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Astronomers Revel In Former NSA Site
westfirst writes "Welded carpets, strange light fixtures, odd graffiti, and a happy face painted on a radio antenna. All of these details and more X-Files grade mysteries are reported by the Baltimore Sun They're all buried deep in the North Carolina woods where a bunch of radio astronomers have inherited an old surveillance site abandoned by the NSA. Now, how can I get that carpet in my house?"
By far the best explination... I was somewhat referring to strong signals, but the analogy is well spoken.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
The triangles are made from some material that i'm unaware of...probably canvas, but anyways they move when you push one because the room is pressurized to keep the radome more stable the door is smaller than normal to keep from having huge pressure changes.
And for radio astronomy you'd also get the fun of compensating for Doppler effects from the advancing/receding edges of the dish and the Earth's movement combined with the movement of the dish. Ick.
On the other hand, maybe when they're not doing astronomy they could fire up the small dish and do astronomical radar sweeps of the area near Earth. I wonder if they could pick up near-miss rocks that the optical astronomers are missing, such as that 50-foot chunk over London last month.
But are they Autobots or Decepticons? ;)
...
Since deception is a large part of the NSA's game, they're OBVIOUSLY Decepticons. I know, it's a forehead smacker.
Assuming you believe "we" were taken by surprise in the first place.
yup, worry worry worry.
So should US, but the friendly services of other countries bother me much more. British MI, did plenty of dirty work for the US in the US durring WWII. After jailing their own dissent, they turned their attention on US isolationists. Nudge nudge, wink wink, said FDR. Having someone to blame can be worse than having someone to do things for you.
Ohhh, creepy thought. The song of the day in MiniLove, "you only hurt the ones you love."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Heheh. Have you heard those radio commercial for the Commercial Fisherman's Association or something like that?
"North Carolina: First in Freedom, First in Flight, now... First in Fish!"
Gimme a break.. that's what *I* want my state to be known for. First in Fish.
I like "First in large mysterious government complexes deep in the Great Smokey Mountains" better...
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Wanna know how to solve the poverty problem? Feed the homeless to the hungry.
--
Hmmm.... Rosman, NC...Roswell, NM. What (or rather where) is next??
You ain't learning nothing when you're talking
"Inside the tunnels, too, are chalk drawings of animals and warriors resembling those found in caves thousands of years ago."
"No TV and no beer make Homer something something."
"Go crazy?"
"Don't mind if I do!!! BLAGGGHH!! BLABBAHGAHH!!"
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
The NSA had a Beowulf cluster of these??
DO NOT SEEK THE TREASURE!!!!!!
It's not quite that easy. The sorts of signals we deal with in astronomy are really quite faint. To get good signal-to-noise, you generally have to point at one spot on the sky for a good while - minutes to hours, usually. Hence the desire for the dishes to track exactly at the rotation rate of the Earth, but in the opposite direction, thereby enabling them to stare in one spot while the Earth turns under them. Yes, with faster slew you could glance at a large area of the sky quite rapidly, but you wouldn't get any usable data that way.
Last night. Did you miss the article?
Most of us have already downloaded the new tarball.
Hay thar.
Is anyone else more than a little disturbed by the "four foot door" on the "golf ball building" described in the article?
Not really, no.
You've got this large, relatively futuristic building with gyrating triangles, and a door not big enough to fit most humans.
I think "most humans" would have no trouble ducking down a little to enter this building.
Perfect Dark grey theory, anyone?
HAHAHA no.
A plausible theory is that this ball serves the exact same purpose as the most of the special decorations on the entire site, which is to reduce interference, in this case to the Big Dish inside. Like the article says, the triangles of varying size can help to reduce interference caused by repeated patterns.
But I see your line of thinking! Maybe the door isn't four feet high because they didn't want to disrupt the damping triangles too much. Maybe it's four feet high because the NSA holds parties for extraterrestrials on top of a giant satellite dish. And they have these parties at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade too, because there are big golf balls there too, according to the article. Or maybe they're too stupid to operate this perfectly normal satellite dish by themselves, and they have to get aliens to do it for them! Yeah, that sounds about right.
Wait, this is Slashdot. Carry on.
~ Give me 101 plastic soldiers, and I will conquer the world.
Yup, they're on Terraserver. Information on the PARI site mentions they are NW of Brevard, NC. The map on the Tours page has a barely-legible "To NC 215". NC 215 is west of Brevard, and has an S-curve 2-3rds of the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Look for "Glassmine Mountain", south of "Cook Mountain". South of the S-curve, looking above the streams (the article says PARI is in a natural bowl, thus probably some streams nearby) on the USGS topological map one sees several circles marked "TOWERS". One does not put TV broadcast in a depression. Zoom in and the road pattern matches that of the map on the PARI site. Zoom in to the area where the buildings are near the road to the gate, and to the left is a large white circle. That white circle is one of the dishes, and the picture shows the shadow is way off to the side of the circle -- showing that the circle is suspended up in the air. I don't know if this link is a temporary search result or if it's a permanent coordinate link. "212 KM NE of Atlanta GA" the label says.
Unfortunately, hunting for long-range signals and super-distant light sources doesn't work that way. It's like saying if I can run really fast with my shovel I can dig up the whole yard in minutes. Fast motion only helps for targeting near-Earth objects in motion, such as satellites in orbit. The only motion the dishes need is to keep focused on a single point in space while on a rotating Earth.
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
More information about what used to go on in there... some history...
Rosman Research Station Rosman, NC
The Rosman Research Station is located in the Pisgah National Forest of North Carolina's Smoky Mountains, near Balsam Grove, NC, off Route 215 approximately 11 kilometers north of Route 64. The station, which closed in 1994, was operated by approximately 250 NSA, Bendix Field Engineering and TRW employees.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operations at the Rosman Spaceflight Tracking Station in 1963, and ceased activities there in January 1981. During NASA's tenure the station supported a number of space projects, including the Apollo and Apollo-Soyuz missions. The station at Rosman was turned over to the General Services Administration by NASA on 1 February 1981. The facility was converted by the Department of Defense for use as a Communications Research Station, a process which was completed in early July 1981. Initially there were approximately 35 contract personnel living in the area, but when the project became operational in July, this number increased to approximately 75 employees. The NSA role at Rosman apparently began almost immediately thereafter. By 1985 this number was reported to have grown to 250 employees, with annual payroll at $5 million, an average of $20,000 a year [The Asheville Citizen 20 June 1985]. For FY85 NSA requested $500,000 for construction of an electric substation to provide additional electric transformer capacity that is required to support station operations. It is difficult to ascertain the total number of satellite receiving antenna at the facility. These at least include two very large dishes, approximately 27.5 feet in diameter (the size of the biggest dish left by NASA), and a smaller 6.2 meter radome.
