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The Skylab-Area 51 Incident
IZ Reloaded writes "The Space Review has an interesting story written by Dwayne Day about the 1974 incident when astronauts onboard Skylab took photos of a facility that did not exist in the US called Area 51. From The Space Review: What the memo indicates is that there was a difference between the way the civilian agencies of the US government and the military agencies looked at their roles. NASA had ties to the military, but it was clearly a civilian agency. And although the reasons why NASA officials felt that the photo should be released are unknown, the most likely explanation is that NASA officials did not feel that the civilian agency should conceal any of its activities. Many of NASA's relations with other organizations and foreign governments were based on the assumption that NASA did not engage in spying and did not conceal its activities."
Good story, but it would have been interesting to see the actual picture taken by the astronauts in 1974, rather than the Geological Survey pic taken in 1968.
By the way, if you're interested in a higher-resolution look at Area 51, just point your Google Earth to 37 d 14' N, 115 d 49' W.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Area 51 on google maps
= 73034
I watched a History Channel documentary on Area 51 recently titled 'History's Mysteries: Area 51: Beyond Top Secret,' it was very interesting.
Link: http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id
Interesting Area 51 facts:
Area 51 has the longest runways in the world.
Area 51 was the test site for the U2, SR-71, B2, and F-117 aircraft.
Area 51 is heavily guarded, and can only be seen from a mountaintop 24 miles away with a high-powered telescope.
You can scavenge aircraft wreckage from around its perimeter with a metal detector and sometimes are able to see the craft name and manufacturer on some of the pieces.
Area 51 employees bury most of the wreckage of crashed aircraft on its site in order for them not to end up in public scrap yards.
Area 51 has captured Russian Mig and other Russian aircraft which they flew and tested.
Area 51 was first officially acknowledged to exist in 1995 due to lawsuit from some of its employees against the US government.
Area 51 has the largest collection of fully-functional extra-terrestrial spacecraft in our Solar System (okay, I just made that last one up.)
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Better sooner then later, we don't want the server to crash as well as the UFOs, do we? http://www.thespacereview.com.nyud.net:8090/articl e/531/1/
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
i find it funny that the u.s goverment always denies that stuff excists but then the
thing crashes down to earth or a picture is taken of it.... and all of a sudden it
does excist !
Julien. http://free.hostdepartment.com/8/81fortune/
Anybody else think that the only reason the government still denies the existance of area 51 is to keep people looking at it? Makes you wonder why, doesn't it? /conspiracy theory
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Nothing to see here
-AlexC
In our current environment of detainees, secret wiretaps, torture, and the like, I find this article quite timely. The closing paragraph seems rather foreboding:
Nothing more is known of this Skylab photography incident than the fact that the photograph was not released. NASA and the State Department clearly lost the argument. But the opponents of releasing it preserved national security, as they defined it.
It seems that similar discussions are happening around current issues, with leaks aplenty. I wonder who will win the argument now?
I do not see why people always assume that governments should not keep secrets from its citizens. Part of the government's job is to handle issues that the general public should not know about.
There are numerous reasons why the general public has to be kept in the dark about certain issues. It could be so that your average uneducated person does not form irrational beliefs that could cause civil disorder. It could be because the government themselves do not have all of the info yet, and do not want to spread disinformation. It could also be because the information has to be kept hidden from foreign governments.
While any powerful organization has the ability to abuse power, people have to understand that they cannot know everything. There is a reason why information about Area 51 has been kept secretive. It may very well be for the wrong reasons, but there is no proof of that. I for one will just sit back and be comforted that if there are facilities in this government that I cannot learn about, it must be pretty hard for other governments to learn about them too. If I wanted to know more I would join the Air Force and try to get into intelligence, and maybe excel enough to get clearance to these secret government projects.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Magicians call it "misdirection"; they get you looking in one direction so you don't see what's happening elsewhere. All the conspiracy nuts spend so much time obsessing about "Area 51" that they fail to see the government's real conspiracies (war in Iraq, etc.).
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I can imagine that they don't do a lot of flying during the day over there. The real interesting thing would be to watch them with a high-powered telescope with night vision attachment.
You better be walking, with thermal camo, though. They've got sensors everywhere, I'm sure.
Tinfoil hat not included.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Like the Rex84 project where they keep working concentration camps operational that can hold 30 million people total. Infact if you google it there's a website with a list.
Or the MKUltra project where they tried to find truth syrums and abducted/kidnapped and forced marines, soldiers, and homeless people to do experiments.
Or the attack on the USS liberty by the Israeli's to trick America into war against their enemies.
Or the Chemtrails, where they do weather modification experiments using airplanes.
Or HAARP which produced a fucking aurora borealous over New York not too long ago.
Then there's the massive underground highway that apparently exists all over the USA that they use at their convenience.
