could use antigravity.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA020796",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical report SAM-D 76-1, dated October 8, 1975, issued through the U.S. Army Missile Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, setting out a proposed mechanism for the materialization and dematerialization of matter and for antigravity.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The 14-page paper was written by Thomas E. Bearden, who held its copyright and let the Army print it through the Missile Command’s SAM-D air defense missile project office. Bearden cited his own earlier papers, including a theory of psychic phenomena.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report treated a photon as mass turned 90 degrees out of ordinary space. It argued that a device controlling this rotation could make a disc-shaped craft appear as a glowing shape of light, turn at right angles at high speed, and travel in time, and might lead to a hyperspace drive or matter teleportation.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was approved for public release and is held by the Defense Technical Information Center as ADA020796. No Army work on the mechanism is recorded in the available sources."
},
{
"id": "lifters",
"title": "The Lifter Tests",
"doc": "Asymmetrical Capacitors for Propulsion (NASA/CR-2004-213312)",
"agency": "NASA Glenn · Institute for Scientific Research",
"year": 2004,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "Testing high-voltage “lifters”",
"hook": "A NASA contractor study of high-voltage “lifter” capacitors that traced their thrust to charged ions colliding with air.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20040171929",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA contractor report CR-2004-213312, dated October 2004, prepared for the Glenn Research Center by the Institute for Scientific Research of Fairmont, West Virginia, on asymmetrical capacitor thrusters, devices that produce thrust when a high voltage is applied across them.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The effect was first observed by Thomas Townsend Brown in the 1920s and is called the Biefeld-Brown effect. Hobbyists built light frames of such capacitors, called lifters, that rise off the ground, and some websites attributed the lift to antigravity or to interactions with the vacuum.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Several devices were tested at atmospheric and reduced pressures with varied voltages, polarities, and ground configurations. A simple model attributed the thrust to electrostatic forces on ions in the leakage current, which transfer momentum through collisions with air. All measured data were consistent with that model, and the tests found no evidence of force in a vacuum.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No further NASA work on the devices is recorded in the available sources."
},
{
"id": "counter-zombie",
"title": "Counter-Zombie Dominance",
"doc": "CDRUSSTRATCOM CONPLAN 8888-11, “Counter-Zombie Dominance”",
"agency": "U.S. Strategic Command",
"year": 2011,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "A military plan for a zombie attack",
"hook": "A U.S. Strategic Command training plan for defending humankind against zombies, chosen because no one could mistake it for a real plan.",
"url": "https://www.stratcom.mil/Portals/8/Documents/FOIA/CONPLAN_8888-11.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Concept plan CONPLAN 8888-11, dated April 30, 2011, written in the format of a U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) plan for military operations to protect humankind from zombies.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Members of a USSTRATCOM component used the scenario in 2009 and 2010 to teach augmentees the Joint Operation Planning Process. Its disclaimer says an impossible scenario avoided classified information and real nations and could not be mistaken for an actual plan. The authors posted it to Intellipedia, the intelligence community’s internal wiki.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The plan names 8 classes of zombie: pathogenic, radiation, evil magic, space, weaponized, symbiant-induced, vegetarian, and chicken. It calls chicken zombies the only proven class. Operations run through 6 phases, from Shape and Deter to Stabilize and Restore.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Defense Department told Foreign Policy, which made the plan public in May 2014, that it was not a USSTRATCOM plan. USSTRATCOM later posted it in its online Freedom of Information Act library."
},
{
"id": "cold-fusion",
"title": "The Cold Fusion Panel",
"doc": "Cold Fusion Research: A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy (DOE/S-0073)",
"agency": "DOE · Energy Research Advisory Board",
"year": 1989,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "The panel that doubted cold fusion",
"hook": "The Energy Department panel report on the 1989 cold fusion claims, which found the evidence for a new nuclear process not persuasive.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5144772",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report of the Cold Fusion Panel of the Energy Research Advisory Board (ERAB), issued in November 1989 to the Department of Energy (DOE), on claims of nuclear fusion at room temperature.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In March 1989 Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced cold fusion at the University of Utah. Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins asked ERAB for a panel, co-chaired by John R. Huizenga and Norman F. Ramsey, which visited laboratories and held 5 public meetings.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The panel found no convincing evidence that reported excess heat was nuclear or would yield useful energy. Laboratories claiming excess heat did not find matching neutrons or tritium. It judged the evidence for a new nuclear process not persuasive and recommended against special programs, while supporting modest funding for focused experiments.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The full board approved the report on November 8, 1989. In 2004 DOE’s Office of Science announced a second review of the research done since."
},
{
"id": "electric-propulsion-study",
"title": "The Electric Propulsion Study",
"doc": "Electric Propulsion Study (AL-TR-89-040)",
"agency": "USAF · SAIC",
"year": 1990,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "Antigravity and free-energy claims",
"hook": "An Air Force rocket lab study of theories linking gravity and electromagnetism, including claims of antigravity and free energy.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA227121",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report AL-TR-89-040, dated August 1990, prepared by Dennis Cravens of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for the Air Force Astronautics Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on theories and experiments coupling gravity and electromagnetism for space propulsion.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The work was Task 07 of a technical assistance contract, F04611-88-C-0014, and ran from September 1988 to November 1989. Its premise was that rockets are limited by conservation of momentum and that a coupling of the 2 forces might allow propulsion without exhaust.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report developed a 5-dimensional theory and recommended a radiation-pressure experiment and tests of Thomas Townsend Brown’s high-voltage capacitors. An appendix described possible “antigravitational” effects predicted by the theory. It also reviewed free-energy and levitation claims, recommending that the Air Force not pursue some and that others be followed.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was cleared for unlimited public release through the National Technical Information Service. Follow-on Air Force experiments are not recorded in the available sources."
},
{
"id": "enhancing-human-performance",
"title": "Enhancing Human Performance",
"doc": "Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques",
"agency": "U.S. Army · National Research Council",
"year": 1988,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The Army weighs “new age” techniques",
"hook": "A National Research Council review, requested by the Army, of “new age” techniques from sleep learning to remote viewing and psychokinesis.",
"url": "https://www.nationalacademies.org/publications/1025",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of the National Research Council’s Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance, edited by Daniel Druckman and John A. Swets and published in 1988, evaluating unconventional techniques proposed to the Army for improving performance.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1984 the Army Research Institute (ARI) asked the National Academy of Sciences to assess “new age” techniques, many from the 1960s human potential movement. A 14-member committee chaired by Swets reviewed techniques for learning, motor skills, mental states, stress, group cohesion, and parapsychology, including remote viewing and psychokinesis.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The committee found evidence for priming later learning during certain stages of sleep, for combining mental and physical practice, and for some stress-reduction methods. It found no supporting evidence for hemispheric synchronization or neurolinguistic programming and no scientific justification for the parapsychological phenomena it reviewed.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army supported field experiments on mental practice, reduced its interest in neurolinguistic programming, and discouraged parapsychological applications. It asked the committee for a second study, published in 1991."
},
{
"id": "tachyons",
"title": "Faster-than-Light Particles",
"doc": "Faster-than-Light Particles: A Review of Tachyon Characteristics (N-1530-AF)",
"agency": "USAF · RAND",
"year": 1980,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "Faster-than-light particles",
"hook": "A RAND note for the Air Force on what faster-than-light particles would have to be like, written in search of a theory of antigravity.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA094529",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. RAND Note N-1530-AF, dated October 1980, by Edward A. Puscher for the U.S. Air Force, deriving characteristics that hypothetical faster-than-light particles, called tachyons, must have to be consistent with special relativity.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The work was sponsored by the Air Force Directorate of Operational Requirements under contract F49620-77-C-0023. Its preface calls it the first phase of exploratory research into whether antigravity might result from undiscovered faster-than-light particles.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The note concluded that tachyons, if they exist, must have imaginary rest mass, always travel faster than light, slow down when energy is added, and have zero energy at infinite speed. It showed that putting imaginary masses into Newton’s law of gravitation yields a repulsive force. The author stated that the analysis was not meant to be convincing.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The note was approved for public release, and the Defense Technical Information Center holds it as ADA094529. The follow-on paper on antigravity it promised is not recorded in the available sources."
},
{
"id": "emdrive",
"title": "The EmDrive Test",
"doc": "Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum (JSC-CN-37435)",
"agency": "NASA Johnson · Eagleworks",
"year": 2016,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "Thrust from a sealed copper cavity",
"hook": "NASA Eagleworks’ report of thrust from a sealed copper microwave cavity in a vacuum, a result that would require no propellant.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20170000277",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper by Harold White and colleagues at the Eagleworks Laboratories of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, released in 2016, reporting thrust from a closed, tapered radio frequency (RF) cavity tested in a vacuum.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Earlier tests had reported anomalous thrust from RF resonant cavities, a class of devices often called the EmDrive, though they expel no propellant. Eagleworks tested a copper frustum driven at 1,937 megahertz on a sensitive torsion pendulum.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Forward, reverse, and null tests at 40, 60, and 80 watts, below 8 × 10⁻⁶ Torr, gave a thrust-to-power ratio of 1.2 ± 0.1 millinewtons per kilowatt, directed toward the narrow end. The team identified no conventional source of the force and proposed an explanation based on pilot-wave theory.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The paper was published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power. In 2021 a group at the Technical University of Dresden tested the same configuration and attributed the apparent thrust to thermal effects on the balance."
},
{
"id": "uap-assessment",
"title": "The 2021 UAP Assessment",
"doc": "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena",
"agency": "ODNI",
"year": 2021,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "144 military UFO sightings, one solved",
"hook": "U.S. intelligence’s 2021 report to Congress on UFOs, which could explain only one of 144 military sightings: a deflating balloon.",
"url": "https://archive.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Unclassified report of June 25, 2021, by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), assessing the threat posed by unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the progress of the Defense Department’s UAP Task Force (UAPTF).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Congress requested the assessment in a Senate report accompanying the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The UAPTF and ODNI’s intelligence manager for aviation drafted it from reports dated November 2004 to March 2021, most of them from Navy aviators.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Of 144 reports from U.S. government sources, the task force identified 1 with high confidence, as a large deflating balloon; the rest remained unexplained. In 18 incidents observers reported unusual movement or flight characteristics, and pilots reported 11 near misses. The report proposed 5 explanatory categories and found no data showing that any UAP were part of a foreign collection program.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. In July 2022 the Defense Department replaced the task force with the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)."
},
{
"id": "pandora",
"title": "Project Pandora",
"doc": "Project PANDORA: Final Report (MRT-4-046, QM-66-072)",
"agency": "ARPA · Johns Hopkins APL",
"year": 1966,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Did microwaves change behavior?",
"hook": "The report on a Walter Reed microwave chamber built to test whether a Soviet beam aimed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow affected behavior.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/ProjectPandoraFinalReport",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report, prepared by Eugene V. Byron of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in November 1966, on the laboratory’s part in Project PANDORA: building and evaluating a microwave test facility at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In the early 1960s U.S. technicians began monitoring microwave beams aimed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) launched PANDORA in October 1965 to study the radiation’s effects, including on behavior.\n\n3. FINDINGS. APL designed a conical horn antenna, monitoring dipoles, and a field-traversing mechanism for an anechoic chamber holding 2 test samples. It found the facility could deliver about 4.0 milliwatts per square centimeter at 250 watts, and 10 milliwatts per square centimeter in a smaller zone.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Walter Reed exposed monkeys to microwaves from 1966 to 1969; a 1969 RAND review found no evidence of behavioral change. ARPA ended PANDORA in March 1970 after spending $4,615,000. The report, classified Secret, was downgraded to unclassified in February 1977."
},
{
"id": "gravity-shielding",
"title": "The Gravity Shield Test",
"doc": "Superconductor-Mediated Modification of Gravity? AC Motor Experiments with Bulk YBCO Disks in Rotating Magnetic Fields",
"agency": "NASA Marshall",
"year": 1998,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "Testing a gravity shield",
"hook": "A NASA Marshall test of the claim that spinning superconductors shield gravity; a gravimeter above the disks recorded no change.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19990019627",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper of 1998 by David A. Noever and Ronald J. Koczor of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, with Rick Roberson, on gravity measurements above large superconducting disks in rotating magnetic fields.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1992 E. Podkletnov and R. Nieminen reported in Physica C that a rotating disk of the superconductor yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) appeared to shield gravity, and later said rotating AC fields were essential. Marshall had already measured gravity near such disks with a precision gravimeter.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The team placed 15-centimeter YBCO disks in the core of a 3-phase AC motor stator, producing a magnetic field rotating at up to 12,000 revolutions per minute, with and without a DC field levitating the disk. Within the gravimeter’s precision, neither the rotating field, the thermal environment, nor rotation of the disk changed the readings.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Marshall group continued related work through 1999, including making 30-centimeter annular disks for further tests."
},
{
"id": "fbi-bigfoot",
"title": "The FBI Bigfoot File",
"doc": "Bigfoot (FBI file 95-213013)",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1976,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The FBI tests Bigfoot hair",
"hook": "The FBI file on 15 hairs a Bigfoot researcher sent to its laboratory, which found them to be “of deer family origin.”",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/bigfoot",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file of 1976–77 documenting the FBI Laboratory’s examination of hairs submitted as possible evidence of Bigfoot.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. A 1975 environmental atlas from the Army Corps of Engineers had stated that the FBI analyzed a reputed Sasquatch sample. In August 1976 Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in The Dalles, Oregon, asked whether this was true. The FBI replied that it could find no record of one. In November he sent 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of skin for analysis.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Using transmitted and incident light microscopy, the laboratory studied root structure, medullary structure, cuticle thickness, and scale casts, and compared the hairs with hairs of known origin. Its letter of February 24, 1977, concluded that the hairs were of deer family origin.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The hairs were returned to Howard S. Curtis of the Academy of Applied Science, which sponsored Byrne’s center. The FBI posted the file to its online Vault in June 2019."
},
{
"id": "hottel-memo",
"title": "The Hottel Memo",
"doc": "Flying Saucers – Information Concerning (memorandum, Guy Hottel to the FBI Director)",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1950,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The FBI’s most viewed UFO memo",
"hook": "A one-page FBI memo relaying a secondhand story of three crashed saucers in New Mexico, now the most viewed file in the FBI Vault.",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. One-page memorandum of March 22, 1950, from Guy Hottel, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Washington field office, to the FBI Director, under the subject “Flying Saucers, Information Concerning.”\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The memo passed on an informant’s account, attributed to an unnamed investigator for the Air Forces. The names of the agent and informant are redacted.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The account described 3 saucers recovered in New Mexico, circular with raised centers and about 50 feet in diameter, each holding 3 bodies of human shape only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth. It said they came down there because a high-powered government radar interfered with their controls. The memo states that no further evaluation was attempted.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. In 2013 the FBI reported that the memo was the most viewed file in its online Vault, launched in 2011. The FBI stated that it never investigated the claim and that the memo, written 3 years after the Roswell incident, has no connection to it."
},
{
"id": "mohole",
"title": "Project Mohole",
"doc": "Experimental Drilling in Deep Water at La Jolla and Guadalupe Sites",
"agency": "NSF · National Research Council",
"year": 1961,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Drilling toward Earth’s mantle",
"hook": "The report on 1961 test drilling off Guadalupe Island, Mexico, the first phase of a plan to drill through the ocean floor to Earth’s mantle.",
"url": "https://www.nationalacademies.org/publications/28639",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. National Research Council report of 1961 on the experimental drilling phase of Project Mohole, carried out from the drilling barge CUSS I off La Jolla, California, and Guadalupe Island, Mexico.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC), whose members included Walter Munk, Harry Hess, and Roger Revelle, proposed drilling through the ocean crust to the boundary with the mantle, the Mohorovičić discontinuity. The National Academy of Sciences gave AMSOC an administrative home, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report covers drilling, casing, coring, dynamic positioning, scientific results, and costs. Off Guadalupe in March and April 1961, CUSS I drilled 183 meters into the sea floor in about 3,560 meters of water, recovering sediments and basalt.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The experimental drilling at both sites cost about $1.5 million. NSF then contracted Brown and Root for a larger drill ship, but cost estimates rose to about $160 million. Congress ended funding in 1966 after about $57 million had been spent, with no hole drilled to the mantle."
},
{
"id": "pogo",
"title": "The Pogo",
"doc": "Flight Tests of a 0.13-Scale Model of the Convair XFY-1 Vertically Rising Airplane with the Lower Vertical Tail Removed (NACA RM SL54E07)",
"agency": "NACA Langley",
"year": 1954,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A fighter that landed on its tail",
"hook": "NACA flight tests of a model of the Convair XFY-1 “Pogo,” a Navy fighter designed to take off and land sitting on its tail.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20050028502",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Research memorandum SL54E07 of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, dated May 1954, by Powell M. Lovell, Jr., of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, on flights of a 0.13-scale model of the Convair XFY-1 vertically rising airplane without its lower vertical tail.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics requested the tests. The XFY-1 was a tail-sitting delta-wing fighter with a large dual-rotating propeller; its lower tail fin made an emergency belly landing appear unfeasible.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The model, flown remotely in the Langley full-scale tunnel, hovered and made the transition to forward flight. Below an angle of attack of about 30 degrees it grew harder to control, because of a lightly damped Dutch roll and oversized control deflections.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report concluded that directional stability at low angles of attack was the critical factor in tail design. The full-size XFY-1 made its first transition from vertical to horizontal flight and back in November 1954. It proved difficult to control in vertical flight and was grounded in 1956."