The Rosman Station was used to intercept telephone and other communications traffic carried by commercial and other communications satellites in geostationary orbit over the Western hemisphere. Potential targets of interest could include Latin American military, diplomatic and commercial traffic as well as domestic US traffic and drug traffickers in the Caribbean.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Having lived in Southern Ohio (not too different from hilly N.C.)... these can be ideal places for installations like this. The mountains provide excellent shielding from extraneous EM radiation. We couldn't pick up squat on the radio, except for the local public station at O.U., until we moved to a house on top of a hill. I believe the NSA still maintains a listening post in the W.V. mountains. If memory serves, it may also be marked on the aviation charts as a `no-flyover' area.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
That golf ball is definetely odd:
Details on the Mickey Mouse golf ball
An overview picture of the compound. I wonder if there is a reason for the trees planted neatly in a row?
Most AFBs I've been on have them. A few were set up agains a hill (Offutt comes to mind) that greatly reduces the areas where it can point. Basically, its to protect the dish from the weather.
-- toolie
If that's what they believe, better drop the "intelligence" part from your description of them. If the point of allowing an attack on Pearl Harbor was to get the US into a war, one battleship in the harbor would have worked just as well as eight.
Most major airports have a "golfball" somewhere.
I guess I never thought of North Carolina as "Out There"...
My other sig is extremely clever...
The Sunny Point MOTSU just outside Southport, NC is supposedly the largest military ammunition / munitions depot on the East Coast. I'm sure that's a high priority enemy target.. and if it gets hit, the enemy gets bonus damange because the CP&L Brunswick Nuclear Plant sit's right beside it. Munition depot goes *BOOM*, Nuclear Power Plant go "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM" big-time.
Man, am I ever glad I moved out of Brunswick County.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
But what are the odds of someone tunneling *under* this compound to try to catch stray rays? Methinks a simple grounded welded rebar cage in the concrete underneath would be cheaper then welding the carpet down.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
It almost makes me wish that the government spent more money on big publically funded projects like this, because in the end it benefits everyone.
I wonder how many more government sites are lying around that are completely redundant? Probably loads and loads. Somebody should try and convince them to give back to science and society! ;)
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
-p4
(c) All Rights Released.
so the bloodsuckers moved out of transylvania? well, that explains the lack of windows.
Having been in the Air Force I can tell you quite certainly that it's a requirement of the START treaties. We had to get rid of a B-1 bomber (an old test model). The treaty required us to chop it up into pieces the size of small cars and leave it lying on the ramp so that Soviet satellites could snap a picture of it.
I want to know if a cat makes sparks when it touches the carpet after sliding down the curtains.
Now if only I could inherit something useful that the government doesn't need.... Like that Harrier jet that I couldn't buy with Pepsi points (those welchers!)
Is it possible that they've given this place to radio astronomers because they can do the least damage with it? Imagine a satellite set-up this intense in the hands of dedicated SETI guys.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
Full story here
Who was the group that acquired the property? Are they hiring?
If you go into the main entrance for John Bryan State Park in Yellow Springs and bear to the left, there was an access road that was gated off. It was about 3/4 mile down that road.
The Miami Valley Astonomical Club (MVAS) which used the Dayton Mueseum of Natural History (it may now be the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, I'm not really sure) has its headquarters, was responsible for the site.
Keep in mind that was about 17 years ago......
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Many hardware dev labs and manufacturing sites have ESD flooring - the trick is, you need to wear ESD compatible footwear (such as the ones I have on now)... This keeps the floor at AC ground, and via the shoes, you keep even with the floor. Since all of the machines are tied to the same ground as the floor as well as the worksurfaces (tables, benches, whatever), everyone and everything should be at almost the same potential.
ESD shoes make your feet sweat more than most regualar shoes so you conduct better to them, and have conductive insides and soles. Works well, and you end up with a lot less part mysteriously failing...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Those are mazes to fool all of the Russian spies.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Check that shit at the door, and give people a claim check, or tell them ahead of time not to bring it, that you'll have to leave it in your car where they're not liable for it, et cetera.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I imagine it would make for a pretty interesting tour. I sure would like to play around with the junk the NSA left behind.
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
The main purpose of radomes is to make it more difficult for us to know where they're pointing their dishes. I can't offhand think of any non-spook projects that use them, and I guess that's the reason.
Actually, there is a radio astronomy observatory (whose name escapes me) that has a radome up around it. It protects the dish from weather and the effects of. It's a safe assumption that a radio observatory doesn't care if anyone can see where it's pointed.
I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for these radomes is both, however.
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
I bet they are all Tesla Coils disguised as Transformers ;)
-- toolie
I do live in NC, and I'm going to try and find time to go out there. Unfortunately, I leave for Floriday on Sunday, for a 3 month gig in Ft. Lauderdale. So a trip to Transylvania will have to wait until at least April. Bummer. :-(
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Shouldn't you be suggesting that they disperse?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
search google "helemano army" I have no pictures.. the 1/4 mile to smoke a cigarette is at kunia tunnels. Looks like $330,000 was spent through 1996 cleaning up helemano.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
SETI nothing. How 'bout Gamma Ray bursts? (they can get data from the Gamma Ray observatories, and zero in quickly to examine the radio signature)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
*sighs* I guess I just get kinda wistful at the idea of heavily secured, well connected, and self-contained former U.S. spy outposts. Again, maybe it's just me..
>I wonder if there is a reason for the trees planted neatly in a row?
:-)
Yeah, looks exactly like a 9-hole par-3 course to me (albeit without greens or sandtraps). Now wondering if it was just camo to try fooling the russians into thinking it was just a golf course, or did the NSA guys just like to keep their game up?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
You know, come to dwell on it, that's an excellent idea for a group supposedly "scraping for funding." They could hire some of the local high school students to lead the tours or something, and charge enough to keep themselves going in perpetuity. People'd pay, too.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
From the article:
The astronomers need the dishes to move no faster than the speed of Earth itself.
66,000 miles an hour is kinda fast isn't it?
It shows what you can do with no budget limitations. This is just sound engineering for a SIGINT facility. Things like fully steerable 2 axis antennae are because the NSA was in the SIGINT business, scarfing communications signals from wherever so they had to be able to pick out any satellite moving in any direction and track it.
You can't build up a charge on yourself if you're constantly grounded through the carpet.
Another abandoned cold war wonder is the accoustic listening system that was used for tracking subs. It has $G worth of fiber and transducers sitting on the bottem of the ocean. Just waiting for some good use. There was some talk of turning it over to marine biologist to track whales.
What other goodies are just sitting out there about to be bulldozed? Or in orbit?