What did you guys think? The US government, taking damn near 1/3rd of everyone's paycheck PLUS fiat taxing everyone on the planet through printing off dollars PLUS taxing corps up the wazoo isn't going to be doing a lot of secret stuff? How expensive do you really think road paving, policing, and military expenditure really is?
Do you really believe all that dough halliburton has been getting, now probably nearing 100 billion, is going into the pockets of the wealthy so they can buy tootsie rolls and nice cars? Rummy just admitted that the pentagon can't account for 2 TRILLION! Do you think that just vanished into thin air?
It isn't logical to believe so I'm afriad.
Slashdot needs a "Pointless Waste of Time, Rumors and Lame Innuendo" section.
... that is Slashdot.
Oh wait
Mulder got into some secret base in disguise (long story), and the military commander of the base didn't even know where the aircraft they were testing came from, and quietly asked Mulder if they had alien technology in them.
I know people who have worked at Area 51. Let me just say you conspiracy freaks need a more productive and useful hobby. Put down your Art Bell "end of the world" book and go out and get some sun.
Area 51 has been the focus of so much attention for so long, that unsuprisingly it contains little of interest any more, at least for those looking for the more exotic objects.
The alledged testing (I say alledged so you keep reading, because this stuff is documented by multiple testimonies given under oath by verifiable ex-military personnel and ex government contractors) of earth-built anti-gravity discs goes on elsewhere in the Groom range, and they are stored in facilities built into the side of mountains, with the rock faces covered with doors made to look like the rock face itself, obvious given the amount of spy satellites (not all owned by the US military) floating around.
Other rather more exotic research and command and control exists at various other locations, including an underground facility in the desert at Utah reachable only from the air, also Edwards AFB and other AFBs. This stuff is again knwon about through sworn testimony from verifiable personnel.
Of course there is a lot of BS about Area 51, aliens, flying saucers (woooo!) etc. And the subject and area attract wackos like wasps to a honeypot. And yes, you can take the nonsense until proven truth line. But there is truth, it is out there, and you can get to it. It's not all rubbish, there are cover ups, and the truth is stranger than fiction. The Aurora spyplace for example has now been verified to exist through testimony, photographs and other documents.
This is Unintelligent Design at work. Become one of the unbelievers! These articles are like hunks of meat thrown in the 'gator tank. Don't complain about the cut of the meat, just get out the tank.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
See this pen thing in my hand? Just look into the pretty light. You didn't see anything. In fact, neither one of us was ever here!
(/obligatory movie reference)
Besides, everyone knows they moved the UFO wreckage to Area 52. What's really scary, though, is not the wreckage itself, but all the alien pr0n they found on board.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Search for area 51. Pretty darned cool!
what?
Pity your opinion is held by such a large number of people.
Method of processing duck feet
Or maybe it was just a decoy?
The truth is rated a troll. Fuck you, mods.
The US gov't in volved in denials and cover-ups? Uncle Sam wouldn't do that. I believe my gov't when it says there is nothing of interest at area 51. Wanna buy a bridge in NYC?
Meddle thou not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and with most anything.
And the map said "We're sorry, but your IP address, 127.0.0.1, has been logged. Please remain seated."
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
If we weren't detaining people, tapping their phones, and beating information out of someone, I'd be pissed. I'm paying the government to protect me.
If what's going on now is protection, count me out. I try to live a moral life. If the government does something in my name, it damned well better be done in a moral fashion, and not the immoral and illegal current activities.
The "war on terror" is a strawman, to start with. The US was attacked by a single group, with known leaders. It was with them we have issues, not some undefined group of "terrorists," but a very well-defined group originally trained up by the US to fight in Afghanistan in the '80s. We know who the enemy is; we just aren't fighting him very effectively.
Now, how far should the government's protection go? Since the number of people who die in auto accidents is orders of magnitude greater than the deaths in the US due to terrorist activities, should we spend orders of magnitude more money patrolling the roads, just to protect you from a potential accident? Or maybe we should just give up cars entirely. That way, we couldn't die due to accidents on the road.
You are more likely to die from the flu than a terrorist attack. Shouldn't the government spend more money on flu vaccines? You are more likely to be shot by someone you know than shot by a terrorist. Shouldn't the government protect you by taking away all firearms?
Finally, the US government's current actions are increasing the likelihood of dying at the hands of terrorists, not decreasing the risk. If the US government had not betrayed us (and I mean everyone in the world, not just US citizens), if they had behaved morally instead of selfishly and evilly, we would be less likely to suffer a terrorist attack.
Instead, they chose the route to US military dominance and empirialism in the Middle East, no matter the cost. The economic and social and moral fallout from this little adventure will follow the US for many, many years.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Than i fucking retard what? Try to complete a sentence for once.