},
{
"id": "igloo-white",
"title": "Igloo White",
"doc": "Project CHECO Southeast Asia Report: Igloo White (Initial Phase)",
"agency": "USAF · Pacific Air Forces",
"year": 1968,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Sensors listening on the Ho Chi Minh Trail",
"hook": "An Air Force history of the sensor barrier on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which relayed truck noise to computers in Thailand.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA485055",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Project CHECO report of July 1968 by Headquarters, Pacific Air Forces, on the first phase of Muscle Shoals, renamed Igloo White in June 1968, an air-supported system for detecting North Vietnamese infiltration through Laos.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered the program on 16 September 1966 and placed it under the Defense Communications Planning Group. Aircraft dropped acoustic and seismic sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Orbiting EC-121 aircraft relayed their signals to the Infiltration Surveillance Center at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, run by Task Force Alpha.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Sensor data were fed into a computer that printed updated tracks every five minutes for target assessment officers. From 1 December 1967 to 24 March 1968, 3,964 target sequences were reported; 446 were confirmed and 370 struck. The report judged the assured direct contribution to truck kills “relatively insignificant,” but credited sensors with aiding the defense of Khe Sanh.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was classified Top Secret, later declassified. Igloo White operated until 1972."
},
{
"id": "rock-site",
"title": "The Rock-Site Concept",
"doc": "Manned Undersea Structures: The Rock-Site Concept (NOTS TP 4162)",
"agency": "U.S. Navy · Naval Ordnance Test Station",
"year": 1966,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Navy bases inside the seafloor",
"hook": "A Navy study proposing rooms excavated in the bedrock beneath the seafloor, with no connection to land or the surface.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0803366",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical publication NOTS TP 4162, issued in October 1966 by the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station, China Lake, on “Rock-Site” installations: rooms excavated in bedrock beneath the sea floor.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. C. F. Austin of the station’s Research Department prepared the study in fiscal year 1966 under Bureau of Naval Weapons exploratory development funding. It presented Rock-Site as a third approach to manned undersea installations, alongside saturation diving, as in Sealab, and structures resting on the bottom.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report cited undersea mines worked since 1867, including a machine shop beneath the sea off Newfoundland. It concluded that existing mining, petroleum, submarine, and nuclear equipment could build one-atmosphere installations with no air umbilical to land or surface, entered by submarine locks. A fully isolated site with a 5-megawatt reactor and a glass-domed observation tower was estimated at $25 million to $50 million.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was later approved for public release. Construction of a Rock-Site installation is not recorded in the available sources."
},
{
"id": "yehudi",
"title": "The Yehudi Lights",
"doc": "Summary Technical Report of Division 16, NDRC, Vol. 2: Visibility Studies and Some Applications in the Field of Camouflage",
"agency": "OSRD · Tiffany Foundation",
"year": 1946,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Lamps that hid bombers in the sky",
"hook": "A wartime camouflage report on Yehudi, which hid bombers against the sky with lamps aimed forward from their wings.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0221102",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Summary technical report, published in 1946 by the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), on the visibility and camouflage research of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) Division 16, including the Yehudi project.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Army Air Forces asked the Camouflage Section for a way to let radar-equipped sea-search aircraft close on surfaced U-boats unseen. Since even a white aircraft appears dark against the sky, the Section proposed forward-aimed lamps along the wing leading edges and fuselage, matched to sky brightness. Carl Foss of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation ran the first experiments. The code name meant “the little man who wasn’t there.”\n\n3. FINDINGS. The Army Air Forces fitted Yehudi lamps to a B-24, and the Navy to a TBF torpedo bomber. In Navy trials, an aircraft otherwise visible at about 12 miles approached to within 3,000 yards undetected.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A Navy contract to fit the lamps to a glide bomb ended with the war. The report, originally Confidential, was declassified."
},
{
"id": "plasma-cloaking",
"title": "Plasma Cloaking",
"doc": "Plasma Cloaking: Air Chemistry, Broadband Absorption, and Plasma Generation (AFOSR-TR-90-0544)",
"agency": "USAF · SRI",
"year": 1990,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A plasma cloak against radar",
"hook": "An Air Force–funded SRI study that concluded a membrane of ionized gas could serve as a switchable radar cloaking device.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA222044",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report of February 1990 by SRI International for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) on using man-made atmospheric-pressure plasma as a radar absorber, which the report called a cloaking device.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Robert J. Vidmar of SRI’s Remote Measurements Laboratory led the three-year investigation, begun in May 1985. The work was motivated by two applications: an artificial ionospheric mirror and a means of reducing electromagnetic backscatter.\n\n3. FINDINGS. SRI built a code of 340 chemical reactions to estimate plasma lifetime and the power needed to sustain it. Plasma generated in air required high power. Helium or argon seeded with an organic vapor, ionized by an ultraviolet flash lamp and held inside a thin Mylar membrane, required much less. The report predicted absorption up to 40 decibels better than carbon-based absorber, from VHF through X-band, and concluded that a plasma cloaking device “will work and is feasible.”\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was approved for public release. Further work is not recorded in the available sources."
},
{
"id": "sanguine-biology",
"title": "Sanguine’s Test Animals",
"doc": "Project Sanguine Biological Effects Test Program: Pilot Studies, Final Report",
"agency": "U.S. Navy · Hazleton Laboratories",
"year": 1970,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Animals in a giant antenna’s field",
"hook": "Navy-funded tests that exposed rats, beagles, insects, and plants to the fields of a proposed submarine radio antenna.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0717409",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report of November 1970 by Hazleton Laboratories, a TRW subsidiary, for the Naval Electronic Systems Command on pilot studies of biological effects from Project Sanguine’s extremely low frequency (ELF) fields.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Sanguine was a Navy plan for a large buried ELF antenna to send messages to submerged submarines. The studies asked whether its fields and earth currents could affect nearby life. Laboratory fields at 45 and 75 Hz were well above those expected from the antenna; soil organisms were also counted near the Wisconsin Test Facility.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Rat fertility, rat learning, bacteria, and plant chromosomes showed no effects. Beagles, some with current passed through their bodies, showed possible but inconsistent rises in blood pressure and temperature. Insects showed a possible rise in lethal mutations, and one of three seed species possible stunted growth.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Sanguine was scaled down through several redesigns into Project ELF, with transmitters in Wisconsin and Michigan, which the Navy shut down in 2004."
},
{
"id": "sealab-ii",
"title": "Sealab II",
"doc": "Project Sealab Report: An Experimental 45-Day Undersea Saturation Dive at 205 Feet (ONR Report ACR-124)",
"agency": "ONR",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Seafloor living, mail by porpoise",
"hook": "The Navy’s report on Sealab II, where aquanauts lived for weeks on the seafloor and a porpoise named Tuffy carried their mail.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/projectsealabrep00paul",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report ACR-124 of the Office of Naval Research (ONR), dated March 1967, on Sealab II, a 45-day saturation dive at 205 feet off La Jolla, California.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Sealab II followed Sealab I, an 11-day dive off Bermuda in 1964, as part of the man-in-the-sea task of the Deep Submergence Systems Program. Begun in January 1965, it placed a habitat 3,000 feet off Scripps Pier. Former Mercury astronaut Commander M. Scott Carpenter led the first team.\n\n3. FINDINGS. From 28 August to 14 October 1965, three teams totaling 28 divers and scientists lived in the habitat on helium, oxygen, and nitrogen for 15 to 30 days, working in 48-degree water. Divers worked effectively, with no significant short-term physiological deterioration, though performance degraded as tasks grew complex. A trained porpoise, Tuffy, carried tools and mail between the surface and the divers on the bottom.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Sealab III began in 1969 at about 610 feet. Aquanaut Berry Cannon died during the operation, and the program ended."
},
{
"id": "talos",
"title": "The TALOS Suit",
"doc": "Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) briefing, Special Operations Forces Industry Conference",
"agency": "U.S. Special Operations Command",
"year": 2017,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The “Iron Man” suit",
"hook": "A Special Operations Command briefing on TALOS, the armored, powered exoskeleton suit the press called the “Iron Man suit.”",
"url": "https://ndia.dtic.mil/wp-content/uploads/2017/sofic/May16TALOS.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Unclassified briefing on the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS), presented by U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in May 2017.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. USSOCOM introduced TALOS in 2013 and ran it through a Joint Acquisition Task Force within its acquisition directorate. The press called it the “Iron Man suit.”\n\n3. FINDINGS. The briefing set the goal of a combat suit offering “super-human performance” and “surgical lethality.” It listed ballistic armor, an exoskeleton bearing the load, powered actuation of the upper and lower body, biomedical monitoring, thermal regulation, and helmet displays fusing sensor and intelligence data. A first prototype was to be presented in 2018. The program was described as partly unclassified and partly classified.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. In February 2019 USSOCOM said the Mk 5 prototype was not suitable for close combat and would not be fielded. Subsystems such as armor and a thermal management suit continued separately."
},
{
"id": "ar-15-test",
"title": "The AR-15 Field Test",
"doc": "Report of Task No. 13A: Test of Armalite Rifle, AR-15",
"agency": "ARPA",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The field test behind the M16",
"hook": "ARPA’s field report on AR-15 rifles issued to South Vietnamese troops in combat, a test that helped lead to the M16.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0343778",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of July 1962 by the Research and Development Field Unit of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in Vietnam on a combat evaluation of the Armalite AR-15 rifle.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Under Project AGILE, ARPA’s counterinsurgency program, the Secretary of Defense approved the purchase of 1,000 AR-15s in December 1961. The test asked whether the rifle suited Vietnamese soldiers, who averaged five feet tall and 90 pounds.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Rifles went to South Vietnamese units fighting the Viet Cong. Commanders and U.S. advisers judged the AR-15 superior to the M1 rifle, M1 and M2 carbines, Thompson submachine gun, and Browning Automatic Rifle. An annex described the wounds it caused; ARPA deleted two photographs of the dead. The report recommended the rifle as the basic weapon of South Vietnamese forces.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report, originally Confidential, was declassified in 1974. According to DARPA, it helped prompt the Secretary of Defense to reconsider the Army’s choice, leading to the first large purchase of the modified AR-15, the M16, in 1966."
},
{
"id": "million-random-digits",
"title": "A Million Random Digits",
"doc": "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates",
"agency": "USAF · RAND",
"year": 1955,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A book of a million random digits",
"hook": "A RAND book of one million random digits, generated by an electronic roulette wheel for Air Force analyses.",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Book of tables published by the RAND Corporation in 1955, containing one million random digits and 100,000 random normal deviates, prepared in connection with analyses for the U.S. Air Force.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. RAND research required large supplies of random numbers for Monte Carlo methods. The largest existing table would have had to be reused many times, introducing correlations. Participants included Paul Armer, G. W. Brown, Olaf Helmer, and J. D. Williams.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The digits came from an electronic roulette wheel: a random pulse source gated by a binary counter acting as a 32-place wheel, with output punched to IBM cards. The basic table was produced in May and June 1947. Tests found small but statistically significant biases, so each digit was added modulo 10 to the matching digit on the preceding card. The pages were printed from cards and spot-proofread.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. RAND reissued the book in 2001 with a new foreword describing it as a standard reference in engineering and econometrics textbooks."
},
{
"id": "alpac",
"title": "The ALPAC Report",
"doc": "Language and Machines: Computers in Translation and Linguistics (NAS-NRC Publication 1416)",
"agency": "NSF · National Research Council",
"year": 1966,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "The report that doubted machine translation",
"hook": "The National Research Council report that saw “no immediate or predictable prospect” of useful machine translation.",
"url": "https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/9547",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC), published in 1966 by the National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council, on machine translation and computational linguistics.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Academy formed the committee in April 1964, at the request of the National Science Foundation, to advise the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Foundation on research in mechanical translation. John R. Pierce chaired it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The committee noted that the government had spent some $20 million over 10 years on machine translation and related work, more than its annual cost of translation. It found machine-aided translation of scientific text but no useful machine translation, and “no immediate or predictable prospect” of it. It recommended supporting computational linguistics as science and work to make human translation faster and cheaper.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report ended substantial U.S. funding of machine translation research for about two decades."
},
{
"id": "biocybernetic-control",
"title": "Biocybernetic Control",
"doc": "Biocybernetic Control in Man-Machine Interaction: Final Technical Report 1973–74 (UCLA-ENG-7534)",
"agency": "DARPA · UCLA",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "An early brain-computer interface",
"hook": "An ARPA-funded UCLA report on reading EEG brain responses as computer input, from the lab that named the brain-computer interface.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA012967",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final technical report of December 1974 by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) on using electroencephalogram (EEG) evoked responses in communication between people and computers.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Jacques J. Vidal led the work under a $198,754 contract running from April 1973 to June 1974. Vidal introduced the term “brain-computer interface” in a 1973 paper, and the report describes the lab’s Brain Computer Interface facility.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Subjects viewed colored and patterned flashes while scalp signals were recorded. The team reported candidate EEG codes that appeared to reflect red, green, and blue retinal processes, and found that single responses, analyzed by stepwise discriminant analysis, could be told apart using only ten amplitude samples. A “code cracking” software package ran on UCLA’s IBM 360/91 and was reachable over the ARPANET.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was approved for public release and distributed by the National Technical Information Service."
},
{
"id": "nash-letters",
"title": "John Nash’s Letters to the NSA",
"doc": "Correspondence between John Nash and the National Security Agency",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 1955,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "John Nash’s cipher proposal",
"hook": "John Nash’s 1955 letters to the NSA, proposing a cipher machine and arguing that key-breaking effort could grow exponentially.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/12/2002760581/-1/-1/0/NASH_LETTERS1.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Declassified collection of 1955 correspondence between mathematician John Nash and the National Security Agency (NSA), with the agency’s replies and internal notes.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Nash, then an assistant professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had sent a handwritten description of an enciphering machine to the NSA through RAND. He wrote again in January 1955, and the agency asked for a fresh description.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Nash argued that for good ciphers the computation needed to recover the key grows exponentially with key length, so that an enemy might have to try all 2^r possible keys, and that such systems would be effectively unbreakable. He sent diagrams of a machine suited to electronic operation. On 3 March 1955 the NSA called the system ingenious but said it did not meet security requirements and could not be adopted.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The letters and the NSA’s analysis stayed in the agency’s records until 2011, when they were declassified. Copies are displayed at the National Cryptologic Museum."
},
{
"id": "multics-security",
"title": "The Multics Penetration Test",
"doc": "Multics Security Evaluation: Vulnerability Analysis (ESD-TR-74-193, Vol. II)",
"agency": "USAF · Electronic Systems Division",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A compiler trap door, found early",
"hook": "An Air Force penetration test of Multics that described a self-perpetuating compiler trap door a decade before Ken Thompson did.",
"url": "https://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/projects/history/papers/karg74.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Volume II of a June 1974 Air Force Electronic Systems Division report by Lieutenant Paul A. Karger and Major Roger R. Schell on a penetration exercise against the Honeywell Multics operating system.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Air Force Data Services Center needed one time-shared system to serve Pentagon users from unclassified to Top Secret. Multics was evaluated as a candidate under Air Force Project 6917 from March 1972 to June 1973 at less than half a person-month of effort per month.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The testers found hardware, software, and procedural vulnerabilities, read the password file, and planted a trap door in system code. They described a compiler trap door: a modified PL/I compiler that inserts hidden code into the system and into itself, surviving recompilation. They concluded Multics was not certifiably secure for open multilevel use, though better than contemporary systems.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report was approved for public release. Ken Thompson cited it in his 1984 lecture “Reflections on Trusting Trust.”"
},
{
"id": "total-information-awareness",
"title": "Total Information Awareness",
"doc": "Report to Congress regarding the Terrorism Information Awareness Program",
"agency": "DARPA",
"year": 2003,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "DARPA’s mass data-mining program",
"hook": "DARPA’s report to Congress defending its counterterrorism data-mining program, including a plan for futures markets on attacks.",
"url": "https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/TIA-report.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of 20 May 2003 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to Congress on the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program, formerly Total Information Awareness.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. DARPA created the Information Awareness Office in January 2002, after the September 2001 attacks, under John Poindexter. Congress required the report in the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report described TIA as a research prototype network for analysts. Red teams would model attacks and the transactions they required, such as airline tickets, training payments, and bomb materials, then search databases to which the government had lawful access for matching patterns. Component programs included Genisys, Human Identification at a Distance, and Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP), in which participants would trade contracts paying $1 if an attack took place.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. DARPA cancelled the Policy Analysis Market in July 2003, and Poindexter resigned. In September 2003 Congress eliminated funding for TIA and the Information Awareness Office, allowing some programs to continue elsewhere."
},
{
"id": "sigsaly",
"title": "SIGSALY",
"doc": "The Start of the Digital Revolution: SIGSALY, Secure Digital Voice Communications in World War II",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 2000,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "A 55-ton encrypted phone line",
"hook": "An NSA history of SIGSALY, the 55-ton wartime system that encrypted Allied leaders’ calls as digital speech keyed by phonograph records.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/13/2002761542/-1/-1/0/SIGSALY.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. History by J. V. Boone and R. R. Peterson, published in July 2000 by the National Security Agency’s Center for Cryptologic History, on SIGSALY, a World War II secure voice system.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The earlier A-3 scrambler on the transatlantic radiotelephone was broken in real time by a German station in the Netherlands. Bell Telephone Laboratories, which had worked on the vocoder since about 1936, received an Army contract in 1942 for two systems.\n\n3. FINDINGS. SIGSALY converted speech to digital data and encrypted it with random key recorded on phonograph records, made in sets of three, distributed by courier, and destroyed after use. Service began on 15 July 1943 between the Pentagon and London, where Winston Churchill’s instrument sat in the War Rooms. Each terminal had about 40 equipment racks weighing about 55 tons. Twelve terminals were deployed, from Paris to Manila.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The terminals carried more than 3,000 conferences before removal in 1946. The system’s existence remained secret until 1976."
