Documents / Report
This is the final report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, conducted by the University of Colorado under Air Force contract F44620-67-C-0035, with Edward U. Condon as scientific director and Daniel S. Gillmor as editor. It was submitted to the National Academy of Sciences on 15 November 1968 for review. The report includes field studies, photographic and radar analyses, case studies, historical chapters and appendices such as the Robertson Panel report and the Twining letter.
the growth of technology in such a '.... ay that by the tim2 a society ,,,auld be technically capable of inter~~ellar space travel, it would have reached a level of intelligence at which it Lad not the slightest interest in interstellar travel. We must not assume that we are cap- able of imagining now the scope and extent of future technological development of our own or any other civilizatirm, and so we must guard against asswni:~g that we have any capaci ty to imagine what a more advanced society l,/ou1(\ regard as intelligent conduct. In addition to the great Jistancc5 involved, and the difficulties ,,"hich they present to inteTste1L\r space travel, there is still another problem: If ''ie assume that civilizations annihilate themselves in such a hay that Weir effective intelligent life span is less than, say, 100,000 years, then such a short time span also works against the likelihood of sucCf~ssful interstellar communication. The different civilizations would probably reach the culmination of thelr develop- ment at different epochs in cosmic history. Moreove£, according to present views, stars are being famed constClrltly by the condensation of interstellar dust and gases. They exist for pcrh'lps 10 billion year5, of which a civ~lization lasting 100,000 years is only 1/100,000 of the life span of the star. It follows that ther·c is an extremely small likelihood tRat two nearby civilizations would be in a state of hibh development at the same epuch. Astronomers no\~ generally agrce' that a fairly large numher of all main-sequence 5 tars are probab ly accompanied by pI anets at the right Jistance from the.:.r Sun to provide for habitable conditions for life as we 1ibility of Interstellar communica- tion, bu', it must be rcmcrnl)cn'd t:lat even thj~; "iew is entirely sprculat,on: I,e an' qu~te Uli,lble direc.t', tv oh~cr'/(! any pla.ncts a~so dated with stars o~11cr thall the Sun. In vlew n·· the fOrf'f:o;ng, IVl' cOllsider that it .:S safe to assume that no ILE ol!t:ilde of our ',alar system has any possilJi lity of visi~.ing 39
Report, from the classic collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 1497 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.