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cloudy atmos re would disccuraze astronomy, hence space travel. whe remaininyv Solar planets are such poor prospects that they can be jenored., In the next few paragraphs, we s all. speak of Mars. It should be.understood that most of the remarks apply equally well to Venus. Varicus neople have suggested that an aivanced race may have been vietcine Marth fron Mars or Venus at intervals from decades to eons. tat, of objects Im the sky seer to have been handed jown throu the generations. If this were true, a race of such knowledge ee power would have est#blished some form of direct sontact. They could nie thet Earth's inhabitants would be help- jess to.do interplanetary harm. If afraid of carrying diseases home, they would at iets Urry to communicate. it is hard: to balieave that any technically accomplished race would some here, ‘ aunt its ability in mystcricus ways and then simply go away. this Weaer, Lones td rractice of space travel implies anc: engineering and science, weapons and ways of thinking. is not olsusible (as many fiction writers do) to mtx space 1s with hbroadswords. ‘urthermore, a race which had enouch tlative to exnlore amo: the planets would hardly »be too id to follow throuzh when the job was accomnlished. other hypothesis needs to > discussed ve 2. Sheu the tisans Ir ve kept a lonce-term routine watch on Earth and have mn alarmed 2y the sight of our A-dsomb skots as evidance that are warlitke and on the threshold of space travel. (Venus is e@liminat here decause her cloudy atmosphere would make ich a survey impractical). The first flying objects were j2ehoed iteeehe opringor 1947, after a total Satemie bomb ex-= olcosions, i.e., Alamozgordo, Hiroshima, Narasaki Crossroads A nd Crossroads 3. UL these, the first two were in positions: to be seen fron Mars, the third was very doubtful (at the edre of ‘arth's disc in dayltgeht) and the last two were on the wrong yige of. Fartn, it igs: likely that Martian astronomers, with their thin atmosphere sould bulld telescopes big enough to see \-honb explosicns on “arth, even thourh we were 165 and 15323 million mixes away, respectively, on the Alamovordo and Hiro- Shima dates. The weakest point in the hypothests is that a continual, defensive wateh of Barth for lone periods of time (perhaps thousands of years) would be dull sport and no race trat even remotely resembled Man would undertake it. We haven't even considered the ites for Venus or Mars, for example. he sum and substance of this discussion is that if Martians are now visiting us without -contact, it can be assumed that they Feave just recently succeeded in space travel and that their civilization would be practically abreast o” ours. Declassification Authority: NND 57565