},
{
"id": "rand-tablet",
"title": "The RAND Tablet",
"doc": "The RAND Tablet: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication Device (RM-4122-ARPA)",
"agency": "ARPA · RAND",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "Handwriting into a computer in 1963",
"hook": "RAND’s description of its tablet and stylus, which let a user write and draw by hand into a computer in 1963.",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM4122.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Research memorandum RM-4122-ARPA, issued by the RAND Corporation in August 1964, describing the RAND Tablet, a stylus-and-tablet device for entering handwriting and drawings into a computer.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. M. R. Davis and T. O. Ellis built the tablet at RAND in Santa Monica, California, as part of research on man-machine communication for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) under Contract SD-79. It had been in use at RAND since September 1963.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The writing surface was a 10-by-10-inch printed-circuit screen with 100 lines per inch in each direction, enough to locate more than 1 million points with only 40 external connections. A pressure switch in the stylus tip registered strokes. The pen’s position appeared as a dot on an oscilloscope, and the computer redrew its track so that the pen seemed to leave “ink.” Users adjusted within a few minutes.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Several institutions had installed copies by 1964. RAND later described the tablet as far too expensive for commercial use but a forerunner of handheld computers, tablet PCs, and iPads."
},
{
"id": "atomic-pigs",
"title": "The Atomic Pigs",
"doc": "Operation Plumbbob, Project 4.1: Effects of Nuclear Detonations on a Large Biological Specimen (Swine) (WT-1428)",
"agency": "Defense Atomic Support Agency · Walter Reed",
"year": 1961,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Pigs exposed to atomic tests",
"hook": "The Army’s report on 1,200 pigs exposed to three atomic tests in Nevada in 1957 as stand-ins for human casualties.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0460308",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report WT-1428 of Operation Plumbbob Project 4.1, dated August 1961, on the effects of nuclear detonations on swine as stand-ins for human casualties.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research ran the project for the Defense Atomic Support Agency as one of 46 military-effects projects of Operation Plumbbob, a series of 24 detonations at the Nevada Test Site in 1957. Pigs were chosen because they approximated humans in cross section. About 1,200 pigs were used during Shots Franklin, Wilson, and Priscilla in June 1957.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Pigs were exposed in aluminum cylinders, in foxholes, and behind glass panels to study radiation, burns, blast, and glass-missile wounds. The median lethal radiation dose was 486 ± 10 rep. Combined wounds, burns, and radiation brought earlier death and higher mortality. Foxholes protected against blast and heat but not necessarily against radiation.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Two-year survivors were sent in August 1959 to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for lifetime observation. The report, first limited to government use, was cleared for public release in 1979."
},
{
"id": "camel-corps",
"title": "The Camel Corps",
"doc": "Report of the Secretary of War, Communicating … Information Respecting the Purchase of Camels for the Purposes of Military Transportation (Senate Executive Document, 34th Congress, 3d Session)",
"agency": "War Department",
"year": 1857,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "The Army’s camels in Texas",
"hook": "Jefferson Davis’s report to the Senate on the Army’s $30,000 purchase of 75 camels to haul supplies across Texas.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/reportofsecretar00uniteds",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, sent to the Senate in February 1857, on the purchase and importation of camels for military transportation.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. An act of March 3, 1855, appropriated $30,000 for the War Department to buy camels and import dromedaries for military use. Army Major Henry C. Wayne and Navy Lieutenant David D. Porter sailed in the storeship Supply to the Mediterranean to buy animals. The first cargo was landed near Indianola, Texas, in May 1856.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Davis reported that 75 camels had been imported and that a limited trial had increased his confidence in the experiment. Wayne’s letters record 6 camels carrying 3,648 pounds of oats from San Antonio in September 1856 and a caravan traveling through rain that, witnesses said, would have stopped loaded wagons.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The camels were kept at Camp Verde, Texas, and 25 were used on an 1857 wagon-road survey to the Colorado River. About 80 passed into Confederate hands during the Civil War, and the government auctioned the remaining camels in 1866."
},
{
"id": "hippo-bill",
"title": "The American Hippo Bill",
"doc": "Hearings before the Committee on Agriculture, 61st Congress, 2nd Session: Importation of Wild and Domestic Animals (H.R. 23261)",
"agency": "U.S. House",
"year": 1910,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Hippos for Louisiana’s waterways",
"hook": "A 1910 House hearing on a bill to import hippopotamuses to eat the water hyacinth choking Louisiana’s waterways and supply meat.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/hearingsbeforec09agrigoog",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Record of a hearing of the House Committee on Agriculture on March 24, 1910, on H.R. 23261, a bill to import wild and domestic animals into the United States.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Representative Robert F. Broussard of Louisiana wrote the bill, which directed the Secretary of Agriculture to import animals suited to unused government lands and appropriated $250,000. He presented three witnesses: William Newton Irwin of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry; Captain Fritz Duquesne, formerly of the Boer army; and Major Frederick Russell Burnham.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Irwin argued that the South’s lakes and streams, clogged with water hyacinth, could add 1 million tons of meat a year if stocked with hippopotamuses, whose flesh he described as a combination of pork and beef in taste. The witnesses also proposed African buffalo, eland, giraffes, and smaller antelopes, and the chairman asked whether loose hippopotamuses would become a pest and how they could be controlled in the streams.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The bill was not enacted, and no hippopotamuses were imported."
},
{
"id": "universe-25",
"title": "Universe 25",
"doc": "Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population",
"agency": "NIMH (J. B. Calhoun)",
"year": 1973,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "A mouse utopia that died out",
"hook": "An NIMH scientist’s account of Universe 25, a mouse colony given unlimited food and water that peaked at 2,200 and then died out.",
"url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1644264/",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper by John B. Calhoun of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine in January 1973, on a mouse colony called Universe 25.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Calhoun built a closed pen 101 inches square with 256 nest boxes and enough food for 9,500 mice, and excluded predators, weather, and disease. Four pairs of mice from a National Institutes of Health breeding colony were introduced on July 9, 1968.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The population at first doubled about every 55 days, then slowed, and stopped growing at 2,200 on Day 560. Mothers abandoned their young, and many males withdrew from social life. Calhoun called the groomed males that neither fought nor mated “the beautiful ones.” The last surviving young were born about Day 600, and the last conception came about Day 920.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. On June 22, 1972, 122 mice remained. Calhoun projected that the last male would die on May 23, 1973. Small groups moved to uncrowded pens did not recover normal social or reproductive behavior."
},
{
"id": "spider-web-toxicity",
"title": "Drugged Spider Webs",
"doc": "Using Spider-Web Patterns To Determine Toxicity (MFS-28921), NASA Tech Briefs, April 1995",
"agency": "NASA Marshall",
"year": 1995,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Spider webs on drugs",
"hook": "A NASA tech brief that measured toxicity by how badly spiders exposed to marijuana, Benzedrine, caffeine, and chloral hydrate built webs.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20100033433",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Article MFS-28921 in NASA Tech Briefs for April 1995, from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, describing a method of measuring the toxicity of chemicals from the webs spun by spiders exposed to them.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The work was done at Marshall by David A. Noever, Raymond J. Cronise, and Rachna A. Relwani. It was offered as an alternative to toxicity testing on higher animals, which the article described as expensive, time-consuming, and increasingly restricted by law.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The article showed a normal web beside webs spun by house spiders (Araneus diadematus) exposed to marijuana, Benzedrine, caffeine, and chloral hydrate. Treating each web like a crystal lattice, an image-analysis program measured the number, area, perimeter, and radius of its cells. The more toxic the chemical, the more deformed the web. The most telling measure was the number of cell sides the spider failed to complete.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The method was published in the Life Sciences section of the issue, with a technical support package offered on request."
},
{
"id": "army-germ-tests",
"title": "The Army’s Open-Air Germ Tests",
"doc": "Biological Testing Involving Human Subjects by the Department of Defense, 1977: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, U.S. Senate",
"agency": "U.S. Senate",
"year": 1977,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Open-air germ tests on U.S. cities",
"hook": "Senate hearings at which the Army described open-air germ-warfare simulant tests in places including San Francisco and the New York subway.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/biologicaltestin00unit",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Record of hearings held by the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research on March 8 and May 23, 1977, on the Defense Department’s biological testing involving human subjects.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Richard S. Schweiker held the hearings after press reports that the Army had released biological-warfare simulants in populated areas. The record reprints the Army’s history of its 1942–69 biological warfare program.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Army witnesses testified to 19 tests with biological simulants and 27 with nonbiological particles in public areas, among them San Francisco Bay in September 1950, Washington National Airport, and the New York City subway in June 1966. The tests were meant to measure vulnerability to covert attack. Schweiker said tests had been run in populated areas across the country and that the Army kept using one organism after medical reports linked it to illness and death.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army said no open-air tests in population centers were contemplated. Kennedy announced legislation to extend the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects to all federal agencies."
},
{
"id": "nuclear-detonation-guidance",
"title": "After the Bomb",
"doc": "Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation, First Edition",
"agency": "Homeland Security Council",
"year": 2009,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "The first days after a nuclear attack",
"hook": "Federal guidance for the first days after a 10-kiloton terrorist nuclear bomb goes off in a U.S. city, from damage zones to fallout shelter.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA525348",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. First edition of federal planning guidance, dated January 16, 2009, for local and state response in the first days after a nuclear detonation in a U.S. city.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. A Homeland Security Council subcommittee wrote the guidance with representatives of the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security and other agencies. It assumed a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear device, based on National Planning Scenario 1, a detonation in Washington, D.C.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The document divided the damaged area into light-damage, moderate-damage, and no-go zones, the last about 0.6 mile in radius, with dangerous fallout extending 10 to 20 miles. It assumed no significant federal response at the scene for 24 hours. It advised that the best first action was to shelter in the nearest building, that basements and large buildings could cut fallout doses by a factor of 10 or more, and that evacuation wait for information on fallout.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued a third edition in 2022 that covered larger detonations and air bursts."
},
{
"id": "sealab-one",
"title": "Sealab I",
"doc": "Project Sealab Summary Report: An Experimental Eleven-Day Undersea Saturation Dive at 193 Feet (ONR Report ACR-108)",
"agency": "ONR",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Eleven days at 193 feet down",
"hook": "The Navy’s report on Sealab I, its first seafloor habitat, where four men lived for 11 days at 193 feet off Bermuda in 1964.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0618199",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Office of Naval Research (ONR) Report ACR-108, dated June 14, 1965, summarizing Sealab I, the Navy’s first undersea habitat, an 11-day saturation dive at 193 feet.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The project applied saturation-diving research by Captain George F. Bond of the Naval Medical Research Laboratory. The habitat, a 9-by-40-foot chamber, was lowered to the seafloor off Argus Island near Bermuda. Lieutenant Robert E. Thompson, Lester E. Anderson, Robert A. Barth, and Sanders W. Manning entered it on July 20, 1964.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The four men breathed about 79 percent helium, 17 percent nitrogen, and 4 percent oxygen, lived in the dry chamber, and swam out to work. Their tissues reached saturation within 24 hours, after which longer stays did not lengthen decompression. Manning lost consciousness on one swim and was revived by his crewmates. The report found no adverse physiological effects and concluded that men could do useful work at 200 feet and deeper.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Weather forecasts ended the dive on July 29, 1964. The crew finished decompression on Argus Island on August 1."
},
{
"id": "louie-louie",
"title": "The “Louie Louie” File",
"doc": "Louie Louie (The Song), FBI file",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The FBI decodes “Louie Louie”",
"hook": "The FBI’s file on whether the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” was obscene. Its laboratory could not make out the lyrics at any speed.",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/louie-louie-the-song",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. File of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), released through its online Vault, on the Bureau’s 1964–65 investigation of whether the Kingsmen’s recording of “Louie Louie” was obscene.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The case was handled under the Interstate Transportation of Obscene Matter (ITOM) statute after complaints from parents, including a January 1964 letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Field offices including Tampa and Indianapolis collected copies of the record and typed sheets of lyrics said to have been transcribed from it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The FBI Laboratory played the record at several speeds, including 78, 45, and 33⅓ rpm. Because the lyrics could not be definitely determined, the laboratory reported in May 1965 that it could not be determined whether the record was obscene. The file notes that three other government agencies had dropped their inquiries for the same reason. Agents interviewed the songwriter, Richard Berry, and officials of the record company.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No charges were brought. The 119-page file was released with redactions."
},
{
"id": "tuskegee-study",
"title": "The Tuskegee Study",
"doc": "Final Report of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel",
"agency": "HEW · U.S. Public Health Service",
"year": 1932,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "40 years of untreated syphilis",
"hook": "The federal panel’s report on the Public Health Service study that followed Black men with untreated syphilis for 40 years.",
"url": "https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cphl/history/reports/tuskegee/complete%20report.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report, dated April 28, 1973, of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel to the Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Public Health Service began the study in Macon County, Alabama, in 1932 with 399 Black men whose syphilis was past the infectious stages and 201 men without it as controls. The men were not told they were subjects in a study of untreated disease. HEW appointed the panel in 1972 after press accounts.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The panel judged the study ethically unjustified in 1932 and found no evidence that informed consent had been obtained. Penicillin should have been made available once it became the standard treatment. It recommended ending the study at once and treating the survivors.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The study ended in November 1972. A suit filed in 1973 was settled for $10 million in 1974. The panel also urged Congress to create a national board to review federally supported human research.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee: Timeline",
"by": "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention",
"url": "https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/timeline.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "guatemala-experiments",
"title": "The Guatemala Experiments",
"doc": "“Ethically Impossible”: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948",
"agency": "Presidential Bioethics Commission · PHS",
"year": 1946,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "People deliberately infected with syphilis",
"hook": "A presidential commission’s report on Public Health Service doctors who deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, and patients.",
"url": "https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. September 2011 report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues on sexually transmitted disease research carried out in Guatemala by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) from 1946 to 1948.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The work was led by PHS physician John C. Cutler through the Pan American Sanitary Bureau and the PHS Venereal Disease Research Laboratory, with a National Institute of Health grant. President Obama ordered the review in November 2010, after a historian found Cutler’s papers at the University of Pittsburgh.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The commission documented the intentional exposure of 1,308 prisoners, soldiers, and psychiatric patients to syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, with some form of treatment recorded for 678. Diagnostic testing covered 5,128 subjects, including children. Subjects were not asked to consent.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The commission concluded that the experiments were gross violations of ethics by the standards of their own time as well as of the present. President Obama apologized to Guatemala on October 1, 2010."
