Posthuman Blues

The Truth About Roswell

"The scientists were worried about things like cosmic rays, solar radiation, and meteors. They also wanted to see how much of a shield a pilot would need from a nuclear power plant -- they were already thinking about atomic rockets and so forth.

"So they started sending volunteers up in high altitude balloons, in gondolas with radioactive isotopes aboard. The gondolas themselves were really balloon-launched gliders, shaped like flying wings. They were light weight, but made of high-tech plastics developed by the Nazis during the war. The idea was, when it was time to bring the volunteers back down, the gondola would be released and guided down by remote control. It could glide for hundreds of miles and land anywhere in the desert.

"But the part I didn't like -- and the reason this has all been kept secret since 1947 -- was where they were finding their volunteers. Of course they didn't want to risk an expensive and highly trained test pilot. There was hardly any training necessary. And of course, they wanted people with small bodies that didn't weigh much -- and most important, people who would never be missed."

Though the source is anonymous (or nonexistent) and the telling needlessly melodramatic, I find the premise worryingly plausible.