I am sorry i made a common spelling error, but English isn't my first language and I'd like to see you write fluent Dutch.
Lame Anonymous Coward.
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
http://www.area51-game.com/
"The conspiracy is no longer a theory."
Well, good to know it's all true, 100%.
"...at once point (probably a while ago) we did "capture" a MiG or whatever. I think it went along the lines that he had to land for mechanical failure or we forced him to land or something. In any case, what makes the story stand out is that we eventaully sent the MiG back in several boxes (ie, after we'd taken it apart to see what it had). Any idea if this is true?" Absolutely! Lt. Victor Belenko of the Soviet Air Force actually defected and flew his MIG-25 to Japan. There is a truly outstanding book about this: Mig Pilot: The Final Escape of Lt. Belenko by John Barron. I highly recommend this book as it is a very revealing look at what life in the Soviet Union was like even for "elite" comrades like fighter pilots.
The govt is just not very good at keeping secrets, "Area 51" has to be one of the least well kept secrets in the world, how can conspiracy theorist beleve in huge cover ups such as a JFK conspiracy, fake moon landings or "aliens" when these people arent competent enough to hide a damn building!?
One thing though, if they were unable to "hide" this base, probably newer secret bases have been made underground. They could still be easily located with a satellite thermal scanning (or similar tech). But hey at least they wouldnt appear clear as daylight in satellites.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Btw, why are such areas as that so low-res on Google Map while so good on Google Earth? Also, why are some governmental building edited out in Google Maps, while apparently (didn't check all) not in Google Earth??
You just got troll'd!
...are what's going on at sites 1 through 50.
I mean, this is site number 51 - what's going on at the first fifty?!
Back in college, another guy and I went out on a road trip across the American southwest. We hit Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, the Painted Desert, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and... Area 51. It was a fun trip.
We left Las Vegas early in the morning (late at night?) at about 8 am. By about 10 am, we found ourselves in the middle of a very bland highway, not quite large enough to pass a car but there was no need anyways. Nothing but low lying brush, and hills seen far in the distance. It was otherwise completely flat. Then, we hit our turn signal, at the black mailbox. Thats how you know when to turn... there is a mysterious, good sized, and seemingly random black mailbox sitting out there, so we turned. After going through miles of roads (with many intersections, mind you) through the desert, we eventually hit the hills in the distance, and found ourselves approaching a small valley leading into them.
We pull up to a pair of sign groupings. One on the left, and one on the right. There were orange markers every 5 feet or so to mark a perimeter. We stopped right before the signs, staying safely on our side. As we pull up to the signs, we see about 250 feet away on top of a small hill, a large black truck pulls up and stops on the hill. True story.
Now, my friend is a bit crazier than I. Mind you, these signs read things like "Use of Deadly Force Authorized" "Military Installation Restricted Access" "Photography Prohibited" and all sorts of other things that make you wary of them. So, he opens up the car door and kneels behind it and starts taking pictures of the signs. After photographing the photography prohibited sign that was right next to the use of deadly force authorized sign, he gets a real good idea. He wants to talk to the man in the truck.
Mind you, the orange markers that mark the perimeter go about a quarter way up the hill that the truck is on. So, he hikes over there and is yelling up at this guy. Meanwhile, I'm watching the whole thing go down through the camera. I see my friend walking the line, yelling like a madman. I see the guy in the truck talking into his radio, reach into his backseat and pick up a shotgun. I'm thinking, "This is no good. I'm going to have to drive back to this guy's mother and tell her that I watched her son die." and that was the best case scenario I was thinking of, not the "Oh man, if I see them kill him, they'll kill me in the cover up, too" train of thought. Eventually, the man in the truck rolls down his window and yells something sufficiently threatening to make my friend decide its time to go. And we do. We drive away back to Las Vegas. All in all, the trip was long for such a short sight. Not that great of a trip really, but one hell of a story.
-Da3vid-
Really? Who are the people you know and what did they tell you?
-FL
It was the Spring of 1974. Rosemary Woods had just erased 18 1/2 minutes from a tape lying around the office when she opened a canister of undeveloped film that someone from NASA had sent, exposing it to the light. It was an accident, honest!
FEMA got exactly what they wanted out of Katrina.
The sports dome concentration camp was a working excercise, not a failure. You have every reason to be concerned.
-FL
Btw, why are such areas as that so low-res on Google Map while so good on Google Earth? Also, why are some governmental building edited out in Google Maps, while apparently (didn't check all) not in Google Earth??
I imagine the resolution on Google Maps is restricted because of the sheer number of pre-cached tiles at every possible resolution it would take to make it available to a huge number of users simultaneously. It's simpler to just restrict that and keep the data set smaller. Now in Google Maps, I imagine they can predict where to pre-cache imagery based on where the user is browsing with direct feedback from the client.