},
{
"id": "whitecoat",
"title": "Operation Whitecoat",
"doc": "An Assessment of Health Status among Medical Research Volunteers Who Served in the Project Whitecoat Program at Fort Detrick, Maryland (RPP-04-213)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · USAMRIID",
"year": 1954,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Objectors volunteered for germ tests",
"hook": "An Army study of the volunteers in Project Whitecoat, Seventh-day Adventist objectors exposed to biological agents at Fort Detrick.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA444263",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 2005 assessment by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) of the health of men who served as medical research volunteers in Project Whitecoat at Fort Detrick, Maryland.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Whitecoat ran from 1954 to 1973 to develop vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments for the Army’s biological warfare defense program. It followed meetings in 1954 and 1955 between the Army Surgeon General’s office and the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whose members, entering service as conscientious objectors, made up more than 90 percent of about 2,300 participants in more than 135 studies.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Volunteers received investigational vaccines or were exposed to agents including Coxiella burnetii, sand fly fever, and tularemia, with curative antibiotics given during or after each study. A survey of 358 exposed and 164 unexposed volunteers found no conclusive evidence of related ill health.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The program was terminated in 1973. Later Army reviews of Whitecoat and the Project 112 and SHAD tests reached similar conclusions.",
"more": [
{
"type": "video",
"title": "Operation Whitecoat",
"by": "PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly",
"url": "https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2003/10/24/october-24-2003-operation-whitecoat/15055"
}
]
},
{
"id": "edgewood",
"title": "The Edgewood Volunteers",
"doc": "Possible Long-Term Health Effects of Short-Term Exposure to Chemical Agents, Volume 3: Current Health Status of Test Subjects",
"agency": "U.S. Army · National Research Council",
"year": 1955,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Soldiers dosed with nerve agents and BZ",
"hook": "The National Research Council’s final report on twenty years of chemical-agent tests on soldier volunteers at Edgewood Arsenal.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA163614",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. December 1985 final volume of a National Research Council (NRC) study, requested by the Department of the Army, on possible delayed and long-term effects of experimental chemicals given to soldiers at the Army laboratories at Edgewood, Maryland.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Edgewood tests ran from 1955 to 1975 at Aberdeen Proving Ground to measure how chemical warfare agents affect human performance and how exposed men respond to treatment. Of 6,720 soldiers who volunteered, 4,826 were exposed. Five NRC panels reviewed the agents by class: anticholinesterases, anticholinergics, cholinesterase reactivators, psychochemicals, and irritants and vesicants.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A questionnaire sent to surviving subjects in 1984 drew responses from 82 percent of those who received it. Exposed men did not differ significantly from controls; about 90 percent reported no health problems related to the tests. Subjects tested with LSD fell outside the study, having been examined earlier by the Army.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Volume 1 appeared in 1982 and Volume 2 in 1984. Testing at Edgewood ended in 1975.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Possible Long-Term Health Effects of Short-Term Exposure to Chemical Agents, Volume 1",
"by": "National Research Council",
"url": "https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/740"
}
]
},
{
"id": "simulated-prison",
"title": "The Simulated Prison",
"doc": "Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison (Technical Report Z-09)",
"agency": "ONR · Stanford (P. Zimbardo)",
"year": 1971,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Students cast as guards and prisoners",
"hook": "An Office of Naval Research report on the Stanford basement prison, shut down after six days of a planned two weeks.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0751041",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical Report Z-09, dated October 1972, by Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, prepared for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under contract N00014-67-A-0112-0041.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The study ran in August 1971 in a 35-foot basement corridor of the Stanford psychology building, fitted with three cells of 6 by 9 feet and an unlit closet for solitary confinement. Of 73 men who answered a newspaper advertisement, 24 were selected as the most stable and assigned at random to guard or prisoner, at $15 a day for up to two weeks.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report describes prisoners becoming passive, dependent, and depressed, and guards becoming more aggressive and dehumanizing. Five prisoners were released early, four for acute emotional disturbance and one for a psychosomatic rash. The study was stopped after six days.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The findings were published in 1973. Later researchers working in the study’s archives reported that guards had been briefed and encouraged toward harsh treatment.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Should Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment be retracted?",
"by": "Augustine Brannigan, Retraction Watch",
"url": "https://retractionwatch.com/2025/03/10/guest-post-should-zimbardos-stanford-prison-experiment-be-retracted/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "starvation-unit",
"title": "The Starvation Unit",
"doc": "Experimental Starvation in Man",
"agency": "OSRD · University of Minnesota (A. Keys)",
"year": 1944,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "Objectors starved to plan famine relief",
"hook": "A wartime report on 34 conscientious objectors who were semi-starved for six months so doctors could learn how to feed liberated Europe.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA473351",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report dated October 15, 1945, by Ancel Keys and four colleagues of the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene, University of Minnesota, on an experimental study of human starvation and refeeding.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The work was supported in part under a contract between the University of Minnesota and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), recommended by its Committee on Medical Research. Subjects were conscientious objectors drawn from Civilian Public Service volunteers, their transfer authorized by the Selective Service System. All were informed of the purposes, rigors, and dangers before volunteering.\n\n3. FINDINGS. After a three-month control period, 34 men completed six months on a diet representing moderately severe famine in north central Europe. They lost an average of 16.8 kg, 24 percent of body weight, with physical deterioration and psychological changes. One man was removed for a urinary disorder, another for psychological reasons.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A rehabilitation phase was under way when the report was written. The full study appeared in 1950 as The Biology of Human Starvation."
},
{
"id": "big-itch",
"title": "Operation Big Itch",
"doc": "Suitability Test of E-14 and E-23 Munitions as Disseminators of Arthropod Vectors, BW 1-55, Operation “Big Itch”",
"agency": "U.S. Army Chemical Corps · Dugway",
"year": 1954,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Fleas dropped from bomblets at Dugway",
"hook": "A 1954 Army test of munitions filled with uninfected rat fleas, dropped over pens of guinea pigs at Dugway Proving Ground.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/operation-big-itch-declassified-documents",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report dated November 17, 1954, by the BW Assessment Laboratories at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, on a field test of two munitions as dispensers of disease-carrying insects.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The test was authorized by Chemical Corps directives of August 1954. The E-14 and E-23 components had been designed to spread dry anti-crop agents. The objectives were to judge their suitability for insect vectors and to measure the survival and host-finding of oriental rat fleas, Xenopsylla cheopis.\n\n3. FINDINGS. In a preliminary trial half the E-23s malfunctioned, so the E-14 was chosen. On September 17, 1954, four loaded E-14s were dropped over guinea pig pens, three of them carrying about 560,000 fleas. Fleas escaped inside the aircraft and bit the crew. The fleas survived the drop and found hosts, but stayed active less than 24 hours unless sheltered on an animal.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report called for a better-sealing munition and said continued research with insect vectors appeared justified. It was later released under the Freedom of Information Act."
},
{
"id": "sonic-wind",
"title": "Sonic Wind",
"doc": "History of Research in Space Biology and Biodynamics at the Air Force Missile Development Center, Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, 1946–1958",
"agency": "USAF · Air Force Missile Development Center",
"year": 1954,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "A flight surgeon rode the rocket sled",
"hook": "An Air Force history of the Holloman rocket-sled program, in which a flight surgeon rode the sled himself to find human limits.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA323170",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1958 monograph by the Historical Division of the Air Force Missile Development Center, Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, on the Aeromedical Field Laboratory’s research in space biology and biodynamics from 1946 to 1958.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The laboratory studied escape from high-performance aircraft. Colonel John Paul Stapp had already taken deceleration runs at Edwards Air Force Base, reaching about 46 g and, in 1951, a retinal hemorrhage. At Holloman the sled Sonic Wind Number 1, built by Northrop, ran on a 3,550-foot track braked by water troughs.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Stapp’s first Holloman run, on March 19, 1954, reached about 22 g. On December 10, 1954, the sled reached 937 feet per second, overtaking a T-33 overhead, with a deceleration plateau above 25 g for 1.1 seconds, peaking at 40 g. He was briefly blinded; vision returned in about eight and a half minutes, with no lasting damage.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Later high-g runs used chimpanzees, two of which died. The data informed aircraft escape systems and crash restraints.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Man Behind High-Speed Safety Standards",
"by": "Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum",
"url": "https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/man-behind-high-speed-safety-standards"
}
]
},
{
"id": "sea-hunt",
"title": "Project Sea Hunt",
"doc": "Project Sea Hunt: A Report on Prototype Development and Tests (NOSC TR 746)",
"agency": "U.S. Coast Guard · Naval Ocean Systems Center",
"year": 1981,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Pigeons searching the sea from a pod",
"hook": "A Navy report for the Coast Guard on pigeons carried in a pod under a helicopter to spot orange objects in the water.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA109510",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Technical Report 746, dated July 1981, by J. V. Simmons, Jr., of the Naval Ocean Systems Center’s Hawaii Laboratory, prepared for the U.S. Coast Guard on a prototype search system using trained pigeons.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Sea Hunt was proposed in 1976 on the finding that a pigeon can scan a larger share of its visual field than a person and stay vigilant for hours. Three birds rode in a container under a helicopter, about 120 degrees apart, and pecked a key when they saw a red, yellow, or orange object, lighting an indicator in the cabin.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The prototype was built and tested in fiscal years 1979 and 1980. Detection was about 85 percent for Sea Hunt against about 50 percent for the helicopter crews; earlier trials gave about 90 against 40 percent.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report recommended operational tests at a Coast Guard air station. Sea Hunt never left testing; helicopter accidents destroyed or damaged the equipment, and it ended in 1983 under budget cuts."
},
{
"id": "great-seal-bug",
"title": "The Great Seal Bug",
"doc": "“The Thing” and I",
"agency": "NSA",
"year": 2018,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "A Soviet bug inside a carved Great Seal",
"hook": "An NSA history of “The Thing,” a powerless Soviet bug hidden in a carved Great Seal given to the U.S. ambassador in 1945.",
"url": "https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/history-today-articles/10%202018/04OCT2018%20The%20Thing%20and%20I.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. October 2018 History Today article by the National Security Agency (NSA) on the 1952 discovery of “The Thing,” a Soviet listening device hidden in a carved Great Seal of the United States at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Ambassador Averell Harriman accepted the carving from the Soviets as a gift in 1945; the NSA’s museum dates the presentation, by Soviet schoolchildren, to August 4, 1945. The device, a resonant cavity microphone with no power source, worked only when beamed with radio waves from outside.\n\n3. FINDINGS. In 1952 State Department security officer Joseph Bezjian had Ambassador George Kennan dictate a staged memo while he swept the residence library with a receiver, and traced the signal to the seal. A 1951 metal-detector scan had found nothing. It was probably placed in 1949.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The device was shown to President Truman. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened an espionage investigation, and the Naval Research Laboratory built countermeasure equipment within 6 weeks. The source is a 1968 State Department report."
},
{
"id": "venona",
"title": "Venona",
"doc": "The VENONA Story",
"agency": "NSA (R. L. Benson)",
"year": 2001,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Soviet spy cables broken by reused pads",
"hook": "An NSA history of Venona, the program begun in 1943 that read Soviet spy cables because Moscow reused one-time pad pages.",
"url": "https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/13/2002761786/-1/-1/0/Venona%20Story_2019%20reprint%20version.PDF",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Booklet by Robert L. Benson of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Center for Cryptologic History on VENONA, the U.S. program that decrypted Soviet intelligence and diplomatic cables of the 1940s.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service, a forerunner of the NSA, began the program at Arlington Hall, Virginia, on February 1, 1943, sorting Soviet telegrams collected since 1939. The KGB’s code was further enciphered with one-time pads, which cannot be broken if each page is used once; the Soviet production center reused some pages.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Richard Hallock found weaknesses in Soviet trade traffic in October 1943, and Cecil Phillips broke into the KGB system in 1944. From 1946 Meredith Gardner read KGB messages whose covernames the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) traced to agents including Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, and Donald Maclean. About 3,000 messages were translated.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The program ended on October 1, 1980. The NSA released the translations in six installments beginning in July 1995, starting with 49 messages on atomic bomb espionage."
},
{
"id": "family-jewels",
"title": "The Family Jewels",
"doc": "“Family Jewels” (0001451843)",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1973,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The CIA’s own list of its misdeeds",
"hook": "A 702-page file of CIA activities that might have broken its charter, compiled on the director’s orders in 1973 and released in 2007.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0001451843",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Compilation of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memoranda, assembled in 1973, on agency activities that might fall outside its legislative charter, released in 2007 as a 702-page file.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger ordered the compilation in a May 9, 1973, directive drafted by William Colby, after learning that the Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, both veteran CIA officers, had received agency help. The directive asked employees to report activities “which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency.”\n\n3. FINDINGS. The file records surveillance of journalists, the opening of mail at JFK airport under HTLINGUAL, the MHCHAOS investigation of domestic dissent, a plan to poison Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, the detention of Soviet defector Yuriy Nosenko, and warrantless wiretapping.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Seymour Hersh reported the CIA’s domestic operations in The New York Times on December 22, 1974. The CIA released the file, with redactions, in June 2007, 15 years after the National Security Archive requested it under the Freedom of Information Act."
},
{
"id": "doctor-zhivago",
"title": "The CIA’s Doctor Zhivago",
"doc": "Distribution of Russian Copies of Dr. Zhivago (memorandum, October 31, 1958)",
"agency": "CIA",
"year": 1958,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The CIA’s Russian edition of a banned novel",
"hook": "A CIA memo tallying the first 1,000 copies of its Russian Doctor Zhivago, including 365 handed to Soviet visitors at the Brussels Fair.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/0005795687.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. October 31, 1958, memorandum from the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Soviet Russia Division on the distribution of Russian-language copies of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, one of 99 documents the CIA declassified on the operation.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Soviet authorities had refused to publish the novel. A December 1957 CIA memo recommended foreign editions “for maximum free world discussion and acclaim and consideration for such honor as the Nobel prize.” The CIA then arranged the novel’s first publication in Russian in 1958, one of many covert programs that distributed banned books in the Soviet bloc.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The memo estimates that the Dutch publisher Mouton printed about 10,000 copies, the first 1,000 of which went to a redacted recipient. Of these, 365 were handed to Soviet visitors at the Brussels Fair, 200 went to Frankfurt, 100 each to Berlin and Munich, 25 to London, 10 to Paris, and 200 to headquarters.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958. The memo was approved for release in April 2014."
},
{
"id": "project-fantasia",
"title": "Project Fantasia",
"doc": "Project Fantasia (SAC-26), OSRD Division 19 project file",
"agency": "OSS · OSRD Division 19",
"year": 1943,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "An OSS plan to haunt Japan with fox spirits",
"hook": "An OSS psychological warfare project to frighten the Japanese with glowing fox spirits, from luminous balloons to painted foxes.",
"url": "https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/spring/office-scientific-research-development-world-war-ii",
"status": "partial",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Project file (SAC-26) of Division 19 of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) on Project Fantasia, a 1943 Office of Strategic Services (OSS) plan to frighten the Japanese with fox spirit apparitions.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The idea came from Ed Salinger, a former Tokyo businessman hired by the OSS, who argued that the Japanese could be frightened by kitsune, fox spirits seen as portents of doom. A May 1, 1943, OSS directive asked Division 19 chief Harris M. Chadwell for an “eerie,” luminescent balloon visible from 2,000 feet and destroyed after 15 minutes.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Researchers considered radium salts, fireworks, ultraviolet devices, and phosphorescent gas, and shapes such as a demon or a fox. In OSS memos Salinger also proposed painting live foxes with luminous paint and releasing them in Japan.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. After a September 18 letter from Chadwell, OSS research chief Stanley Lovell agreed to end the project. Division 19 minutes of November 4 recorded that “this problem of Fantasia has been mercifully completed.” The file is at the National Archives."
},
{
"id": "ghost-army",
"title": "The Ghost Army",
"doc": "Official History of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops",
"agency": "U.S. Army · 23rd Headquarters Special Troops",
"year": 1945,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "An Army unit of inflatable tanks",
"hook": "The official history of the Army unit that impersonated whole divisions in Europe with rubber tanks, recorded sound, and radio traffic.",
"url": "https://ghostarmy.org/thearchive/Official-History-of-the-23rd/intro/",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Official history of the U.S. Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a tactical deception unit, written in September 1945 by Captain Frederick E. Fox.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The War Department activated the unit at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, on January 20, 1944. It absorbed the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion, made up largely of artists; a radio deception company; a combat engineer company; and the 3132nd Signal Service Company, the Army’s first sonic deception unit. In France it numbered 82 officers and 1,023 enlisted men.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The history follows the unit from Normandy in June 1944 into Germany. Its last operation, Viersen, in March 1945, which the history calls its best, used rubber dummies, radio, and sound to simulate 2 infantry divisions while the real ones massed elsewhere for the Ninth Army’s Rhine crossing.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The unit was ordered deactivated by September 15, 1945. Its records were declassified in 1996 and are held by the National Archives. In 2022 Congress authorized a Congressional Gold Medal for the unit, citing 21 full-scale deceptions."
},
{
"id": "insectothopter",
"title": "The Insectothopter",
"doc": "Insectithopter: Project History (ORD-1531-74)",
"agency": "CIA · Advanced Technology Center",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "A CIA robot dragonfly to carry a bug",
"hook": "A CIA project history of a one-gram robot dragonfly built to fly a listening device to its target, steered by laser.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/INSECTITHOPTER%5B15760222%5D.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. April 4, 1974, project history (ORD-1531-74) by the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Office of Research and Development on the Insectithopter, a dragonfly-shaped vehicle for planting an audio surveillance device.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The goal was a clandestine insect-like vehicle that could be steered to a target at least 100 meters away to emplace an optical microphone. The Advanced Technology Center, 80 percent owned by LTV, had shown feasibility in a $40,000 initial effort; this follow-on contract cost $105,376. A laser was to track and steer it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The vehicle flew at a 1.0-gram launch weight with jet propulsion and flapping wings, with a range of 200 meters and 60 seconds’ endurance. Controlled flight was shown with a glider indoors, but controlled powered flight was not achieved before the contract ended.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report rated the project technically excellent but noted declining support from potential users; no user or mission was found. It was released in 2019. The CIA Museum, which holds the vehicle, states that crosswinds made control too difficult."
},
{
"id": "wandering-soul",
"title": "The Wandering Soul Tapes",
"doc": "Monthly Operations Report—Feb 1970, 4th Psychological Operations Group",
"agency": "U.S. Army · 4th Psychological Operations Group",
"year": 1970,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Ghost recordings played at enemy troops",
"hook": "Army psychological operations reports on “Wandering Soul” tapes, broadcast at night to exploit beliefs about restless spirits of the dead.",
"url": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/74213310",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Monthly operations report for February 1970 by the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, one of several Army psychological operations (PSYOP) reports recording the use of “Wandering Soul” tapes in South Vietnam.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The tapes drew on beliefs set out in the group’s December 1969 fact sheet on Vietnamese spirits, which states that a person with no cult honoring him after death “becomes an errant spirit, wandering endlessly and doing great harm to the living.” The reports do not describe the tapes’ content.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report describes a team with the 173d Airborne Brigade at Landing Zone English broadcasting about 6 hours nightly at the 22d North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Regiment, mixing tapes naming its units with “Wandering Soul” tapes. Since January, 41 Viet Cong support personnel had rallied, most citing the broadcasts. An 8th PSYOP Battalion report for December 1969 records an NVA soldier who rallied after hearing the tape.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The reports were declassified and are held, digitized, in Record Group 472 at the National Archives."
