I worked for The Wellcome Trust (during the Martian Rock time) preparing their CD-Rom slides.  I then found I had a spontaneous talent for designing and making clothes out of neoprene and latext ('96-'98). This went well for two years, my company was funded by the Prince of Wales Business Trust and was featured in the best fetish magazine and was selling at the best fetish club (TG).  To my knowledge I was the first designer to use neoprene in clothes manufacture.  Neoprene and latex are what the balloon wreckage were said to be made from in the Roswell wreckage in the version of the story when it is not an alien craft.  Neoprene is thicker than latex which is a more flexible, thinner substance.  Latex is from tree sap whereas Neoprene is a synthetic manufactured product.  When people tell you that latex will discolour to black from beige in the sun, I find this an extremely unlikely scenario. Imagine all those clubbers in Ibiza wearing their latest House of Harlot designs and then going back to complain that in a few days their natural coloured beige designer latex top had discoloured to black!  It just doesn't happen. What does happen is that the latex will deteriorate if subjected to water for a length of time - in rain storms.  My rubberwear is still in good condition from 1998.  If the balloon debris from say a Mogul Project was found in the desert I would guess that would be made out of silk, as parachutes were.  If any latex was used and exposed to the elements while it was at full stretch, it would, like any domestic balloon shrivel up and decompose, losing it's shine and flexibility to become eventually a sticky, puckered nonelastic.

Neoprene is much thicker than latex and stretches very little.  It is a pure black shiny surface, usually in thicknesses which are suitable for floor coverings and tubing products anything from 1.5mm to 6mm.  The types I have used have been solid.  Wetsuits are apparently made of a foam variety.  It seems more likely to be used in adhesives than balloons.

Dupont-Dow.com states "Neoprene polychloroprene is an extremely versatile synthetic rubber with 70 years of proven performance in a broad industry spectrum. It was originally developed as an oil-resistant substitute for natural rubber. Neoprene is noted for a unique combination of properties, which has led to its use in thousands of applications in diverse environments.

A Balanced Combination of Properties:

Resists degradation from sun, ozone and weather

Performs well in contact with oils and many chemicals

Remains useful over a wide temperature range

Displays outstanding physical toughness

Resists burning inherently better than exclusively hydrocarbon rubbers

Outstanding resistance to damage caused by flexing and twisting"

A search of the Dupont-Dwo site for neoprene does not bring any results related to balloons.

"In 1931, DuPont started to manufacture neoprene, a synthetic rubber created by Carothers' lab. The research team then turned their efforts towards a synthetic fiber that could replace silk. Japan was the United States' main source of silk, and trade relations between the two countries were breaking apart. By 1934, Wallace Carothers had made significant steps toward creating a synthetic silk by combining the chemicals amine, hexamethylene diamine  and adipic acid to create a new fiber formed by the polymerizing process and known as a condensation reaction. In a condensation reaction, individual molecules join with water as a byproduct. Wallace Carothers refined the process (since the water produced by the reaction was dripping back into the mixture and weakening the fibers) by adjusting the equipment so that the water was distilled and removed from the process making for stronger fibers. DuPont patented the new fiber as "nylon" the following year."  (http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa980325.htm)

- "Because neoprene was more resistant to water, oils, heat and solvents than natural rubber, it was ideal for industrial uses such as telephone wire insulation and gasket and hose material in automobile engines. DuPont improved both the manufacturing process and the end product throughout the 1930s. The company discontinued the Duprene trade name in 1937 in favor of the generic neoprene to signify that the material is an ingredient, not a finished consumer product.

- Elimination of the disagreeable odor that had plagued earlier varieties of neoprene made it popular in consumer goods like gloves and shoe soles. World War II removed neoprene from the commercial market, however, and although production at the Deepwater plant was stepped up, the military claimed it all. DuPont purchased a government-owned neoprene plant in Louisville, Kentucky, to keep up with increasing demand after the war. Essentially unchanged since 1950, neoprene continues to be essential in the manufacture of adhesives, sealants, power transmission belts, hoses and tubes. Since 1996 neoprene has been produced under DuPont Dow Elastomers LLC, a joint venture with Dow Chemical." (Heritage.Dupont.com)

- That's the technical data, now let's look at the 'debunking Roswell Incident' data :

"According to the log summary (Atch 27) of the NYU group, Flight A

through Flight 7 (November 20, 1946-July 2, 1947) were made with

neoprene meteorological balloons (as opposed to the later flights

made with polyethylene balloons).  Professor Moore stated that

the neoprene balloons were susceptible to degradation in the

sunlight, turning from a milky white to a dark brown.  He

described finding remains of balloon trains with

reflectors and payloads that had landed in the desert:  the

ruptured and shredded neoprene would "almost look like dark gray

or black flakes or ashes after exposure to the sun for only a few

days.  The plasticizers and antioxidants in the neoprene would

emit a peculiar acrid odor and the balloon material and radar

target material would be scattered after returning to earth

depending on the surface winds"." (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/mogulofficial3.html)

As we can see from these quotes neoprene is designed not to degrade and for it's "outstanding physical toughness".  Also I challenge the suggestion that it would have been any colour but black.  It is only recently that latex has been turned from the natural beige it is to synthetic colours for use in fetish clothing.  Neoprene would have been bakelite black and in my experience still is with a few innovations in a coloured nylon fabric surface bonded to the black backing in foam wetsuits.  In footage I have seen of the Mogul Project balloon it is not a taut firm stretched rubber sphere but a soft jellyfish like sack of a shiny fabric, which I would describe as looking like silk.  Silk was used for parachutes and so could obviously hold the air.

"The Air Force research did not locate or develop any information

that the "Roswell Incident" was a UFO event.  All available

official materials, although they do not directly address Roswell

PER SE, indicate that the most likely source of the wreckage

recovered from the Brazel Ranch was from one of the Project Mogul

balloon trains.  Although that project was TOP SECRET at the

time, there was also no specific indication found to indicate an

official pre-planned cover story was in place to explain an event

such as that which ultimately happened.  It appears that the

identification of the wreckage as being part of a weather balloon

device, as reported in the newspapers at the time, was based on

the fact that there was no physical difference in the radar

targets and the neoprene balloons (other than the numbers and

configuration) between Mogul balloons and normal weather

balloons.  Additionally, it seems that there was over-reaction by

Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel, in originally reporting that

a "flying disc" had been recovered when, at that time, nobody for

sure knew what that term even meant since it had only been in use

for a couple of weeks." (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/mogulofficial3.html)

I think it is fairly obvious to anyone what a 'flying disc' would look like.  It would look like a disc - a flying saucer.  To think that the 509th who were holding  atomic weaponry would not be well versed in what was flying in the skies above them and the types of "weather balloon"  in use is just to ridicule the most alert and security conscious military base in use at that time.