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explanation. Project Grudge made no conclusions as to the origin of UFO sightings but did acknowledge that visitations by an advanced race of extraterrestrial life forms visiting our planet was a possible explanation. In the opinion of many UFO researchers, Project Grudge was more of a UFO debunking operation than a true investigative body. In the late 1940s, much to the dismay of government officials, UFO sightings continued unabated with a wave of day-time sightings by military and commercial airline pilots. To pacify the public craving for "official inquiry" into the UFO phenomenon, the government revamped its investigative team into a new undertaking called "Project Bluebook." Project Bluebook was commanded by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and was supposed to be a serious attempt at analyzing the UFO phenomenon. Orders were given to every Air Force group in the world to report local sightings of UFOs. Project Bluebook ended in 1969 after examining over 12,000 reports of UFO sightings worldwide. Investigators of Project Bluebook explained away more than 94 percent of the sightings as natural or man-made phenomena. Weather balloons, aircraft, the planet Venus, plasma discharges, and swamp gas are among the many explanations. However, more than 700 of the sightings investigated by Project Bluebook were never explained and officially categorized as unidentified flying objects. Civilian UFO researchers have arrived at similar numbers.” Before they were released to the public in 1969, the files of Project Blue book were "cleaned up," with the more sensitive material removed and sent to other agencies. Thus, in the minds of private researchers they are of limited value in appre- hending the true nature of the UFO phenomenon. In the 1950s public polls revealed that more than 90 percent of the population had heard of flying saucers. While the government remained officially silent on the 700 remaining UFO reports, the public was inundated by opinions in the popular press. UFO magazines, books, and movies promoted the notion that the remaining sightings represented either a secret technology of the United States or the Soviet Union, mass hal- lucinations, or visitors from another planet. In the ensuing decades, sightings of metallic craft accelerated into the tens of thousands. The notion of unidentified flying objects and highly advanced extraterrestrial visitors became a media and social phenomenon. The media frenzy was characterized by hundreds of UFO publications and grade-B movies in the 1950s and 1960s. The TV series Star Trek has captivated the world and popularized the notion of alien beings and interstellar travel. Movies such as Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E. T, and most recently Independence Day and First Contact, have bolstered the notion of alien beings on distant planets and their Earthly visitation in fantastic ships as a reality in the minds of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. As of this writing, three of the top five movies in history are based on the theme of extraterrestrials and UFOs. Every month there are dozens of television programs based aoe a TTA at -o 38 THE MEDIA INVASION on the UFO theme.