},
{
"id": "genetrix",
"title": "Project Genetrix",
"doc": "1st Air Division (Meteorological Survey) Final Report, Project 119L",
"agency": "USAF · Strategic Air Command",
"year": 1956,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Camera balloons sent across the USSR",
"hook": "The Air Force’s final report on Project 119L, which launched 516 camera balloons to drift across the Soviet bloc in 1956.",
"url": "https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp89b00708r000500040001-0",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report of the Strategic Air Command’s 1st Air Division (Meteorological Survey) on Project 119L, codenamed Genetrix, which flew camera balloons across the Soviet bloc in early 1956.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. RAND conceived the project for the U.S. Air Force (USAF). Balloons launched from Scotland, Norway, West Germany, and Turkey were to ride the winds east over the Soviet Union and be cut down over the Pacific, where C-119 aircraft would catch the gondolas in midair.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Launches began on January 10, 1956. Of 516 balloons launched, 399 were considered operational, 243 were never heard from, and 44 gondolas had been returned by March 5. C-119s made 16 midair recoveries in 19 attempts. Of 184 launched from January 26, only 2 were recovered, which the report blamed on Soviet defenses.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Soviet Union protested on February 4. On February 6 President Eisenhower told Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that the operation should be suspended, and launches stopped that day. The USAF ended the project on March 1. The report was released in 2011."
},
{
"id": "crossroads",
"title": "Operation Crossroads",
"doc": "Report on Atomic Bomb Tests Able and Baker (Operation Crossroads), Vol. 1",
"agency": "Joint Task Force One",
"year": 1946,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Atomic bombs against a target fleet",
"hook": "The task force’s report on two atomic bombs fired at Bikini in 1946 against 93 target ships, some carrying test animals.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0473986",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Operational report of Joint Task Force One to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, November 1946, on Operation Crossroads, two atomic bomb tests against ships at Bikini Atoll.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In late 1945 General H. H. Arnold and Fleet Admiral Ernest King urged tests against naval vessels, since the bomb’s effects on shipping were almost unknown. The President approved the plan in January 1946, under Vice Admiral W. H. P. Blandy. About 42,000 people took part. The people of Bikini were moved to Rongerik Atoll in March 1946.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The target fleet of 93 vessels included 5 battleships and the carrier Saratoga. Test Able, an air burst on July 1, sank 5 ships. Test Baker, a shallow underwater burst on July 25, sank the Arkansas and the Saratoga. The transport Burleson placed test animals on the targets and collected them afterward. Radioactivity persisted on most target ships and blocked salvage.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A third, deep-water test was postponed indefinitely in September 1946. The report was cleared for public release in 1979."
},
{
"id": "sl-1",
"title": "The SL-1 Accident",
"doc": "Final Report of SL-1 Recovery Operation (IDO-19311)",
"agency": "AEC · General Electric",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "The Army reactor that killed its crew",
"hook": "The final report on recovering the SL-1 reactor, which concluded its central control rod had been pulled out 20 inches by hand.",
"url": "https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/PRR/163645.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. July 1962 final report (IDO-19311) by General Electric for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on the recovery and analysis of the SL-1 reactor, which exploded on January 3, 1961, at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The SL-1 was a prototype low-power boiling-water plant for remote military sites, requested by the Department of Defense in 1955. On the evening of the accident, a three-man military crew was reassembling control rod drives. The explosion killed all three, the first fatal power reactor accident in the United States.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The central control rod was found bound in its shroud at 20 inches withdrawn. Manual withdrawal to that point explained all significant evidence, and no other means fit. The 130 megawatt-second excursion produced a water hammer of up to 10,000 psi that lifted the pressure vessel about 9 feet.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Between May 1961 and July 1962 the vessel and core were removed and dissected, the reactor building was cut up and buried, and the site was decontaminated."
},
{
"id": "broken-arrows",
"title": "Broken Arrows",
"doc": "Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1980",
"agency": "DoD / DOE",
"year": 1981,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "The Pentagon’s list of nuclear accidents",
"hook": "The Pentagon’s 1981 summaries of 32 accidents with nuclear weapons, including Palomares and a bomb lost off Tybee Beach.",
"url": "https://unredacted.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/635.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Department of Defense (DoD) report, current as of April 1981, giving unclassified summaries of 32 accidents involving U.S. nuclear weapons from 1950 to 1980.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. DoD and Department of Energy (DOE) researchers compiled the list in December 1980 and January 1981, defining an accident to include the loss, jettisoning, or non-nuclear detonation of a weapon. The Air Force had released 26 of the summaries in 1977; one was added after the Titan II explosion in Arkansas in September 1980.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report stated there had never been even a partial inadvertent U.S. nuclear detonation. Only the accidents at Palomares, Spain, and Thule, Greenland, dispersed nuclear material widely. On February 5, 1958, a B-47 jettisoned a weapon into Wassaw Sound off Tybee Beach, Georgia; it was declared irretrievably lost. After Palomares, about 1,400 tons of contaminated soil and vegetation were shipped to the United States.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The authors called the list complete to the best of their knowledge, while allowing that earlier accidents may have gone unreported."
},
{
"id": "snap-10a",
"title": "SNAP-10A",
"doc": "Preliminary SNAPSHOT-1 Performance Summary (NAA-SR-11430)",
"agency": "AEC · Atomics International",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "The only U.S. reactor sent into orbit",
"hook": "The first report on SNAP-10A, the only nuclear reactor the U.S. has sent into space, which shut down after 43 days in orbit.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4556136",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. August 1965 report (NAA-SR-11430) by Atomics International for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a preliminary evaluation of SNAPSHOT, the orbital flight test of the SNAP-10A reactor power system.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. SNAP-10A was the first space power system to turn reactor heat directly into electricity through thermoelectric elements, designed to supply 500 watts for one year from 4.8 kilograms of fully enriched uranium-235. An Atlas-Agena rocket launched it from Vandenberg Air Force Base into a polar orbit on April 3, 1965.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The reactor reached full power about 12 hours after launch and, after 6 days of active control, ran self-regulating for 43 days. An ion engine carried as a secondary payload caused spurious instrument readings and was shut off by its own timer. On May 16, 1965, the system shut down; its reflectors had been ejected, and no cause had yet been found.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The shutdown was later traced to a voltage regulator in the spacecraft, unrelated to the reactor. The reactor remains in a stable orbit expected to last about 4,000 years."
},
{
"id": "gamma-field",
"title": "The Gamma Field",
"doc": "The BNL Gamma Field (The Bulletin Board, Vol. 15, No. 18)",
"agency": "AEC · Brookhaven",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "Crops grown in rings around cobalt-60",
"hook": "Brookhaven’s account of its gamma field, where plants grew in rings around a cobalt-60 source to study radiation damage and mutations.",
"url": "https://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/bulletin/files/1962/19620109.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. January 1962 article in the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) staff bulletin describing the Gamma Field, an outdoor plot where plants were exposed to a cobalt-60 source.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The BNL Biology Department, under the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), set up the field in 1949 on an isolated part of the site; it was the first of its kind. The source sat in a buried lead shield and was raised by remote control. By 1953 it had been strengthened from 2 to 2,200 curies.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Plantings formed concentric circles around the source, then 3,800 curies, so that distance set the dose. Plants were exposed 20 hours a day. Over 300 species showed radiation tolerances differing as much as 500-fold. A mutation program with universities and agricultural experiment stations grew apples, peaches, carnations, and other plants there, yielding early- and late-ripening peaches and 3 new carnations.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A low-dose area had been cleared by 1962. By 1966 the field covered 13 acres with a 3,500-curie source."
},
{
"id": "smyth-report",
"title": "The Smyth Report",
"doc": "Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940–1945",
"agency": "War Department (H. D. Smyth)",
"year": 1945,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "The public history of the atomic bomb",
"hook": "The government’s public account of how the atomic bomb was built, released on August 12, 1945, three days after Nagasaki.",
"url": "https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/publications/smyth_report.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report by Princeton physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth, released by the War Department on August 12, 1945, giving the administrative history and basic science of the American atomic bomb project from 1940 to 1945.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Major General Leslie R. Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, commissioned the report in 1944. Smyth dated his preface July 1945. Groves’s foreword stated that the volume held all the scientific information that could be released without harming national security, and warned that seeking more was subject to the Espionage Act.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report covered fission, the first chain reaction at Chicago, plutonium production, uranium isotope separation, and work on the bomb at Los Alamos. Its summary argued that the questions the weapon raised were political and social, to be decided by the people through their representatives.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Princeton University Press issued an edition in September 1945 with minor corrections, photographs, an index, and the War Department release on the July 16, 1945, test in New Mexico."
},
{
"id": "nuclear-winter",
"title": "The Nuclear Winter Study",
"doc": "The Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange",
"agency": "Defense Nuclear Agency · National Research Council",
"year": 1985,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "The Pentagon-funded nuclear winter study",
"hook": "A National Research Council study, paid for by the Pentagon, of how smoke from burning cities could chill the Northern Hemisphere.",
"url": "https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/540/the-effects-on-the-atmosphere-of-a-major-nuclear-exchange",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1985 report of the National Research Council’s Committee on the Atmospheric Effects of Nuclear Explosions on how a major nuclear exchange would modify the Earth’s atmosphere.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Defense Nuclear Agency funded the study under contract with the National Academy of Sciences; George F. Carrier of Harvard chaired the committee. Work by Crutzen and Birks in 1982 on smoke from fires, and the Alvarez dust hypothesis for the extinctions of 65 million years ago, had suggested severe climatic effects far from target zones.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The baseline war detonated 6,500 megatons, half the world arsenal, with 1,500 megatons on targets in or near about 1,000 cities. Fires and ground bursts would loft smoke, dust, and chemicals, and nitrogen oxides would deplete ozone for about 2 years. The committee found a clear possibility of major temperature drops lasting weeks, and subnormal temperatures for months, across much of the northern temperate zone, though it endorsed no specific quantitative estimate.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The committee called its findings interim and urged a major research effort to narrow the uncertainties."
},
{
"id": "skyfire",
"title": "Project Skyfire",
"doc": "Project Skyfire Progress Report, 1958–1960 (Research Paper 71)",
"agency": "U.S. Forest Service",
"year": 1962,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "Seeding thunderstorms to stop forest fires",
"hook": "A Forest Service report on seeding Montana thunderstorms with silver iodide to cut the lightning strikes that start forest fires.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CAT31005343",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. 1962 progress report (Research Paper 71) by Donald M. Fuquay of the U.S. Forest Service’s Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station on Project Skyfire lightning research and cloud seeding, 1958 to 1960.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Skyfire began with a cloud survey from fire lookouts in 1953, run with Vincent J. Schaefer’s Munitalp Foundation. Lightning caused more than 132,000 fires in 13 western states from 1939 to 1958, and 70 percent of Rocky Mountain forest fires. Exploratory seeding began in 1956.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Ground generators spread silver iodide in unpredictable patterns over mountains, so aircraft were used instead. In 1960, near Philipsburg, Montana, forecast storm days were randomly assigned to seeding. Eight seeded days produced 188 recorded discharges against 587 on 8 unseeded days, but the probability that chance explained the difference was 0.15 at best and 0.46 when all days were counted.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report judged one or two more summers unlikely to give significant results, and plans were made to extend the experiment."
},
{
"id": "haarp",
"title": "HAARP",
"doc": "HAARP: Research and Applications (DTIC ADA355641)",
"agency": "USAF / ONR",
"year": 1998,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "The military’s ionosphere heater in Alaska",
"hook": "An Air Force and Navy report on HAARP, the Alaska transmitter built to heat the ionosphere for submarine radio and remote sensing.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA355641",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of a scientific committee sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), received by the Defense Technical Information Center in November 1998, on the uses of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. HAARP grew out of a February 1990 workshop sponsored by ONR and the Air Force, which called for an auroral-zone transmitter with three times the ground power of the heater at Tromsø, Norway. Construction at Gakona, Alaska, began in 1993. Dennis Papadopoulos of the University of Maryland chaired the committee.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The planned array of 360 10-kilowatt transmitters would radiate between 2.8 and 10 megahertz. Modulating the beam would make the ionosphere emit waves from 0.001 hertz to 40 kilohertz for submarine communication and underground exploration. Heating could also produce artificial airglow and electron-density striations that scatter radio signals.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Final buildout was completed in 2007. The military transferred the facility to the University of Alaska Fairbanks on August 11, 2015."
},
{
"id": "project-excelsior",
"title": "Project Excelsior",
"doc": "Discussion of Project Excelsior, in Proceedings of the Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space (NASA SP-8)",
"agency": "USAF · Aerospace Medical Laboratory",
"year": 1959,
"cat": "humans",
"blurb": "A parachute jump from 102,800 feet",
"hook": "An Air Force pilot’s account of Project Excelsior, his three parachute jumps from balloons, the last from 102,800 feet.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19630001263",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper by Captain Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr., of the Air Force’s Aerospace Medical Laboratory, in NASA’s proceedings of a May 1962 conference, on Project Excelsior, a series of balloon jumps testing escape from high altitude.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, ran the project to study high-altitude escape and protection of a man in a space environment.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Wearing a full pressure suit, Kittinger jumped over Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, from 76,000 feet on November 16, 1959, from 75,000 feet on December 11, 1959, and from 102,800 feet on August 16, 1960. On the first his stabilization parachute deployed improperly; he spun, lost consciousness, and was saved by his automatic reserve parachute. The Beaupre multistage parachute stabilized the later falls. He concluded that a stabilized man could escape from above 100,000 feet.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. On the third jump a pressurization failure left his right hand swollen; his free fall lasted about 4 minutes 37 seconds and reached 614 miles per hour."
},
{
"id": "man-in-space-soonest",
"title": "Man in Space Soonest",
"doc": "Chronology of Early Air Force Man-in-Space Activity, 1955–1960 (AFSC Historical Publications Series 65-21-1)",
"agency": "USAF · Space Systems Division",
"year": 1958,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "The Air Force’s first astronaut plan",
"hook": "An Air Force chronology of Man in Space Soonest, the 1958 plan to orbit a man by 1960 as the first step toward a manned Moon landing.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA950166.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. January 1965 chronology by the historical office of the Air Force’s Space Systems Division on Air Force manned spaceflight planning from 1955 to 1960, including Man in Space Soonest (MISS).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. On April 25, 1958, the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division issued a plan to “achieve an early capability to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth.” MISS was the first of four phases, ending in a lunar landing, at an estimated $1.5 billion.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The May 2 plan would have orbited a man by October 1960 on a Thor with a fluorine second stage, for about $120 million. A July 24 plan proposed an Atlas launch in June 1960 for $106.66 million. On July 24–25 the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) refused approval, saying the White House saw no valid reason for a military man in space.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The National Aeronautics and Space Act became law on July 29, 1958. In August President Eisenhower gave manned spaceflight to NASA, and MISS funds went to the new agency."
},
{
"id": "project-diana",
"title": "Project Diana",
"doc": "To See the Unseen: A History of Planetary Radar Astronomy (NASA SP-4218), chapter 1",
"agency": "NASA (A. J. Butrica)",
"year": 1946,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "The Army bounces radar off the Moon",
"hook": "NASA’s history of radar astronomy on Project Diana, the Army Signal Corps experiment that bounced radar off the Moon in January 1946.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19960045321",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Opening chapter of To See the Unseen (NASA SP-4218), a 1996 NASA history of planetary radar astronomy by Andrew J. Butrica, on Project Diana, the U.S. Army Signal Corps experiment that first detected radar echoes from the Moon.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. John H. DeWitt, Jr., director of the Signal Corps’ Evans Signal Laboratory near Belmar, New Jersey, had failed to reflect radio waves off the Moon in 1940. He assembled a team in September 1945. He also had a directive from the Chief Signal Officer to develop radars able to detect missiles from the Soviet Union, and the Moon stood in for the missiles.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The team used equipment on hand: a crystal-controlled transmitter and receiver built for the Signal Corps by Edwin H. Armstrong, and two SCR-271 “bedspring” antennas on a 100-foot tower that turned only in azimuth. At 11:58 a.m. on January 10, 1946, they detected echoes that had taken about 2.5 seconds to return.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The War Department announced the result on January 24, 1946, after outside observers confirmed it."
},
{
"id": "voyager-golden-record",
"title": "The Voyager Golden Record",
"doc": "Voyager Will Carry ‘Earth Sounds’ Record (NASA News Release 77-159)",
"agency": "NASA",
"year": 1977,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A record of Earth sent to the stars",
"hook": "NASA’s 1977 announcement of the phonograph record of greetings, music, sounds, and pictures from Earth sent on both Voyagers.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770079863",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. NASA Headquarters news release 77-159, mailed August 1, 1977, announcing that a phonograph record titled “Sounds of Earth” would be carried on each of the two Voyager spacecraft.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Astronomer Carl Sagan of Cornell University, who had been responsible for the Pioneer plaques, formulated the idea, and a committee of scientists, musicians, and others chose the contents. Timothy Ferris produced the record and Ann Druyan was its creative director. Columbia Records prepared it for NASA as a public service.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The 12-inch copper disc, in an aluminum packet with a cartridge, needle, and playing instructions, held 115 pictures in analog form, spoken greetings in about 60 languages, a sound essay including whales, rain, and a Saturn V launch, nearly 90 minutes of music from Bach to Chuck Berry, and a message from President Carter. The release estimated it would survive more than a billion years.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The final record carried greetings in 55 languages. Both Voyagers launched in 1977; Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in 2012 and Voyager 2 in 2018."
