In 1947, something crashed in the New Mexico desert, just outside Roswell New Mexico. Many said it was an extraterrestrial craft carrying the bodies of several alien creatures. Whether or not you believe the story, this event kicked off the modern UFO movement as we know it today. What if this happened 100 years earlier? How would wild west frontiersmen deal with first contact? We explore this question in today’s episode. We look at the inevitable technological gap between the two civilizations, and if a a small group of aliens could squash a human uprising. We also explain prosthetic hand cannons, the strange properties of gold, Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines, and the importance of cooperation in creating an interstellar civilization.