From the article: "You see this kind of thing everywhere here," Powers said. "They never have just one of something."
That's because the Ramans do everything in threes.
--
Is it okay to cry "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse? --Steve Martin
That was very cool; I can't believe the ET's and Globes and Enquirers aren't going ape over the "new proof that the NSA talks to the Aliens".. /.er....
But then I guess their readership would be lost @NSA... maybe "new proof the CIA talks to the Space people"...
I wish they'd give some more details or pic's of the "Golf Ball".. maybe one of the Astronomers is a
I don't really think it matters, the whole point is that the location is as such that there is NO NOISE at ALL, you get a ton of cell phones and laptops and stuff that are searching for a signal, and you have noise. I personally would give my left lung to go, wheel my a$$ in on a respirator, at least I could say I went into a giant golf ball and came out thinking I was Tiger Woods :)
Well, conveniently enough, the aircraft carriers based in Pearl Harbor were all at sea when the Japanese struck. The war in the Pacific ended up being very carrier-centric, and the monstrous battleships and cruisers have pretty much been phased out of the navy. Most of the ships that were at Pearl were older boats, too. But hey, it's the government. They never lie. They never cheat. They never deceive.
itachi
No wonder! It's in Transylvania County, NC, for crying out loud! We all know that all the weird stuff in the world comes from Transylvania. Or is it North Carolina?
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Don't forget it's also where the US Forest Service was founded. (odd that NSA had a site not to far from the First Forest as it were... conspiracies!)
And it's Appalachian Mountains.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
They're actually sort of annoying to work in. You can't listen to the radio while you code, you see. :-/
As a highly advanced listening post, I'd imagine that some pretty sensitive devices were kept inside. It might just be easier to attempt to minimize static electricity in the building as a whole than to try to shield each device properly and make it fault compliant. Also, I would imagine that a fair amount of electronics work would be carried done in the facility itself, another good reason to attempt to remove all static charge build-up. If I understand correctly, EMP attacks don't have much to do with static charges. They are caused by a large EMF fluctation which causes massive currents to form in electrical companants. I think that techniques to prevent static charges would have little to do with those that protect against EMPs.
/* This post not warrantied for mission critical applications. */
That might be why the dishes and infrastructure remained, but the rest of the equipment was gone.
It's more of a shame that the forest service didn't try harder to find uses for it. *I* would have paid to explore that facility, even if it was mostly empty.
Yea, but his is uniform...
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Wow! Great post!
For those who are wondering what PCBs are, here's an EPA site about 'em. They're also an important part of Neal Stephenson's novel Zodiac.
This behavior doesn't appear to be unusual; recently in San Francisco, where the Navy has an old shipyard that's filled with random toxic waste, an underground fire burned for a month without public notice. See the SF Cronicle article here.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Sounds like TEMPEST caliber stuff...
I'm pretty sure static can be kept to a minimum with far less drastic measures.
However, it doesn't really surprise me considering who the former tenants were.
--K
Hehe, yeah, that is what I meant. thousands of asus A7V's just waiting for overclocked beowulf cluster goodness
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
There are millions of them. In St. Louis there's the Climatron, a large tropical greengouse which has its fawcwts made of glass. In Illinois, the Department of highways uses them to store heavy snow moving equipment--it's a very common design, invented by Buckminster Fuller in the 1950's.
DAILY ROTATION
A Faraday cage is only useful for keeping interference out. Shielding actually has to block the emission of fields, and is completely different. If it were possible to use a Faraday cage to do shielding, they would just to that to their conference rooms and computers, rather than using all the white noise to foil TEMPEST devices et al.
However, having the carpet grounded would in fact reduce, all though not eliminate the possibility of static electicity jumping. That's why I'm not sure the purpose really is to help static electricity. Consider the following two scenarios:
1. You walk around on a carpet, stealing electrons from it and giving it a charge of say, +x, and building up a negative charge on yourself of -x. You then touch the carpet, causing all those electrons to leap off you and arc back to the carpet. You could also touch a neutral piece of electronics (charge 0), which would accept half of your electrons (give or take) and fry itself.
2. You walk around on a grounded carpet, stealing electrons from it and building a charge on yourself. However, since it's grounded there is an unlimited number to steal. Furthermore, since the carpet isn't building up a huge negative charge, it has no problem giving up more electrons (say -2x). Thus, you could conceivably build up a *bigger* charge than before. This would result in more of a shock when transferring the charge back to a neutral piece of equipment.
Am I missing something here? Unless you're also wearing a conducting strap connected to your body and the bottoms of your feet, there's no benefit. In that case, you stay neutral because any electrons you steal are immediately returned to ground. Are the electronics that sensitive that the worker's can't just ground themselves when they're working on them?
Walt
All the scientists probably found some warp gate that sent them to hell, and these new guys are going to view some log of them holding their own eyeballs in their hands...
Andy
A huge communications complex. complete with Kitchen, Basketball court, Tons of Ancient ceramic and bakelite 66 blocks (telephone punch down blocks), A huge generator room and 8 Transformers the size of 55 gallon drums.
Rotted Open
Sitting in a lake of PCB's
Needless to say we did not explore the tunnel that had been bricked over that was 15 feet wide and 20 foot tall. Later we discovered plans to Bldg 2. That tunnel went all the way to Schofield Barracks.
Big enough to drive a Semi through.
We called the EPA. They took plastic barrels that bolt together down the hole and presumably put alll the pcb's in them. The barrels never came out. Once assembled and filled they were left in place for the next impromptu archeologist. The man hole was welded shut.
There is now an entire community built over the site. Training area 4 is now entirely military housing. No Superfund. No Press.
Just a manhole welded shut in the middle of a schoolyard
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Yes, as a temporary member (eventually, I will free all my electrons too and cease to be a member) of the Electron Freedom League, I have to concur. This anti-static bias is clearly a plot to deny electrons the freedom they deserve. Static electricity is a very common way for electrons to free themselves from their terrible bondage to protons. Reducing it can only have the effect of extending the bondage and slavery (electrons are the workhorses of all chemical reactions) of most atoms.
Electrons of the world, unite!
Brought to you by The Electron Freedom LeagueNeed a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Why would they need to track satellites with radio dishes that huge? Then I understood. Those dishes could pick up the faint signals from the satellite's computer bus. From those signals you could get all sorts of interesting information about the satellites.
This is just like reading your computer monitor at a distance from the electromagnetic signals given off.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Arrgh, fix your sig! Is this an accident, or are you just trying to distinguish yourself from WB8FOZ? :)
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Rest assured this is for anti-static purposes. Quite a few Bay Area companies use it!
-Cheers,
PQBON
They might also be perfect for viewing Gamma-Ray bursters. The thing is, you need to turn to face bursters as soon as possible as they die away quickly. IANA Astronomer, but these dishes may be very useful.