},
{
"id": "arecibo-message",
"title": "The Arecibo Message",
"doc": "The Arecibo Message of November, 1974 (Icarus 26:462–466)",
"agency": "NSF · National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center",
"year": 1975,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A radio picture beamed at M13",
"hook": "The Arecibo Observatory staff’s paper on the 1,679-bit picture message radioed to the star cluster M13 in November 1974.",
"url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/0019-1035(75)90116-5",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper by the staff of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC), in the journal Icarus for December 1975, on the radio message sent from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico toward the globular star cluster M13.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Cornell University operated the NAIC for the National Science Foundation (NSF); Frank Drake was its director from 1971 to 1981. Under a 1971 NASA–NSF agreement the reflector was resurfaced and given a 450-kilowatt radar transmitter operating at 2,380 MHz.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The message was transmitted on November 16, 1974, during the dedication of the resurfaced reflector. It consisted of 1,679 binary digits that, arranged in a grid, form a picture of numbers, chemical elements of life, DNA, a human figure, the solar system, and the transmitting telescope.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The transmission was mostly ceremonial; a reply from M13 would take nearly 50,000 years. The telescope collapsed on December 1, 2020, and NSF’s 2022 plans for the site did not include rebuilding it."
},
{
"id": "houbolt-letter",
"title": "A Voice in the Wilderness",
"doc": "Letter, John C. Houbolt to Robert C. Seamans, Jr., 15 November 1961, in Enchanted Rendezvous (NASA-TM-111236)",
"agency": "NASA Langley (J. Houbolt)",
"year": 1961,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "The letter behind Apollo’s route",
"hook": "A Langley engineer’s letter, sent over his superiors’ heads, urging lunar-orbit rendezvous, the method NASA chose for Apollo in 1962.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19960014824",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Nine-page letter of November 15, 1961, from John C. Houbolt, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, to Associate Administrator Robert C. Seamans, Jr., arguing for lunar-orbit rendezvous (LOR) as the way to land men on the Moon, reproduced in a 1995 NASA monograph by James R. Hansen.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Houbolt had first written to Seamans on May 19, 1961. He served on the Heaton Committee, whose August 1961 report he disputed because its ground rules kept it from considering LOR. Writing directly to NASA’s number-two official skipped proper channels, and Houbolt feared it might cost him his job.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The letter opened “Somewhat as a voice in the wilderness” and asked why the giant Nova booster was simply accepted while rendezvous was “ostracized.” Its attachments outlined ways to land on the Moon with a single Saturn C-3, its equivalent, or something less.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Wernher von Braun endorsed LOR for the Marshall Space Flight Center on June 7, 1962. NASA announced on July 11, 1962, that it had chosen LOR for Apollo."
},
{
"id": "90-day-study",
"title": "The 90-Day Study",
"doc": "Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars (NASA-TM-102999)",
"agency": "NASA Johnson",
"year": 1989,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A Moon base, then astronauts on Mars",
"hook": "NASA’s 1989 plan for President Bush’s return to the Moon: a permanent lunar outpost by 2002 and astronauts on Mars by 2016.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19910017741",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Internal NASA report (NASA-TM-102999), dated November 1989, prepared for Administrator Richard H. Truly on the main elements of a Human Exploration Initiative to return to the Moon and go on to Mars.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. On July 20, 1989, President George H. W. Bush asked the National Space Council, under Vice President Dan Quayle, to chart a course to the Moon and Mars. Truly created a task force led by Johnson Space Center Director Aaron Cohen to supply data for the Council.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The report modeled five reference approaches using Space Station Freedom, new heavy-lift rockets of about 60 and 140 metric tons, and transfer vehicles assembled at the station. In the first, four astronauts would land on the Moon in 2001, permanent lunar occupancy would begin in 2002, and four astronauts would reach Mars in 2016. It gave no total cost.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NASA’s history office puts the study’s long-term cost estimate at about $500 billion. The White House and Congress reacted with hostility, chiefly over cost, and the plan never won congressional support."
},
{
"id": "missile-mail",
"title": "Missile Mail",
"doc": "Missile Mail (United States Postal Service Historian, July 2008)",
"agency": "Post Office Department · U.S. Navy",
"year": 1959,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A cruise missile full of letters",
"hook": "The Postal Service’s history of the 1959 test in which a Navy submarine fired a Regulus missile carrying 3,000 letters to Florida.",
"url": "https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/missile-mail.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. History sheet issued in July 2008 by the Historian of the United States Postal Service on “missile mail,” the Post Office Department’s 1959 delivery of letters by guided missile.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield proposed the test to the Secretaries of Defense and the Navy as part of his drive to modernize mail transportation. At Norfolk, Virginia, 3,000 envelopes were packed into two mail containers and loaded into the warhead compartment of a Regulus I cruise missile aboard the submarine USS Barbero.\n\n3. FINDINGS. On June 8, 1959, the Barbero fired the missile from more than 100 miles off the Florida coast. It flew at about 600 miles per hour and reached the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Mayport, Florida, in about 22 minutes. The identical letters, from Summerfield, went to President Eisenhower, members of Congress, and other officials. Summerfield predicted that mail would soon be delivered within hours by guided missile.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No further missile mail flights were made. Both mail containers are in the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum."
},
{
"id": "akron-disaster",
"title": "The Akron Disaster",
"doc": "Dirigible Disasters: Report of the Joint Committee to Investigate Dirigible Disasters (S. Doc. 73-75)",
"agency": "U.S. Congress",
"year": 1933,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "Congress on a flying carrier’s crash",
"hook": "Congress’s report on the 1933 crash of the Navy airship Akron, a flying aircraft carrier. Three of the 77 men aboard survived.",
"url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-09748_00_00-067-0075-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-09748_00_00-067-0075-0000.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Senate Document No. 75 of the 73rd Congress, the report of the Joint Committee to Investigate Dirigible Disasters, presented June 14, 1933, on the loss of the Navy rigid airship USS Akron and the future of naval airships.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation of Akron, Ohio, built the Akron under a 1928 contract that also covered its sister ship, the Macon. The Akron was 785 feet long.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The Akron left Lakehurst, New Jersey, on April 3, 1933, and crashed into the sea about 20 miles off Barnegat Light in a thunderstorm; three of the 77 men aboard survived. The committee blamed a down current that drove the stern into the water and the decision to fly into the storm, and noted that life belts had been left ashore. It recommended that the Navy keep and replace its airships, which could carry scout airplanes.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Macon was lost in a storm off Point Sur, California, on February 12, 1935, with its four Sparrowhawk airplanes; 2 of its 83 crew died."
},
{
"id": "lifelog",
"title": "LifeLog",
"doc": "LifeLog Proposer Information Pamphlet (BAA 03-30)",
"agency": "DARPA",
"year": 2003,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "DARPA’s plan to record a whole life",
"hook": "A DARPA solicitation for a system to capture everything one person sees, hears, reads, and does, and sort it into an “episodic memory.”",
"url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20030603173339/http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Solicitations/PIP_03-30.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Proposer Information Pamphlet for Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) 03-30, issued in 2003 by the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), soliciting proposals for LifeLog, a system to record and organize one person’s experience.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The program manager was Douglas Gage of IPTO. Proposals were due by June 23, 2003.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The pamphlet called for capturing physical data from worn cameras, microphones, GPS units, and biomedical sensors; transactions such as email, instant messages, web activity, phone calls, faxes, and scanned mail; and the media the user consumed. Software would sort these streams into events, threads, and episodes, forming an “episodic memory,” and infer the user’s routines, habits, and relationships. Offerors had to address human-subject approval and data privacy.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Civil libertarians criticized the program after it was announced in spring 2003. DARPA dropped LifeLog in late January 2004, citing “a change in priorities,” and Wired News reported the cancellation on February 4, 2004.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project",
"by": "Wired",
"url": "https://www.wired.com/2004/02/pentagon-kills-lifelog-project/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "morris-worm",
"title": "The Morris Worm",
"doc": "Computer Security: Virus Highlights Need for Improved Internet Management (GAO/IMTEC-89-57)",
"agency": "GAO",
"year": 1989,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "Auditors on the first internet worm",
"hook": "The GAO’s report on the November 1988 program that reportedly infected up to 6,000 of the internet’s 60,000 computers.",
"url": "https://www.gao.gov/products/imtec-89-57",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. June 12, 1989, report (GAO/IMTEC-89-57) by the General Accounting Office (GAO) on the November 1988 Internet virus, now known as the Morris worm, and on Internet security.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Representative Edward J. Markey, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, requested the review in October 1988. The program appeared on November 2, 1988, on the Internet, then more than 500 networks linking over 60,000 computers.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The worm spread through holes in the sendmail and fingerd programs and through weak passwords, and reportedly infected up to 6,000 computers, including at NASA Ames and Lawrence Livermore. GAO found no focal point for Internet security and recommended that the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) create one.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. OSTP did not implement the recommendation. Robert Tappan Morris, a Cornell graduate student, was indicted in 1989 and convicted in 1990, the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. He received probation, a fine, and 400 hours of community service.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Morris Worm",
"by": "FBI",
"url": "https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/morris-worm"
}
]
},
{
"id": "clipper-chip",
"title": "The Clipper Chip",
"doc": "Escrowed Encryption Standard (FIPS PUB 185)",
"agency": "NIST / NSA",
"year": 1994,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "A crypto chip with keys held for police",
"hook": "The federal standard behind the Clipper chip, which encrypted phone calls while government escrow agents kept a copy of each key.",
"url": "https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/fips/185/final",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 185, the Escrowed Encryption Standard (EES), issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on February 9, 1994, for the technology announced as the Clipper chip.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The White House announced the Clipper chip on April 16, 1993. The National Security Agency (NSA) developed its technical basis. Of 320 public comments on the proposed standard, nearly all from industry and individuals opposed it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The standard specified the classified SKIPJACK algorithm in tamper-resistant chips. Each chip sent a Law Enforcement Access Field (LEAF) carrying its encrypted session key. Each device’s unique key was split into 2 components held by separate escrow agents and released only with legal authorization.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Attorney General named NIST and the Treasury’s Automated Systems Division as escrow agents in February 1994. Matt Blaze of AT&T published a flaw in the LEAF that year. The program was defunct by 1996. NSA declassified SKIPJACK in June 1998, and the standard was withdrawn in October 2015."
},
{
"id": "project-camelot",
"title": "Project Camelot",
"doc": "Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson on the “Camelot” Matter (FRUS 1964–68, Vol. XXXI, Doc. 280)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · SORO (American University)",
"year": 1965,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "An Army study of how to predict revolts",
"hook": "Dean Rusk’s memo to President Johnson on Project Camelot, an Army study of insurgency whose approach to Chilean scholars caused a scandal.",
"url": "https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v31/d280",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum of June 30, 1965, from Secretary of State Dean Rusk to President Lyndon B. Johnson on Project Camelot, published in Foreign Relations of the United States.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Project Camelot was sponsored by the U.S. Army and carried out by the Special Operations Research Office (SORO), affiliated with American University. It was a large unclassified study, budgeted at more than $4 million, to analyze war, insurgency, and counterinsurgency, with case studies planned in Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.\n\n3. FINDINGS. SORO personnel had approached university scholars in Chile. On June 12, 1965, a Communist newspaper there reported the project under the headline “Yankees Study Invasion of Chile.” Ambassador Ralph Dungan called it seriously detrimental to U.S. interests. Rusk told Johnson that he and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara would review Army-sponsored research on political problems abroad.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Defense Department canceled Project Camelot on July 8, 1965. In August Johnson ordered procedures to ensure the propriety of government-sponsored social science research on foreign policy."
},
{
"id": "project-twinkle",
"title": "Project Twinkle",
"doc": "Project Twinkle: Final Report",
"agency": "USAF · Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories",
"year": 1951,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The Air Force hunts green fireballs",
"hook": "The Air Force’s final report on its camera watch for the “green fireballs” seen over New Mexico, whose findings were “essentially negative.”",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/project-twinkle-november-1951",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report of Project Twinkle, dated November 27, 1951, by project scientist Louis Elterman of the Geophysics Research Division, Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, on unexplained lights over the southwestern United States, including the “green fireballs” of northern New Mexico.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The fireballs had been reported since 1947 and concerned security agencies near Los Alamos. After an October 1949 conference at Los Alamos called for instrumental observations, the division set up the project. An observation post opened at Holloman Air Force Base in February 1950, and Land-Air, Inc., ran Askania tracking cameras under contract until March 1951.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The cameras produced no usable triangulations. Most sightings were attributed to aircraft, balloons, rockets, birds, small clouds, and meteors. Astronomer Fred Whipple found nothing unusual on meteor photographs from 35 nights with reported sightings.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report recommended no further spending. The project was left on standby, and in December 1951 the division recommended declassifying the report because nothing of a security nature had been found.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects",
"by": "Edward J. Ruppelt",
"url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17346"
}
]
},
{
"id": "cattle-mutilations",
"title": "The Cattle Mutilation File",
"doc": "Animal Mutilation (FBI file)",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1974,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The FBI and the cattle mutilations",
"hook": "FBI files on the 1970s cattle mutilations, from letters to senators to a 1979 inquiry on New Mexico Indian lands that found no culprits.",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/Animal%20Mutilation",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records, dated 1974 to 1980, on reported mutilations of cattle and other animals in western and midwestern states, released on the FBI’s online Vault.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The file opens with a September 10, 1974, letter from Director Clarence M. Kelley to Senator Carl T. Curtis of Nebraska, finding no apparent federal violation. The FBI lacked jurisdiction except on Indian lands.\n\n3. FINDINGS. In March 1979, after Senator Harrison Schmitt reported 15 mutilations in Indian country, the Justice Department asked the FBI to investigate. At an April 1979 conference in Albuquerque, chaired by Schmitt, theories ranged from satanic cults, predators, and pranksters to extraterrestrials and an unknown government agency. By June the FBI had identified no one responsible.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The district attorney’s office in Santa Fe received about $50,000 in federal funds to coordinate the inquiry. Its June 1980 report, “Operation Animal Mutilation,” by former FBI agent Kenneth M. Rommel, Jr., added nothing new, according to a July 1980 FBI memo."
},
{
"id": "einstein-file",
"title": "The Einstein File",
"doc": "Albert Einstein (FBI file)",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1932,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "The FBI’s file on Albert Einstein",
"hook": "The FBI’s file on Albert Einstein, opened in 1932 and grown to 1,427 pages by his death in 1955.",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/Albert%20Einstein",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file on the physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955), released in 14 parts on the FBI’s online Vault.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The FBI opened the file in December 1932. Its first entry was a lengthy memorandum from the Woman Patriot Corporation, an anti-communist organization, listing what it called Einstein’s subversive ideas. Director J. Edgar Hoover regarded Einstein as possibly a communist and an extreme radical.\n\n3. FINDINGS. According to the FBI, the file consists of several background investigations, an investigation of a close associate of Einstein’s thought to be a foreign intelligence agent, and material reflecting FBI concern about his politics in relation to atomic energy. From 1950 the FBI’s attention intensified, and Hoover sought information that could support deporting him.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. By Einstein’s death on April 18, 1955, the file ran to 1,427 pages. Fred Jerome sued for a less censored copy and drew on it for his 2002 book The Einstein File.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Why the FBI Kept a 1,400-Page File on Einstein",
"by": "Mitch Waldrop (National Geographic)",
"url": "https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/why-the-fbi-kept-a-1400-page-file-on-einstein"
}
]
},
{
"id": "alaska-reindeer",
"title": "Reindeer for Alaska",
"doc": "Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska, 1895 (S. Doc. 111, 54th Cong., 1st Sess.)",
"agency": "Bureau of Education (S. Jackson)",
"year": 1896,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Siberian reindeer and Sámi herders",
"hook": "A Bureau of Education report on its program to ship Siberian reindeer to Alaska and bring Sámi herders from Norway to train Native herders.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/reportonintroduc1895jack",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of Sheldon Jackson, general agent of education in Alaska, to the Commissioner of Education on the introduction of domestic reindeer into Alaska in 1895, printed as a Senate document on February 10, 1896.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Jackson proposed reindeer as a food supply for the Eskimo of arctic Alaska. In 1891 he bought 16 reindeer in Siberia as a trial. In 1892 he founded the Teller Reindeer Station at Port Clarence and landed 171 animals. Congress appropriated $6,000 in 1893 and $7,500 in each of 1894 and 1895.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Siberian herders proved unsatisfactory, and with $1,000 in private gifts Jackson sent William A. Kjellmann to Lapland. He returned in 1894 with 16 Sámi men, women, and children. Fawn losses fell from 22 percent in 1894 to about 6 percent in 1895.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Sámi herders were recruited again in 1898. By 1904 Alaska had 10,234 reindeer, most owned by missionary societies. The Reindeer Industry Act of 1937 authorized the government to acquire reindeer.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Frank Churchill’s 1905 Documentation of the Reindeer Service in Alaska",
"by": "National Park Service",
"url": "https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/aps-20-2-5.htm"
}
]
},
{
"id": "kudzu",
"title": "Kudzu, Not a Pest",
"doc": "Kudzu for Erosion Control in the Southeast (Farmers’ Bulletin No. 1840)",
"agency": "USDA · Soil Conservation Service",
"year": 1939,
"cat": "earth",
"blurb": "The USDA’s case for planting kudzu",
"hook": "A USDA bulletin urging Southern farmers to plant kudzu against erosion, with a section headed “Kudzu not a pest.”",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CAT87204579",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Farmers’ Bulletin No. 1840, “Kudzu for Erosion Control in the Southeast,” by R. Y. Bailey of the Soil Conservation Service, issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in December 1939.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Kudzu, a vine introduced from Japan, had been grown in the United States as a shade plant. The Soil Erosion Service, created in 1933 and later renamed, promoted it to stop erosion on worn-out Southern farmland, distributing about 85 million plants and offering farmers up to $8 per acre to plant it.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The bulletin called kudzu a “heavy-duty” plant for steep slopes, gullies, waterways, and highway and railway banks and noted vine growth of 50 feet in a season. A section titled “Kudzu not a pest” called fears of its spread unfounded.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The bulletin was revised in 1944. In 1953 USDA removed kudzu from its list of permissible cover plants, and in 1970 it listed kudzu as a common weed. Congress placed it on the Federal Noxious Weed list in 1997.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The History and Use of Kudzu in the Southeastern United States",
"by": "Alabama Cooperative Extension System",
"url": "https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/invasive-species/the-history-and-use-of-kudzu-in-the-southeastern-united-states/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "flying-jeeps",
"title": "The Flying Jeeps",
"doc": "VZ-7AP Aerial Platform Research, Final Report (SBD TR 60-37)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · Curtiss-Wright",
"year": 1960,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The Army’s search for a flying jeep",
"hook": "Curtiss-Wright’s final report on the VZ-7AP, a four-rotor “aerial jeep” built for the Army to fly low over rough ground.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0248716",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Final report SBD TR 60-37, issued in August 1960 by Curtiss-Wright’s Santa Barbara Division for the U.S. Army Transportation Research Command (TRECOM), on the VZ-7AP Aerial Platform, a four-rotor “aerial jeep.”\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1956–1957 the Army sought an airborne vehicle that could do a jeep’s work, flying low along the ground’s contours, and in July 1957 TRECOM signed research contracts. Chrysler’s VZ-6 and Piasecki’s VZ-8 Airgeep were built for the same requirement.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Wind-tunnel tests showed that ducted propellers cost more in drag, weight, and control than they gained in lift, so the vehicle used four open rotors and one turbine engine. Free flights began in September 1959. The platform reached 44 mph, hovered at up to about 25 feet, and carried a 57 mm recoilless rifle in a demonstration.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The report judged the concept feasible, but the Army found the flying jeep unsuitable for the battlefield and turned to helicopters; none entered production. One VZ-7 is in the U.S. Army Aviation Museum collection."