You'd just need to get the message from the initial detection to the dishes quickly. I guess all that fibre'd help as well.
The triangles are made from some material that i'm unaware of...
It's Gore-Tex, the same stuff with which they make diving suits. It's not so much pressure changes -- gore tex is breathable yet waterproof. It's also transparent to radio waves, else they wouldn't have used it.
The reason they have a 4 ft. door is because it's a service hatch. The thing is operated via two fibre optic lines. One handles control, and one modulates the RF signal back as light so it cannot be tapped.
Lowmag.net
Some of the big National Weather Service doppler radars look like giant golf balls. They tend to be on tall towers (like a golf tee) on high spots to maximize how far they can see.
Also, you'll see radomes on cruise ships, to protect their satellite TV/phone dishes from the weather (salt water, and wind). They've got fancy az-el rotators to keep their sat TV dishes pointed at the right place as the ship moves around...
Or perhaps the "golf ball" is to prevent spy satelites from seeing exactly where that dish is pointed!
2^5
Obviously we don't, since you don't have a digital camera or scanner. ;)
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Not different at all. Receiving and transmitting antennas are interchangeable.
I've seen something much like that on top of one of MIT's buildings - not positive about what it i, though.
Right, and also don't forget "I Know What You Did Last Summer" which was filmed in Southport, NC.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Except that Pearl Harbor wasn't a suprise.
What's that you said?
What?
I can't hear... I can't.. I... I SAID I... I SAID I.. CAN'T... HEAR... YOU...
WHAT?
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Secondly, every island is a little more wierd than the next. Kahoolawe used to be a Navy Air Bombing site. Today you can take tours of the special beauty of the island. Not limited to the *live* bombs laying on the ground, as well as *marked* landmine fields.
Green Harvest (local government agency dedicated to eradicating marijuana) dropped what initially looks like little orange balls all over the Big island (You guys call it the isle of Hawaii, we call it Big island). Turns out that when the balls impact something solid, they release a gas that will supposedly kill *only* Marijuana, turns out that it's actually an Agent Orange Derivative, that was being *tested*. Hundreds got sick and sued, Green Harvest's funding is in jeapordy as a result.
On Kauai we have the PMRF (Pacific Missile Range Facility). The PMRF is the *entire* US west coast defense system, I'll give you three guesses to figure out what kind of missile(s) protects the entire west coast of America.
Hawaii is a very fuc*ed up place. Hearing that about Oahu does not suprise me at all.
Surfing is religion
you are silly
Surfing is religion
you are silly
I Hack You! - Ninja Fish
I think someone's still trying to sell off a few of the NIKE missile silos.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
I actually believe the article was referring to the Forest Service bulldozing the site, but I may be mistaken.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
The main purpose of radomes is to make it more difficult for us to know where they're pointing their dishes. I can't offhand think of any non-spook projects that use them, and I guess that's the reason.
--
Xenu loves you!
I can name a ton of them...any sat that uses the AFSCN (Air Force Satellite Control Network)...trust me on this I flew the damn birds.
Yeah, but moving ships out of the harbor would have given away the secret.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
This place isn't that out of the ordinary. A number of years back an unnamed government agency turned over pieces of a facility on staten island to the NY Port Authority. The facility contained several nuke proof datacenters, and a very strange, large building with no ceiling. More or less something that was to look from the road to be part of the complex, but was merely a facade. Oddly enough, this building had an antenna farm in it, which included fast tracking dishes of more than 18' . Strange thing to have in the downlink scatter zone of the city of Manhattan, don't you think? When you consider that all the buildings have their own redundant systems to run power, and cooling (including CPU chilling for older mainframes) for durations greater than a week the site gets interesting....
n .HTM
official information can be seen here:
http://www.panynj.gov/economic_development/commai
Anyone know anything else about the Teleport complex?
It does snow there sometimes, and they're a little slow to clear the roads. That "long, twisting road through the Pisgah National Forest," NC Highway 215, can be quite dangerous in icy conditions.
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
The squiggly gray line running north-south through the center of the image is NC Highway 215. The splotch at center-left, with features that look like terraces at this scale, is your destination: the former Rosman Research Station. Mapquest identifies the east-west road running toward the station as Macedonia Church Road, and the last turn into the station as Neil Armstrong Road.
So here are complete directions:
From Asheville, take I-26 east; or, fly to the Asheville Airport.
From either I-26 or the airport, turn right onto NC Highway 280, toward Brevard. If you came from I-26, NC 280 will pass the airport.
NC 280 ends just inside the Brevard city limits, near a shopping center with a Wal-Mart and a Pizza Hut. Go straight through the light. You are now westbound on US Highway 64.
Follow US 64 through Brevard. An alternate route is to turn right onto Caldwell Street near the Brevard Motor Lodge; it rejoins US 64 at its other end.
Past Brevard, US 64 passes a Conoco station and then goes over a mountain. Stay on US 64 for about a half mile past the mountain, until you reach a right turn onto NC Highway 215.
Now here's where my recall is rather fuzzy; Mapquest to the rescue. After about five miles on NC 215 (drive carefully!) turn left onto Macedonia Church Road, and then onto Neil Armstrong Road.
You're there.
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
If they are in need of funding, they should think about giving tours. It sure sounds like something I'd take a side trip to visit. Anyone else?
Viv
-----------
I Use Napster. I use DeCSS. I buy over $1000 a year in CD/DVDs.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
I'm sure the Air Force is destroyed them because they couldn't find anyone to sell them to. I heard of old silos being converted into mushroom farms, homes, and even a rural school.
It is, there is a compound down the street from me that used to be Ronald Regan's "Western Whitehouse", basically, secret services, intelligence HQ while he was on his Ranch in Southern California. Now it's a technology incubator. But it has the double walls, white noise, RF shielding, TEMPEST rooms, and one of my clients servers are CoLo'd in what was once the vault. That's a trip, opening the vault to do server maintenance.
actually, as I understand it pearl harbor was *not* a surprise to the intelligence community -- it was just decided not to announce it so that the average american would be happier to get into WWII (in other words, it was a political decision)
I've read and heard things like this too. But since I wasn't alive then I don't know and probably won't know for sure what the whole story is/was. We probably knew something was going to happen once we stopped oil shipments to Japan and froze all of their assests in the US. But there is a difference between thinking you're going to get punched in the face and actually getting punched in the face.
Politically it is much easier to get into a war of that magnitude if we can demonstrate a great need for it (like getting bombed and needing to retaliate) but if I remember my history correctly Britain and France had to convince us to fight in Europe first before concentrating soley on Japan. Again that could be pure rhetoric coming from the news agencies of the time or the goverment, but who is to say for sure. If it was a political decision to go ahead and take the bombing, it was a waste of life but it turned out for the best for America. We became the leading world power, had bases abroad, the war brought women into the workplace, and started (barely scratched the surface really) to remedy the racial situation (ala Jim Crow), not to mention the technical achievements created too (rockets, space travel, guided bombs, etc.)
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
With all that fiber, what a LAN party to be had. :)
...click here.
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
Every inch of floor in more than four buildings was covered with two-by-two-foot squares of bleak brown carpet. When the astronomers tried to replace it, they discovered it was welded with tiny metal fibers to the floor. The result, they eventually realized, is that the rugs prevent the buildings from conducting static electricity. Even the regular lighting looks different, covered by sleek metal grids that prevent the light bulbs from giving off static interference. The few windows are bulletproof.
Did everyone that worked there wear ESD Wrist straps too.?
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
If you get a chance, browe to http://www.pari.edu/Needs.htm and see if you can do anything to help these guys out. It sounds like, in addition to money, they can use a lot of miscellaneous stuff, that some /.'ers might have laying around.
Here's a partial list of what they're looking for:
Computers (Pentium 100 or above), Computer Components, Computer Monitors, Network Servers, Laptop Computers, etc.
Office Furniture and Equipment (Desks, Chairs, Shelving, Copiers, Conference Tables, Storage Cabinets, etc.)
Work Tables/Benches, Shelving
Category 5 cables rated to 100 Mbps minimum
Optical Telescopes (10" or larger) and Eyepieces (1.25" and 2") and components
35mm Camera Lens - any sizes, or makes, and adapters to C-mounts
LX200 Mounts
CCD Equipment
Optical filters
Glass domes
Hydrogen Maser Frequency Standard
Phase Locked Loop OCXO Disciplining System
Reference Distribution Driver Amplifier
Remote Reference Taps/Buffer Amps
Synthesized Frequency Generators
AC Digital Wattmeter
Bit Error Rate Tester
VHS or S-VHS Stereo VCR's,
Video Cameras and Monitors, Weatherproof Housings, Shutters, Remote Controls, Etc.
Multi-track Audio Recorders
Type N coax Connectors and Crimping Tools
Cable Striping Tools
Chip in and help a worth cause. BTW, they need volunteers of various sorts too, so if you live close to this place, it might be interesting to go work with them a little...
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Hrm... something went wrrr... click! When I was reading these lines here: There are unusual numbered patterns on the dish's white panels, laid out like a cheat sheet to a jigsaw puzzle. I remember reading an article somewhere that talked about the "Numbers" stations, radio stations that where some anonymous people read out long lists of numbers. These stations are supposedly setup by spy agencies to relay encrypted information to field agents. Just a thought.
Every inch of floor in more than four buildings was covered with two-by-two-foot squares of bleak brown carpet. When the astronomers tried to replace it, they discovered it was welded with tiny metal fibers to the floor. The result, they eventually realized, is that the rugs prevent the buildings from conducting static electricity.
Somewhere, a government-contract carpet layer is reading this and having some nasty flashbacks to that job.
You fool, its a mini golf course for the massive golf ball.
We weren't taken by suprise by Pearl Harbor.
We sacrificed Pearl Harbor to prevent the Japanese from finding out we had cracked their codes.
DUH!
Haven't you watched the History channel?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Please spend some quality time with a nuclear physics book. Nuclear Power plants don't go *BOOM* - the core melts into the ground.
Of course a *BOOM* would probably be preferable.
With the proper computer equipment, they might be able scan large chunks of sky quickly, due to the speed of the dishes. Plus, they'd be a perfect reference check for the SETI folk, due to the speed at which they can test a signal and localize it. They could check areas around signals to make sure it's not a mistake and such. I'm sure these can be used for great science... Makes you wonder what other modern equipment the NSA has.
But I have to say the riveted carpeting... wow. In our current data center, we have carpeting on a raised floor, but I'm not sure it's static free. I wonder if that will ever make it into the civilian market...
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I'll note that the article specifically says that the NSA was going to come back with bulldozers, if the facility hadn't been donated.
But the first thing that popped into my head after reading this was myst :)
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
North Carolina is "First in Fish"?
When compared to Alaska? Or Kodiak Island even? Methinks there are some fish tales being told here.
Mind you my backyard is a small carpark so I'd probably notice if an 85 foot radio satellite dish appeared there one morning...
You're more observant than Cartman, then.
-
Actually, all they need is those static straps that attach to the heal of your shoes. When I used to work at a memory manufacturing company, the factory floor was conductive/grounded, and the factory workers had heal straps with a piece that would be tucked into their shoe. There'd be enough sweat buildup in the socks so the strap wouldn't have to directly contact the skin.
"Boa, you are a lost 'un, ain't che?"
Yessir.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Gather around children and you shall hear, the story of a small town getting fucked in the ear.
Yeah I can't even drink the water in my town(Santa MAria, CA) because it is so infested with PCB's. 64 parts per billion to be exact, that's 32 times the legal limit.
It all started back in '77 when the state government, along with your basic run-of the mill corporate bastards, decided to dump the state's toxic waste in the nearby (poor, scarcely populated) town of casmalia. Of course they met no opposistion from the citizens because the citizens had no idea what was going on.
So basically the corporate criminals who were doing this (with the complete, unquestioning blessing blessing of the local government, go figure) started to pump some of the most dangerous chemicals known to man into a little canyon. The said it was safe because there was "a thick layer of clay" under the ground. Of course there were never any geological tests to prove this, it was just sort of assumed.
Well so this dude named Les Conrad (the hero of our story), a sign painter, gothired to paint some of the dump's trucks. And he saw them pumping that shit into the ground. He questioned them about it, and of course they told him it was perfectly safe. And of course it turned out they were lying.
So Mr. Conrad did some research and found out that not only was the dump not safe, the chemicals were becoming highly concentrated in our entire valley's groundwater! Of course he tried to bring this to the attention of local politicians, but the simply ignored him. He had to fight for 17 years to finnally get the plant shut down in 1997. And by then the damage had already been done. Our town has twice the national rate of lukemia, and people are dying of cancer left and right. All because of our corrupt local and state officials and the corporate criminal paymasters.
It makes me fucking sick.
----------------------------------
The Bunker is an ex-RAF Radar Tracking Station, designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike. It has been decomissioned and bought by a private company to serve as a "Britain's ultimate safe house" for hosting and colocation of servers. I wonder if the Exodus data centers have airtight blast doors?
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The part that scares me is this: the NSA has jurisdiction inside the USA, unlike the CIA which does not. I do not think most /.'s would be comfortable with the NSA in thier backyard.