},
{
"id": "x-13-vertijet",
"title": "The X-13 Vertijet",
"doc": "Hovering and Transition Flight Tests of a 1/5-Scale Model of the Ryan X-13 VTOL Airplane (NACA RM SL58H29)",
"agency": "USAF · NACA Langley",
"year": 1958,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A jet that parked hanging by its nose",
"hook": "NACA tests of a model of the Ryan X-13, a jet that took off and landed upright, hanging by a nose hook from a wire on a trailer.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19710082837",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Research memorandum SL58H29, completed in August 1958 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at Langley for the Air Force, on flight tests of a 1/5-scale model of the Ryan X-13, a vertical take-off jet.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. After early Navy funding, the Air Force ordered two X-13 Vertijets in July 1954 to show that fighters could operate from small dispersed sites. The airplane took off and landed upright, hanging by a nose hook from a wire on a tilting trailer.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The model flew on hydrogen-peroxide rockets or compressed air, with a flywheel simulating the engine’s gyroscopic effects, which made it hard to hover without pitch and yaw dampers. Transitions to forward flight were easy. Take-offs and landings from a wire were also tested.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Pilot Peter Girard flew the full cycle of trailer launch, forward flight, and vertical landing on April 11, 1957. Funds ran short, and the X-13 last flew that September. Ryan gave the first X-13 to the Smithsonian in 1960.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Ryan X-13 Vertijet",
"by": "Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum",
"url": "https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/ryan-x-13-vertijet/nasm_A19600018000"
}
]
},
{
"id": "snow-cruiser",
"title": "The Antarctic Snow Cruiser",
"doc": "Snow Cruiser, 1939–1941, General Files of the U.S. Antarctic Service (Record Group 126)",
"agency": "U.S. Antarctic Service · Armour Research Foundation",
"year": 1939,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "A 55-foot polar bus with a plane on top",
"hook": "The U.S. Antarctic Service’s file on the Snow Cruiser, a 55-foot vehicle with an airplane on its roof that bogged down in the snow.",
"url": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6983131",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. File of correspondence, 1939–1941, in the National Archives records of the United States Antarctic Service (USAS), on the Snow Cruiser, an experimental polar vehicle lent to the Service by the Armour Institute of Technology’s Research Foundation.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Congress funded the USAS in 1939 for an expedition under Richard E. Byrd. Thomas C. Poulter, the foundation’s director, designed the cruiser, and Pullman built it in Chicago at no cost to the government. President Roosevelt’s order of November 25, 1939, placed it under Byrd’s command.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The cruiser was about 55 feet long, rode on 10-foot tires, had an electric motor at each wheel, and carried a small airplane on its roof. Unloaded at the Bay of Whales in January 1940, it sank into soft snow; one late effort took 15 hours to move 1.5 km.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. It served as stationary quarters at Little America III and was abandoned in 1941. The ice shelf carrying it later broke away, and it is presumed lost at sea.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "An Antarctic Snow Cruiser in Gomer, Ohio?",
"by": "Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center",
"url": "https://byrd.osu.edu/history-corner/antarctic-snow-cruiser-gomer-ohio"
}
]
},
{
"id": "spruce-goose",
"title": "The Spruce Goose",
"doc": "Resistance Tests of a 1/16-Size Model of the Hughes-Kaiser Flying Boat, NACA Model 183 (NACA WR L-683)",
"agency": "Commerce Department · NACA Langley",
"year": 1944,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The wooden flying boat that flew once",
"hook": "NACA towing-tank tests on a model hull of the Hughes-Kaiser flying boat, the 200-ton wooden cargo plane later called the Spruce Goose.",
"url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930093029",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum report of June 1944 (later Wartime Report L-683) by the Langley laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) for the Department of Commerce, on towing-tank tests of a model hull of the Hughes-Kaiser flying boat.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1942 shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser and Howard Hughes obtained an $18 million government contract for three flying boats to carry troops and cargo over the Atlantic, safe from U-boats. To spare metal, the design, the HK-1, was built of laminated birch.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Tests of a 1/16-size hull in early 1944 gave a maximum take-off weight of 375,000 to 400,000 pounds, depending on the propellers, and a take-off at 400,000 pounds in 69 seconds over 5,600 feet.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Kaiser withdrew in 1944, and the aircraft became the H-4 Hercules. A Senate committee investigated its cost, and Hughes testified in August 1947. On November 2, 1947, he flew it about a mile at 70 feet over Long Beach harbor. It is now displayed in McMinnville, Oregon.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Howard Hughes’ Flying Boat “Spruce Goose”: Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark",
"by": "ASME",
"url": "https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/ResourceFiles/AboutASME/Who%20We%20Are/Engineering%20History/Landmarks/219-Howard-Hughes-Flying-Boat-HK-1.pdf"
}
]
},
{
"id": "bigdog",
"title": "BigDog",
"doc": "BigDog, the Rough-Terrain Quadruped Robot",
"agency": "DARPA · Boston Dynamics",
"year": 2008,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "DARPA’s four-legged robot pack mule",
"hook": "Boston Dynamics’ status report on BigDog, a DARPA-funded four-legged robot built to carry soldiers’ loads over rough ground.",
"url": "https://doi.org/10.3182/20080706-5-KR-1001.01833",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Status report by Marc Raibert and colleagues at Boston Dynamics, presented at a 2008 international automatic-control congress, on BigDog, a four-legged robot developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. DARPA funded BigDog under its Biodynotics program for biologically inspired, dynamic robots, with the aim of a robotic pack mule for troops. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory supplied its stereo vision system.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A 15-horsepower engine drove a hydraulic pump powering 4 actuators in each leg. The robot weighed about 109 kg and kept its balance as it walked, trotted, and bounded. It climbed a 35-degree slope, walked in mud and snow, carried 154 kg on flat ground, and once hiked 10 km in 2.5 hours. It sounded like a motorcycle.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. DARPA and the Marine Corps followed with the larger Legged Squad Support System (LS3), meant to carry 400 pounds of a squad’s gear. After field tests in 2014, the Marines shelved it in 2015 as too loud."
},
{
"id": "grand-challenge",
"title": "The DARPA Grand Challenge",
"doc": "Grand Challenge 2004 Final Report",
"agency": "DARPA",
"year": 2004,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A robot car race nobody finished",
"hook": "DARPA’s report to Congress on its 2004 race for driverless vehicles, in which none got past mile 7.4 of a 142-mile desert course.",
"url": "https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/DARPA/15-F-0059_GC_2004_FINAL_RPT_7-30-2004.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of July 30, 2004, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to Congress on the first Grand Challenge, a prize competition for autonomous ground vehicles held on March 13, 2004.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Congress had set a goal that one-third of ground combat vehicles be unmanned by 2015 and authorized DARPA to award prizes. DARPA offered $1 million to the first vehicle to drive itself over a 142-mile desert course from Barstow, California, to Primm, Nevada, in under 10 hours.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Of 106 applicants, 15 vehicles qualified to start. None finished. The Red Team of Pittsburgh went farthest, 7.4 miles, before its vehicle caught on a berm. One vehicle flipped on its first turn, one tangled itself in wire, and several hit walls in the start area. No report was required without a prize, but DARPA submitted one.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. DARPA doubled the prize for a second race. On October 8, 2005, five vehicles completed a 132-mile course, and Stanford University’s Stanley won the $2 million."
},
{
"id": "tennis-for-two",
"title": "Tennis for Two",
"doc": "The Brookhaven TV-Tennis Game (W. A. Higinbotham)",
"agency": "Brookhaven National Laboratory (W. Higinbotham)",
"year": 1983,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "A 1958 tennis game on an oscilloscope",
"hook": "Physicist William Higinbotham’s account of the tennis game he built on an oscilloscope for Brookhaven’s 1958 visitors’ day.",
"url": "https://www.bnl.gov/about/docs/higinbotham_notes.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Undated account, written in 1983 by physicist William A. Higinbotham and kept by Brookhaven National Laboratory, of the electronic tennis game he built for the laboratory’s 1958 visitors’ days, now known as Tennis for Two.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Higinbotham headed Brookhaven’s Instrumentation Division and had designed radar displays during World War II. Most exhibits were static, and he wanted a game the public could play that would show science’s relevance to society.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A small analog computer drew a side view of a tennis court on an oscilloscope with a 5-inch screen. Each player held a box with a knob to aim and a button to hit the ball. Technician Bob Dvorak built it in about 3 weeks. Long lines formed to play.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. A 1959 version had a larger screen and settings for the gravity of the Moon and Jupiter. The game was never patented and drew notice only after a 1982 magazine article. Higinbotham later testified in a challenge to Magnavox’s video game patent.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The First Video Game? Before ‘Pong,’ There Was ‘Tennis for Two’",
"by": "Brookhaven National Laboratory",
"url": "https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php"
}
]
},
{
"id": "edvac",
"title": "The EDVAC Report",
"doc": "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC (Contract No. W-670-ORD-4926)",
"agency": "U.S. Army Ordnance · Moore School (J. von Neumann)",
"year": 1945,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "Von Neumann’s computer blueprint",
"hook": "John von Neumann’s 1945 draft, written under an Army contract, describing a computer that keeps its program in memory with its data.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/firstdraftofrepo00vonn",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Incomplete draft by John von Neumann, dated June 30, 1945, and issued by the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering under Army Ordnance contract W-670-ORD-4926, setting out the logical design of the EDVAC computer.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The same contract had funded the ENIAC for the Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL). In late 1944 the Army agreed that the Moore School should design a smaller, more flexible successor. Von Neumann joined the group, which included ENIAC designers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The draft divided the machine into arithmetic, control, memory, input, and output, and held instructions in the same memory as numbers. It described circuit elements by analogy with neurons and favored binary arithmetic and delay-line memory.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Herman Goldstine circulated the draft under von Neumann’s name alone, angering Eckert and Mauchly; a court later ruled it a public disclosure that made the EDVAC patent unenforceable. The EDVAC reached BRL in 1949 and began limited operation in 1951."
},
{
"id": "aspen-movie-map",
"title": "The Aspen Movie Map",
"doc": "Movie-Maps: An Application of the Optical Videodisc to Computer Graphics",
"agency": "DARPA · MIT Architecture Machine Group",
"year": 1980,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "Driving through Aspen on videodisc",
"hook": "A DARPA-funded MIT paper on the Movie-Map, which let a user drive the streets of Aspen, Colorado, on videodisc, filmed every 10 feet.",
"url": "https://doi.org/10.1145/800250.807465",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper by Andrew Lippman of the Architecture Machine Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), presented at the 1980 SIGGRAPH conference, on the Movie-Map, an interactive videodisc system for simulated travel through a town.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Cybernetics Technology Division of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded the work under a contract that ran from October 1977 to September 1980. Nicholas Negroponte was principal investigator. The town filmed was Aspen, Colorado.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Four cameras aimed at 90-degree intervals took one frame every 10 feet along each street, and every turn at every intersection was filmed. Two videodisc players let the user choose route, speed, and view on a touch screen and switch between fall and winter. Data such as a restaurant’s menu was stored behind building facades and reached by driving to them.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The paper described a smoother version then under development. The project is now cited as a forerunner of Google Street View.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Aspen Movie Map Beat Google Street View by 34 Years",
"by": "MIT Media Lab",
"url": "https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/the-aspen-movie-map-beat-google-street-view-by-34-years/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "simnet",
"title": "SIMNET",
"doc": "SIMNET: An Insider’s Perspective (IDA Document D-1661)",
"agency": "DARPA · IDA (L. N. Cosby)",
"year": 1995,
"cat": "computing",
"blurb": "DARPA’s networked battle simulators",
"hook": "An insider’s history of SIMNET, DARPA’s network of low-cost tank and helicopter simulators that put crews in a shared virtual battlefield.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA294786.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) Document D-1661, written by L. Neale Cosby in March 1995 for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), then named ARPA, as an insider’s history of Simulator Networking (SIMNET).\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Air Force Captain Jack A. Thorpe sketched networked combat training in a 1978 paper. Assigned to DARPA in 1981, he began SIMNET in 1983 with Craig Fields. The Army committed to the program in January 1985.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The goal was networked simulators costing 100 times less than existing ones, where crews could fight together in a shared synthetic environment. Small firms such as Bolt Beranek and Newman built image generators 30 to 50 times cheaper than standard ones. DARPA and the Army linked 260 simulators at 11 sites in the United States and Europe. Established simulator makers opposed it.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. DARPA and the Army spent about $300 million over 10 years. The Army took over the program in 1990, renamed the technology Distributed Interactive Simulation, and began procurement in 1992."
},
{
"id": "ithacus",
"title": "Project Ithacus",
"doc": "Ithacus: A New Concept of Inter-Continental Ballistic Transport (AIAA Paper 64-280)",
"agency": "Douglas Aircraft (P. Bono, G. C. Goldbaum)",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "space",
"blurb": "A rocket to fly 1,200 Marines anywhere",
"hook": "A Douglas Aircraft study of a reusable rocket that would land 1,200 troops anywhere on Earth within 45 minutes.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0605208",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Paper by Philip Bono and George C. Goldbaum of Douglas Aircraft’s Missile and Space Systems Division, presented as AIAA Paper 64-280 at the first annual meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 1964, on Ithacus, a rocket troop transport.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Douglas sponsored the study itself. Ithacus was a version of Bono’s ROMBUS, a proposed reusable single-stage booster that would land on four legs. The paper noted that airlifts such as Operation Big Lift, which flew 15,700 troops to Europe in October 1963, needed runways an enemy could destroy.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The 14-million-pound vehicle would carry a 1,200-man Marine Corps battalion or 132 tons of equipment at an average 17,000 mph to any point on Earth within 45 minutes. Troops would ride on couches on 6 decks, held to 3 g, and the vehicle would land vertically. The authors listed engine noise, estimated at 181 decibels, as a major unresolved problem.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Ithacus remained a study and was not built."