I can think of some killer networking uses for that much extra equipment. Thnk about it- miles of fibre, no static electricity... this could be the ultimate co-lo site, if nothing else! Let's get creative, raise the cash, and move in!!!
~wmaheriv
~wmaheriv
"Shema Yisroel- Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad!"
The result, they eventually realized, is that the rugs prevent the buildings from conducting static electricity.
Perhaps this is to stop any EMP attacks such as that mentioned on Slashdot last week?
Well damn, that's a great point. After all, the public school system is such a perfect example of efficiency! I think I'll write my congressmen (yes, they're all men) now, demanding that all money that's currently going towards national security be instead routed to the public schools so they can continue to be a shining example to all other countries about how school systems should be run. After all, who needs national security?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
While we can all see that this is quite overkill for astronomers this is cool. Finally our government doing something smart. But for all the sonspiracy guys out there,not sure how many but one guy said something like give it to the group with the least danger, there was no danger. The NSA stripped it of everything classified I am sure and it was the ever so secretive Forestry service that gave it to them. Last time I checked the Forest service could care less about all that security. As for the astronomers they got to save a lot of money on building sat dishes and buildings. They also got one hell of a wired compound. Now to just figure out how to tour it cause that wouldbe cool.
I am 31337 or something.
Four foot -wide- door, perhaps? Would make a lot more sense...
I work at a DOD contractor (TRW), I have a security clearance for my work, and a veteran engineer I work closely with is named Don Powell...
Vidi, Vici, Veni
What Powers and several others in the group find remarkable, though, is not just the expansive network of buildings and security, but the extraordinary cost of all they items they have found - items the agency discarded.
I'm Sure they had better stuff All ready for them at the new site so they through their old junk away to make room for the new.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
given that backwoods rednecks will at that point be the future of humanity, i think it's time to move to NC. ;)
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Nylon capret is an insulator, yet walking across it creates static electricity. Look up what a faraday cage is. Its designed to shield the building from RF, obviously they had powerful transmitters judging from the generator size.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
your reply is completly asine...i didn't say take all the monies going to the NSA (or national security) and use it for education (or public schools.)
i did say that if they recouped their investment of materials at the site (say auctioned them off) and then donated that revenue stream to education (like grants for college freshmen,) we'd be better off.
whaddya think - WPI gets no federal funding?
please - troll elsewhere.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
> Firing Janet Reno is the first step.
Just wait till you tards get a gander at Ashcroft. He's a thousand times worse than Reno.
Just Say Duh(Bya)!
- Have a picture
Except, if you think about it, the Decepticons never do any real sneaky deception. They just blow stuff up.
to put things into scale, do you think the sattelite dishes were the small or large radar? its pretty obvious that the golf-ball thing was a hyperwave decoder. the UFOs always fly around out of range of your weak-ass interceptors with avalanche missles once you built a hyperwave decoder. i hated that
Just in case any of the astronomers are reading...
Need money? How about using some of that fiber and building space for outsourced data centers? How about renting time on the golf ball satellite to private companies? Surely someone could find some use for it. And turn the paper shredding building into a community paper recycling center! I'm sure there are dozens of other ways you could branch out for funding...
While the shroud of mystery surrounding any US governmental agency is enough to give any slashdoter a hard-on, people in the professional audio and recording industry will probably find this all very mundane and boring, at best calling this one example of "applying every RF shielding trick in the book".
One famous example of such overshielding is Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch's sound effect recording studio, which uses state-of-the-art (read: costly) shielding, such as a one-foot wide ground plane wire running under a wire mesh shieled floor.
In other words, well-paid private ventures like Lucasfilm can and do afford the same kind of costly technology that government agencies purchase. Nothing much to write home about, really.
However, it's nice to know that government has willingly transfered such a well-built facility to more pacific purposes, where the investment won't disappear under the bulldozer's scraping.
Governments: please, never waste taxpayers money again by destroying anything; destroying evidences of compromising material is one thing, scrapping an entire facility is another. Whenever possible, please do auction the facility or, better yet, hand it over to researchers at no cost, to let that horrendous expenditure enjoy some civilian purpose, instead of dumbly scraping it once the MJ12 has deemed the location obsolete.
--
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
The big dishes are so they can listen to satellites that aren't pointed at them. e.g. satellites belonging to other people.
:).
I think pretty soon terrorists will start communicating on slashdot (if not already). The noise level here is so high it'll probably mask anything interesting
Carpet.. welded to the ground silly, read da article :)
It seems I once saw an article where there was a huge meth lab or something inside an old silo, and when they were finally busted, the DEA had to send in HAZMAT teams to dismantle and decontaminate the site.
Considering the expense they put into it and the obsessive secrecy, I'm surprised the NSA didn't demolish the whole site and give it back to the forest service as a tract of newly-bulldozed land.
I don't doubt that there's nothing meaningful to be learned by spooks from the empty buildings and general layout, but given the NSA's relentless obesssion with secrecy, letting someone know how they do *anything*, from park their cars to carpet their floors, seems like something they wouldn't allow. Leaving it all there like an NSA ghost town-cum-museum seems a little unusual.
On an unrelated note, why is the Air Force demolishing decomissioned missle silos in North Dakota? Is it a START/SALT requirement, or is the Air Force more relentlessly secretive than the NSA?
Anyone know where the dish with the smiley face is? The pictures on the PARI site of the 4.6 meter dish only shows that it's in the corner of a building. The map in the "Tours" section is illegible. Of course, on the pictures with a 1-meter resolution, a 4.6 meter dish might be identifiable but the 3-meter smile might not be.
Wow, neat what the Internet has brought us. Now if only we can get .01m images so we can read serial numbers off the equipment and count hairs on the heads of people walking around.
--Peter
>I wonder if there is a reason for the trees planted neatly in a row?
:-)
Oddly enough, I was wondering the same thing myself. I started thinking "This is the NSA, so there has to be a pattern!" So I pulled up the TerraServer image of the site, and took a long look at them to figure out the pattern and ascertain their purpose.
My conclusion? They're to anchor the hillside and keep it from sliding down onto the telescopes
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Whether or not he will be prosecuted for murdering Vicki Weaver is still being appealed Dream on... This country took a big step backwards by electing Bush. While he may not vindicate Janet Reno (in fact he will probably replace her) he will certainly pick a much worse right-wing "law and order" type (read White male) to continue the federal government's war against it's own citizens (i.e., continue the stupid "War on Some Drugs", continue racial profiling against Blacks and Hispanics, continue ripping off citizens with bogus forfeitures of money and property, etc., etc.).
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
I do live in NC. As a matter of fact, I live approximately 6 miles from this facility. The installation carries with it a lot of mystique for the locals here, in regards to its top secret classification a few years back. The place is a cool visit. It's amazing to see what it actually was, instead of just hearsay and conjecture. I think the new owners will be very pleased with their site and location. I would encourage all /.'ers to visit PARI if they have a chance. It definitely holds geek value, besides the beautiful view from the top of that mountain.
-
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
What is inside that giant geodesic dome that looks like a golf ball? 12.2m Radio Telescope The 12.2 meter radio telescope is a precision surface antenna protected by a 20 meter Gore-Tex® radome. The antenna (below) is an elevation over azimuth configuration, controlled remotely via fiber optics from the main control center in building #1. Radio Frequency (RF) is also linked via fiber optics to the control room in building #1. The 12.2 meter's precision surface is evident in this photo. Pseudo-random shaping of the GoreTex® radome panels also allows for lower loss and a more extended frequency range operation than might be possible in a more conventional geodesic dome design.
-
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
It's like Blair Witch for geeks.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
You all know that one scene in the movie Independence Day where they go underground into Area 51, and the genius' father politely points out how funding is possible... "What? You dont think that a hammer costs fifty-thousand..." But seriously, where do you think the NSA gets their funding from? It's ridiculous. We have starving homeless people in this nation and the NSA has installations that must cost well into the millions. For god's sakes, what is our government afraid of? It's amazing that our nation was based on certain principles such as if your government is not handled properly that the people have the right to change it. Yet at every turn all I see is how restrictive our government is and how agencies like the NSA will stop anything that would dramatically alter this nation. People that think we live in a democracy need to become aware of the socialistic self perpetuating republic of indirect control that is the US. Anyways, I will get off my soap box now.
___________
I don't care what it looks like, it WORKS doesn't it!?!
Is it just me, or does the article have this backwards? Sure, I'm just nit-picking, but it seems that one would install such metal fibers to promote conduction and thus prevent the build-up of static charge. Consider conductive anti-stat floor mats, wrist straps, et cetera, which make this seem not-so unusual (except that it's built into the carpet).
:)
Oh well, anyway, it's still all pretty cool, and I envy the folks who get to work there (mainly for the nice cabling setup).
Maybe this was what was with Dana Barrett's apartment building. It used to be a satellite tracking facility, and that explains all the strange beamwork.
To quote the movie:
"Guess they just don't make 'em like they used to, huh?"
"No, no! Nobody ever made them like this!"
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
What people don't see is that it probably would have cost more than the fiber cable is worth to have the contractors come into the place, remove the cable (carefully, if it will be reused or resold, which takes more manhours which takes more money...), wrapped, packed, warehoused, shipped, tested, etc, etc, etc...
If something can be reused, the government reuses it. But only if it is economically feasible.
Yes, I work for the government. No, I am not lying to you. I like beer and have been to 31 Grateful Dead concerts.
No one in the story said how much the fiber optic cable cost. Even if you are talking about
$20,000 worth of cable, it still would cost more to remove it and get it to another user.
Think!
Whoo let the fish out? Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop...
warning, it's the goatse link
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Sounds like the kind of place I'd like to be. For some reason, I've always loved monitoring stuff and obnoxious alarms and looking suspicious... I couldn't have made something better for myself if I'd tried. Maybe there's another one I could buy... so many benefits... mmm...
!-!_!-!_!-!
His point is that insulators /increase/ buildup of static electricity, which is backed up by your example.
As for the RF-sheilded building, could it be used for tests regarding RF device safety? Have the control group live in the sheilded building, the test group live in an identical-yet-not-shielding building...
What's this Submit thingy do?
I would be on my way there right now... Just to ask for a tour. Someone from /. please go and visit this place for us if it is reasonable accessable for you.
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
Is it just me, or wouldn't it be extremely difficult to weld something with both metal and plastic fibers to another piece of metal? Don't you run the risk of ruining the plastic?
Or were the 'threads' more like metallic strips running through the carpet?
What's this Submit thingy do?
... can be found at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.asp?S=11&T= 1&X=823&Y=9741&Z=17&W=1. And yes, the link is permanent.
Good conclusion, though I have to wonder about the wisdom of this - it's a pretty easy pattern to locate, and would make a fairly simple target for pattern-recognition based systems, such as those deployed in 70's-era spy satellites...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Have people never heard of raydomes?
yeah - i read your posts and i know the cost of cable....
whaddya think that 85 ft dish cost?
or the Gore-Tex covered ball?
or the security equipment?
look, the government routinely auctions items off - part of the deal is that the buyer pays for removal and shipping.
a common tenant of business is that many "companies" (in this case think of this site like that) are worth more DIVIDED than as a whole unit. so while they sold it to this well informed lucky buyer, my supposition was that having the largest informed market (exactly who knew this place was for sale?) and selling the items piece by piece would have generated significant revenue - IMHO.
granted, i admitted that after reading the mission statement of the buyer and seeing their work, that it was prolly best where it ended up, but the tacit assumption of our freshman poster that the public school system is such a perfect example of efficiency and there by we should just ignore options is both ignorant and wasteful.
the cable was the least of the stuff there to be sold.
maybe you should think the whole thing through...twice.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
BTW: I would suggest that the astronomers investigate the dish in the 'golf ball'. My guess is that it's more capable, in some way or other, than the otheer dishes were. "Nothing in this place is quite what it seems"
`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Maybe they should use all that cabling and host a massive LAN-party!
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
It almost makes me wish that the government spent more money on big publically funded projects like this
What Powers and several others in the group find remarkable...the extraordinary cost of all they items they have found - items the agency discarded.
unless i am wrong here, that was my tax $$, spent for government items that where then discarded/sold for what must have been a pittance.
yeah - let's have some more big, wasteful government...which benefits no one.
half the money invested in the place could have paid for education programs out the ass...but gee, i am so glad that the NSA just basically threw it away.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
I'm curious, did the NSA have any say in what could be done with the land?
in Brevard for 3+ years. It was something no one talked about much. I knew it was up there somewhere but never found anyone who would talk much about it. Way cool if you ask me.
With the two 80 foot satellite dishes pointing toward the sky. probably really is for static protection, though i bet the whole place is surrounded by a faraday cage for tempest shielding.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Here is to the end of the cold war. The whole reason we have this huge national debt is because of off-the-wall military spending, etc...
It's good to see some of this gear that the government pissed away so much money on to fight the commies getting recycled for a peaceful, useful, civilian purpose. I wish i had that compound, it would be my dream home =:-)
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
I am suprised that with that much space, and that many sats etc - and just the over all bad ass'd'ness of such a place there arent more people and groups sharing such a facility. All in all it just sounds like a really big cool funlab
-- Whee
Linux Official 2.4 Kernel fast mirror.... CLICK HERE
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
SCIF- Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.