},
{
"id": "rand-delphi",
"title": "The Delphi Forecast",
"doc": "Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study (P-2982)",
"agency": "RAND (T. J. Gordon, O. Helmer)",
"year": 1964,
"cat": "doomsday",
"blurb": "RAND’s experts forecast the next 50 years",
"hook": "A RAND paper on a Delphi survey in which 82 experts forecast science, war, and society up to 50 years ahead.",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P2982.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. September 1964 paper (P-2982) by T. J. Gordon, a consultant to the RAND Corporation, and Olaf Helmer of RAND, reporting an experiment in long-range forecasting by the Delphi technique.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Over about 12 months, 6 expert panels, on scientific breakthroughs, population growth, automation, space progress, war and its prevention, and future weapon systems, each answered 4 questionnaires spaced about 2 months apart. A summary of each round was fed back before the next. Of about 150 people approached, 82 responded, 40 of them unconnected with RAND.\n\n3. FINDINGS. For 2000 the panels foresaw a world population of about 5.1 billion, controlled thermonuclear power, large-scale ocean farming, men on Mars, and commercial global ballistic transport. For 2100 they listed household robots, chemical control of aging, and two-way communication with extraterrestrial beings as possibilities. The authors made no claim for the reliability of the predictions.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. RAND credits the study, the first large-scale Delphi study, with leading to the method’s widespread adoption.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Statement About Theodore ‘Ted’ Gordon",
"by": "RAND",
"url": "https://www.rand.org/news/press/2024/02/28.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "first-earth-battalion",
"title": "The First Earth Battalion",
"doc": "The First Earth Battalion (Task Force Delta concept paper)",
"agency": "U.S. Army Task Force Delta (J. Channon)",
"year": 1979,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "An Army plan for “warrior monks”",
"hook": "An Army officer’s concept paper for a battalion of “warrior monks” trained in meditation, martial arts, and New Age techniques.",
"url": "https://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_channon_0200.htm",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Concept paper by Lieutenant Colonel James B. Channon, prepared for the Army’s Task Force Delta and self-published in 1979, proposing the First Earth Battalion, a unit of “warrior monks.”\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Channon, who had served two tours in Vietnam, returned in 1979 from a 2-year research trip and presented the manual to Pentagon leaders. Colonel D. M. Malone signed its foreword for Task Force Delta, whose study asked how the Army could manage change; a disclaimer said it did not reflect Army policy.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The paper asked soldiers to give their primary allegiance to the planet and to train in martial arts, yoga, and meditation. It proposed divining tools in the rucksack, an isolation tank for command decisions, discordant rock played at the enemy, and troops parachuting in to stand between opposing armies while a satellite broadcast the scene.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. No such unit was formed. Jon Ronson’s 2004 book The Men Who Stare at Goats described the manual. Channon died in Hawaii in September 2017.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Profound military man from Hawi dies: Jim Channon’s ideas depicted in book, film",
"by": "Hawaii Tribune-Herald",
"url": "https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/?p=89041"
}
]
},
{
"id": "dolphin-house",
"title": "The Dolphin House",
"doc": "The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence",
"agency": "Communication Research Institute (J. C. Lilly)",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "A woman and a dolphin in a flooded house",
"hook": "John Lilly’s 1967 book on his dolphin lab, where Margaret Howe lived in a flooded room with a dolphin to teach him English.",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/mindofdolphin0000john",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Book by neurophysiologist John C. Lilly, published by Doubleday in 1967, reporting the dolphin research of his Communication Research Institute, including a live-in experiment to teach a dolphin English.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The institute’s Dolphin Point Laboratory on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, had backing from NASA and other government agencies. Margaret C. Howe, a volunteer without scientific training, joined the staff on February 7, 1964. After a 7-day trial with another dolphin in March 1965, she moved into a flooded upper room with Peter, a young male bottlenose dolphin, on June 15, 1965, and stayed until September 1.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The book prints Howe’s account of the 2½ months and transcripts of her lessons. Peter’s target words included names, greetings such as “hello,” and objects such as a ball. Howe later said she manually relieved Peter’s sexual urges so the lessons could continue.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Funding was cut and the St. Thomas laboratory closed. Peter was moved to Lilly’s Miami laboratory and died there within weeks.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong",
"by": "Christopher Riley, The Guardian",
"url": "https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me"
}
]
},
{
"id": "pascal-b",
"title": "The Pascal-B Manhole Cover",
"doc": "Learning to Contain Underground Nuclear Explosions (essay, June 2002)",
"agency": "Los Alamos (R. R. Brownlee)",
"year": 1957,
"cat": "nuclear",
"blurb": "A steel cap blown off a nuclear shaft",
"hook": "A Los Alamos physicist’s account of a 1957 test that blew a steel cap off its shaft at a calculated six times escape velocity.",
"url": "https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Brownlee.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Essay written in June 2002 by Robert R. Brownlee of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) on his calculations for Pascal-B, a 1957 underground safety test, and the steel cap it blew off its shaft.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. In 1956 Alvin Graves of the LASL Test Division asked Brownlee whether underground tests could limit fallout. With deputy division leader Bill Ogle he planned shots in a pipe, first open at the top, then capped, then plugged. Pascal-B was fired on August 27, 1957, in a 500-foot shaft on the Nevada Test Site during Operation Plumbbob, yielding 0.3 kilotons.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Brownlee calculated that the shock would reach the 4-inch-thick welded cap in 31 milliseconds and force it off. Pressed by Ogle for its speed, he said six times Earth’s escape velocity, a figure he considered meaningless. A high-speed camera caught the cap in one frame only, so no speed was measured.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Plugs and tamping were found to reduce releases, and later underground tests were almost all contained."
},
{
"id": "halt-memo",
"title": "The Halt Memo",
"doc": "Unexplained Lights (memorandum, Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt to RAF/CC)",
"agency": "USAF · RAF Bentwaters (C. Halt)",
"year": 1981,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The Air Force’s Rendlesham Forest memo",
"hook": "A U.S. Air Force deputy base commander’s memo reporting a glowing object and moving lights in an English forest in December 1980.",
"url": "https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10342055",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum of January 13, 1981, headed “Unexplained Lights,” from Lt. Col. Charles I. Halt, deputy commander of the U.S. Air Force bases at RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge, England, to the British base commander.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The memo went on to the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Written from memory, it dates the sightings December 27 and 29, 1980; contemporaneous records place them a day earlier.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Security police reported a glowing, metallic, triangular object 2 to 3 meters across in Rendlesham Forest, which moved off through the trees. Three depressions there gave radiation readings of up to 0.1 milliroentgens. Halt and others later watched a pulsing red light and star-like objects, one of which “beamed down a stream of light.”\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The MoD made only a cursory inquiry and found no threat to national security. The Air Force released the memo in June 1983, and press coverage made the case “Britain’s Roswell.” Writer Ian Ridpath identified the flashing light as the Orford Ness lighthouse.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "Rendlesham Forest UFOs",
"by": "David Clarke",
"url": "https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/rendlesham-forest-ufos/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "battle-of-los-angeles",
"title": "The Battle of Los Angeles",
"doc": "Memorandum for the President (OCS 21347-86)",
"agency": "War Department (G. C. Marshall)",
"year": 1942,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Anti-aircraft fire over a blacked-out L.A.",
"hook": "General Marshall’s memo to Roosevelt on the February 1942 night when Army guns fired 1,430 rounds at unidentified aircraft over Los Angeles.",
"url": "https://library.marshallfoundation.org/Portal/Default/en-US/RecordView/Index/47437",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Secret memorandum of February 26, 1942, from Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the previous morning’s air alarm over Los Angeles.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. On February 25, two days after a Japanese submarine shelled a California oil field, radar tracked an unknown target off the coast. A blackout was ordered, and antiaircraft guns opened fire.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Unidentified airplanes were probably over the city; the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade fired 1,430 rounds at them between 3:12 and 4:15 a.m. As many as 15 may have flown, at speeds from “very slow” to 200 mph. No bombs fell; none were shot down. The memo suggested enemy agents flying commercial aircraft to spread alarm.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Navy Secretary called it a false alarm. Japan later stated it had sent no planes, and the Army Air Forces’ official history suggested weather balloons. The memo was declassified in 1974. UFO writers cited the night, and a retouched newspaper photograph, as evidence of alien craft.",
"more": [
{
"type": "book",
"title": "The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume I: Plans and Early Operations",
"by": "Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate (eds.)",
"url": "https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/I/AAF-I-8.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "operation-highjump",
"title": "Operation Highjump",
"doc": "Report of Antarctic Developments Project, 1947 (Operation HIGHJUMP) (AD 88221)",
"agency": "U.S. Navy · Task Force 68 (R. H. Cruzen)",
"year": 1947,
"cat": "machines",
"blurb": "The Navy’s 4,700-man Antarctic expedition",
"hook": "The Navy’s report on Operation Highjump, which sent 13 ships and more than 4,700 men to Antarctica in 1946–47 to map it from the air.",
"url": "https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/tr/AD0088221/index.html",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Report of June 10, 1947, from Rear Adm. Richard H. Cruzen, commander of Task Force 68, on the Navy’s Antarctic Developments Project, code-named Operation HIGHJUMP.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Navy set up the project in August 1946, with Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd as officer in charge. Its 13 ships and more than 4,700 men were to test equipment in the cold, extend U.S. sovereignty over as much of Antarctica as practicable, and develop air bases on ice.\n\n3. FINDINGS. Operations began on December 2, 1946. Heavy pack ice forced an early withdrawal from Little America, and a planned airstrip was never built. About 1,500,000 square miles were sighted, 700,000 of them unexplored. Seven men died, 3 in a seaplane crash. The report recommended yearly Antarctic operations.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Byrd recommended that the next large expedition be a joint Army–Navy project. The Confidential report was later declassified. Later writers claimed it was sent against a secret Nazi base; a 2007 study in Polar Record rejected the claim."
},
{
"id": "cash-landrum",
"title": "The Cash-Landrum Inquiry",
"doc": "UFO Incident (memorandum for division chief, Department of the Army Inspector General)",
"agency": "U.S. Army · Inspector General (G. C. Sarran)",
"year": 1982,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "The Army looks for 23 mystery helicopters",
"hook": "The Army inspector general’s inquiry into whether military helicopters escorted a UFO that three Texans said burned them in December 1980.",
"url": "https://app.box.com/s/w8uvmyulh1s4lbent7oh",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Memorandum of 1982 by Lt. Col. George C. Sarran of the Army Inspector General’s office on whether Army helicopters took part in a reported unidentified flying object (UFO) incident in Texas on December 29, 1980.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and Landrum’s grandson reported a fiery object over the road, about 23 helicopters, some of them CH-47 Chinooks, and later illness. The Air Force referred the case to the Army.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The inquiry covered only Army, National Guard, and Army Reserve helicopters, not the UFO or the injuries. Army commands, Guard and Reserve units near Houston, and local police knew of no such flights. Sarran found the witnesses credible, including a policeman who saw twin-rotor helicopters that night, but found no evidence of Army involvement.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. The Army released parts of the file in August 1982, withholding Sarran’s opinions. Cash and Landrum sued the government for $20 million; a federal judge dismissed the suit in August 1986. The case became a staple of UFO literature."
},
{
"id": "maury-island",
"title": "The Maury Island Incident",
"doc": "UFO, Part 3 (FBI file 62-83894): Seattle teletypes on flying discs at Tacoma, August 1947",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1947,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Saucer debris, a fatal crash, an FBI probe",
"hook": "FBI teletypes on flying-disc fragments that proved to be slag, and the bomber crash that killed the two officers carrying them.",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO/UFO%20Part%2003/view",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. August 1947 teletypes from the Seattle office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in Part 3 of the FBI’s UFO file, on flying-disc fragments reportedly found on Maury Island, Washington.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. On July 31, two Tacoma men, named in later accounts as Harold Dahl and Fred Crisman, showed the fragments to pilot Kenneth Arnold and to Army Air Forces intelligence officers Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank Brown, who took samples.\n\n3. FINDINGS. In signed statements the two men said the material was rock from a gravel pit, sent to an editor who offered to pay for a flying-disc story. The officers’ B-25 crashed near Kelso on August 1 when an exhaust fire burned off a wing, killing both; investigators found no sabotage. The Seattle office reported that the story was possibly started to promote the sale of slag.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Edward Ruppelt, later head of Project Blue Book, called it a hoax in 1956. Dahl’s story of a warning from a man in a dark suit fed early “men in black” lore.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "FBI’s real-life “X-Files” documents strange connection between UFOs and the JFK assassination",
"by": "MuckRock",
"url": "https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/dec/05/fbis-real-x-files-documents-strange-connection-bet/"
}
]
},
{
"id": "plum-island",
"title": "Plum Island",
"doc": "High-Containment Biosafety Laboratories: DHS Lacks Evidence to Conclude That Foot-and-Mouth Disease Research Can Be Done Safely on the U.S. Mainland (GAO-08-821T)",
"agency": "GAO",
"year": 2008,
"cat": "animals",
"blurb": "Should foot-and-mouth leave its island?",
"hook": "The GAO’s testimony that Homeland Security had no evidence that foot-and-mouth disease research could move safely off Plum Island.",
"url": "https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-08-821t",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Testimony (GAO-08-821T) given to Congress on May 22, 2008, by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on a plan to move foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) research off Plum Island, New York.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center, off Long Island, was the only U.S. facility studying high-consequence foreign livestock diseases. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which took it over in 2003, planned a replacement, possibly on the mainland. By law, live FMD virus could be used only on a coastal island unless the Secretary of Agriculture decided otherwise.\n\n3. FINDINGS. DHS had neither conducted nor commissioned a study of whether FMD work could be done safely on the mainland. In September 1978 the virus escaped containment and infected animals elsewhere on the island, but none was found beyond it. GAO also listed 6 internal releases from 1971 to 2004.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. DHS chose Manhattan, Kansas, in 2009, and the new facility opened in May 2023. A 2004 book, Lab 257, tied the island to Lyme disease, a link reviewers rejected."
},
{
"id": "navy-ufo-patent",
"title": "The Navy’s “UFO Patent”",
"doc": "Craft Using an Inertial Mass Reduction Device (U.S. Patent 10,144,532 B2)",
"agency": "U.S. Navy · NAWCAD (S. C. Pais)",
"year": 2018,
"cat": "fringe",
"blurb": "A Navy patent to cancel a craft’s inertia",
"hook": "A Navy patent for a craft whose vibrating, electrically charged hull would polarize the vacuum around it and shed its inertial mass.",
"url": "https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/10144532",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. U.S. Patent 10,144,532, granted December 4, 2018, and assigned to the Navy, for a “craft using an inertial mass reduction device” invented by Salvatore Cezar Pais.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. Pais, an aerospace engineer at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), Patuxent River, Maryland, applied in April 2016. The examiner rejected the claims as inoperable; the patent was granted after James Sheehy, the Naval Aviation Enterprise’s chief technology officer, wrote that China was investing in the area.\n\n3. FINDINGS. A resonant cavity filled with a noble gas such as xenon would wrap the craft. Microwave emitters would make its charged outer wall vibrate and spin in an accelerated mode, polarizing the local vacuum and reducing the craft’s inertial mass. The patent envisioned a hybrid aerospace-undersea craft and reports no experimental results.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. NAWCAD spent $508,000 from October 2016 to September 2019 testing Pais’s related field generator and stated that the “Pais Effect” could not be proven. No craft was built, and the patent lapsed in 2023 for unpaid fees.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "The Navy Finally Speaks Up About Its Bizarre “UFO Patent” Experiments",
"by": "The War Zone",
"url": "https://www.twz.com/39012/the-navy-finally-speaks-up-about-its-bizarre-ufo-patent-experiments"
}
]
},
{
"id": "fbi-hitler-file",
"title": "The FBI Hitler File",
"doc": "Adolf Hitler (FBI file, Parts 1–4)",
"agency": "FBI",
"year": 1945,
"cat": "espionage",
"blurb": "Tips that Hitler had fled to Argentina",
"hook": "The FBI’s file on Hitler, mostly tips from 1945 to 1947 that he had survived the war, including a landing by submarine in Argentina.",
"url": "https://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file on Adolf Hitler, about 740 pages dated 1933 to 1947, mostly on reports that he had survived World War II.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. After Germany’s surrender, Allied forces did not immediately find evidence of Hitler’s death, and the FBI looked into some of the rumors of his escape. The file also covers a 1933 threat against his life.\n\n3. FINDINGS. An August 14, 1945, memorandum from the Los Angeles office relayed an informant’s claim that Hitler had landed by submarine in Argentina about 2 and a half weeks after Berlin fell and was hiding on a ranch near the Andes, aided by 6 Argentine officials. The informant said he had been paid $15,000. Other tips came from the legal attaché in Buenos Aires and from letter writers, one reporting Hitler on a New York subway.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Agents could not find the informant again or verify his claims. Hitler had died in Berlin in April 1945. Online posts in the 2010s misread the file as proof of an escape.",
"more": [
{
"type": "article",
"title": "FBI Files Revealed: Informants Claimed Adolf Hitler Fled To Argentina At End of WW2",
"by": "Lead Stories",
"url": "https://leadstories.com/2016/01/fbi-hitler-files.html"
}
]
},
{
"id": "echo-flight",
"title": "The Echo Flight Shutdown",
"doc": "History of the 341st Strategic Missile Wing and 341st Combat Support Group, January–March 1967 (with later volumes, excerpts)",
"agency": "USAF · 341st Strategic Missile Wing",
"year": 1967,
"cat": "paranormal",
"blurb": "Ten nuclear missiles drop off alert at once",
"hook": "Air Force unit histories on the March 1967 morning when all 10 Minuteman missiles of Echo Flight dropped off alert within seconds.",
"url": "https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/ufos/malmstromufo.pdf",
"status": "verified",
"art": true,
"about": "1. SUMMARY. Excerpts from 1967 and 1968 histories of the 341st Strategic Missile Wing, Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, released in 2001 under the Freedom of Information Act, on the shutdown of Echo Flight’s 10 Minuteman missiles.\n\n2. BACKGROUND. At 0845 on March 16, 1967, all 10 launch facilities in Echo Flight lost strategic alert nearly simultaneously. The Strategic Air Command called in the Ogden Air Materiel Area, which sent engineers with Boeing and Autonetics staff.\n\n3. FINDINGS. The missiles returned to alert without parts being replaced. Investigators ruled out weather and found no cause on site. The history states that rumors of UFOs near Echo Flight “were disproven.” Tests at Boeing showed that a single noise pulse on a logic coupler could shut the system down; the best candidate source was a transformer failure on a local power line.\n\n4. DISPOSITION. Electromagnetic pulse tests followed at Malmstrom into 1968. From 1996, former launch officer Robert Salas tied the shutdowns to UFO sightings, and the case became a staple of UFO writing."
}
]