This article was fascinating. Reminds of of one of thos far-out 'secret facility' scenes from an old six-million dollar man episode.
So, when are they going to start giving public tours?
www.enthea.org
Lots. Screengems Studios has a production lot here and Dawson's Creek is filmed on my island. The B-52's once filmed a music video in front of my condo. DeLaurentis used the Screengems sound stages to film parts of U-576. Parts of the Matlock TV series were shot around the Wilmington area till the show was canceled.
North Carolina has a deceptively large film industry. Hopefully this stupid SAG strike will be over soon and we can get back to business.
nitpick:
The FBI is a law enforcement agency
/nitpick
Vidi, Vici, Veni
It seems to me that the "welded" carpet could server two useful purposes from a security perspective. First to prevent bugs from being planted beneath the carpet. Second to help form a "Faraday cage" in order to prevent the escape of RF signals from the room.
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
In fact the NSA has a ton of technology on display at the Museum of Cryptology. I went there last summer and saw a Cray, a big black Thinking Machines doohickey, some finger print scanners and several Enigma machines. All technology you can read about in more than 4 locations so it's no longer secret.
I'm glad the astronimers got to reap the benefit. It doesn't sound like anything the NSA left behind needed to be kept secret and someone now makes good use of it.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Seems to me to be a great place to film TV and movies with a government agency theme. X-Files perhaps? And considering the money that production companies pay to use great locations, wouldn't it be a great idea for funding?
Then again, how many productions happen in North Carolina anyway?
What is inside that giant geodesic dome that looks like a golf ball?
Ask Mickey Mouse... he's had that technology for years.
In addition to having a old NSA base, the Carolinas are know to have old Sherman Tanks just out there in the wilderness. They were used as practice targets for the U.S. Army Air Corp and the U.S. Navy airplanes for WWII. The goal was to strike tanks with airplanes (a.k.a. close air support) but their was a serious problem. Tanks hidden in camo were extremely difficult to be hit because they were hidden so well. In fact, they people in charge of hiding them lost the exact locations of these tanks and thus some of them were never recovered. Imagine what other stuff is out there!!
Additionally, for those who would believe that the Carolinas is just a rural backwash state, consider this: The United States Armed Forces have a rather large concetration of firepower located in the Carolinas and surrounding area. Seymour Air Force base located in NC, houses the First Strike Eagles (F-15E). Pope Air Force base is also located in NC. The Army's Fort Bragg and the Marine's Camp Lejeune are located in NC. And finally, the Navy's Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity is located in Norfolk, VA (which is near NC). Thus the Carolinas is a fairly important region.
here's the place that got the site.
click tour for site layout and pics!
i guess their mission statement puts me more at ease.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Surely they didn't move to cardboard boxes, or some ol' generic office park.
If they threw this away.... the scary aspect is _what_did_they_move_into_?
Guess we'll know in 20 years....
was that it was a base for X-Com's UFO defense. It's a shame that the alien containment, the plasma defenses, and the PSI labs were removed, but at least they left the laboratories, the barracks, and the hangars.
So, where is the undersea X-Com facility? Note to self: never board a ship named "Hyperion".
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
They were doing satellite eavesdropping, so they want to eliminate as much interference to their dishes as possible. Location gave them isolation from external sources, they just have to make sure that their own computers and whatnot don't kill the RF quiet that they worked so hard to create.
Back in the 70's, the government had a sattelite tracking station in Yellow Springs, Ohio right next to John Bryant (??) state park. Nothing quit as grandious as NSA site, just a squat concrete building with a dome, a roll-off roof, and a few other rooms, one of which looked like a dark room.
The astonomy club I belonged to got involved when they were going to level the place and was given access to the site. Again, the government was just going to bulldoze a building, rather than find a use for it. The dome was large enough, if I remember, for a good sized reflector telescope (we needed a fairly large ladder to use it). The room with the roll-off roof had a platform that could hold several more telescopes.
I wonder how many more of these are around???
Pluto, what a goofy name for a mickey-mouse planet
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
hey, does that mean the rest of us (the vast majority of the world) *should* worry about the CIA ? ;-)
Mind you my backyard is a small carpark so I'd probably notice if an 85 foot radio satellite dish appeared there one morning...
Come, explore scenic North Carolina,
where we were first in flight, home of RedHat, and large mysterious government complexes deep in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Surely there's a connection in there....
Victor in Raleigh
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Perfect Dark grey theory, anyone?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
But since it's owned privately now, do you think that there will be tours soon? How about it? Huh? I'll bring the fiber card and some cable if I can plug in. Something tells me it would be a bit nicer than my 33.6
Alas, poor clippy, I loath him so.
The mission of the NSA is quite simple:
To protect the communications of the U.S. Government.
So with that in mind it is not at all surprising that their juristiction includes the US. Why should we be uncomfortable with that? Are you uncomfortable that the #1 spy agency (the FBI) has juristiction inside the US? I do worry about the ATF guys, but when they can capture people like McVeigh and the World Trade Center bombers I know they are out there to protect me.
I think a lot of negative press has been given to our intelligence agencies. The CIA looks like dumb assess on our very biased news coverage, the DIA and NSA look like geeks with incredible powers and the FBI is seen as a mad house. However, not everything you read or hear repeated is true. I found out recenty that JEH was NOT a crossdresser. That is a myth that was used to discredit him. He was a bully, but why bother to lie like that? The truth always comes out.
--Peter
the first sign that something is out of the ordinary is a line of giant transformers.
;)
But are they Autobots or Decepticons?
-----
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
Reading the article and learning about the site is just incredible. What would also be great are photographs and some illustrations of the layout of the place, just so that we can get an even better idea of it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I work at a mid-sized IT facility. My project manager walked by, and looked at the front page of the Slashdot article. He saw the welded carpet line, and said "Oh yea. They all have that. It reduces EMF transmission. They also have double walls that emit white noise, and shielded wiring... Its all standard stuff." essentially quoted me 3/4 of the article without reading it.
Apparently this is more common than we all realize.
This has Echelon written all over it. I'd sure like to find out what the NSA did with the, "two 85-foot satellites dishes on the site - some of the largest in the country." It sure makes me wonder about the power the NSA holds over government agencies and the average Joe. Check out for more info on Echelon.
It would be great if more of these could be available where there are more ``youngsters''. So many of the telescopes that the general public might have a chance of looking through are found in larger cities where the light pollution has rendered them all but unusable for any serious viewing. Even then, I suppose those might be worth something; you may still find them useful to look at the moon. Which could still be enough to inspire the next generation of astronomers.
But, hey! What about us ``oldsters''?
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
.. was there any evidence of the smoking man..? =)
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'