As for "governmental building edited out", check out this article at NYTimes, where Andrew McLaughlin, a senior policy counsel at Google rebuffs this idea. "Nor, he said, has the United States government ever asked Google to remove information."
And more specifically, "For a brief period, photos of the White House and adjacent buildings that the United States Geological Survey provided to Google Earth showed up with certain details obscured, because the government had decided that showing details like rooftop helicopter landing pads was a security risk. Google has since replaced those images with unaltered photographs of the area taken by Sanborn, a mapping and imagery company, further illustrating the difficulty of trying to control such information."
Did anyone see the press release from a few months ago where SETI announced that if they ever do recieve contact from extraterrestrials they will inform the US government before the media and allow the government to decide whether to release the information to the general population? What a bunch of bullshit. I expected better of SETI. They just lost privilges to use my computer for computing while I'm not using it...
To alcohol and cigarettes and Mary-Jane to keep me insane doing someone else's cocaine
Your points are only valid in as much as there are people out there who would try to hurt or abuse you for personal or national gain if they learn your secret information.
In a world where there are Sharks like this, there will inevitably be Sharks within your own walls. It's a flaw in the human condition and therefore, as we have seen from countless examples, the systems we use to keep secrets will be abused by Sharks trying to hurt the people they are supposed to protect for their personal gain.
It is a not necessarily a no-win situation. You can pursue a life which does not interest Sharks, you can learn how to avoid, repel and kill Sharks on a personal level, or you can leave the Shark Tank altogether.
Believing, however, that the secret organizations and the government in general is benign and exists with the pure intent to help you and protect you, is like swimming with your eyes shut. The Sharks like that.
-FL
Bad assumption. I've been involved in two private aircraft crash investigations, including securing the scenes for one of them. Debris from the first was isolated to the hole it dug. The other was spread over a mile, with the key components in explaining the crash being found half a mile from the spot where the majority of the aircraft impacted.
A previous incident at the same airport (AF tanker exploded overhead) rained debris over many square miles. Catastrophic failures, which can happen when pushing aircraft to their limits, do not make for compact crash sites or easy recovery of all debris.
How come /. is not vulnerable to the /. effect? Text only? Super servers?
Most of the big successes came from the Lockheed "Skunk Works". The Skunk Works is gone. The hangars in Burbank were abandoned, and have now been demolished. Another great R&D center lost.
Similarly, once everyone learned about the UN's black helicopters, they repainted them in other colors.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Interesting, I think you should write the producers of the History Channel's 'History's Mysteries' and ask them how could they have gotten it all so wrong?
I am astonished at how you know more about Area 51 than their writers did.
Just for fun, can you post some of the links you have seen about the 1-2 meter resolution photos of Area 51? We all would love to see them.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Does anyone remember the NASA tether experiment? Is the video footage (torrent) censored, officially released or what?
(emphasis mine)
Bob Lazarus told us the truth, as Area51 is full of alien and reptile nazi "Vril" and "Thule" saucer craft. The yankee are trying to find a remedy against the reptile nazi, who will come out of the Antarctica in 2045 and take over the world with their wunderwaffen and clone army. The saucers have anti-gravity propulsion which uses liquid mercury boiling in iron pots. These are derived from the ancient age aryan "vimana" saucers, which can deliver chakra blasts on the enemy.
Everybody already knows they've already admitted that the base exists, its just they deny that its used to store aliens - which is something any self-respecting person would do - lest the rest of the world think they are crazy. The whole lakebed where the base is at is just a damn airfield for prototype planes - not a storage place for dead aliens or a tunnel to hell.
And BTW: there ARE other bases in the area, named with similar "Area #", with a random number.
I was amused to see that while you can get a perfectly good picture of Area 51 from Google Maps, Area 51 does not show on the FAA aircraft navigation charts (e.g. the Las Vegas VFR sectional chart). Groom Lake itself is on the map, but there is no sign of any aircraft facilities.
The Las Vegas chart is also the only one I've seen that threatens deadly force if you don't do as you're told by The Authorities.
The whole point of these charts is to provide information to pilots, including the nearest place to land if they're in trouble. Suppressing Area 51 must have taken some pretty high-level string-pulling.
...laura
Real or not? I tend to giv
Yes. But you see... the Migs the Soviet Union sold to Middle East crackpots where in no way the same machines that defend the Motherland. For starters the export machines have a crippled electronics package, lower quality radar and I'm sure other parameters of the plane have also been considerably downgraded. Capturing these machines didn't tell the analysts much about what the real McCoy can do. This incidentally is why it is so extremely important for nations like India and China to develop their own weapon systems.
Instead of viewing area 51 in google maps by entering its coordinates, you can simply search for Area 51 and it pops right up.
"It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss
With all these marbles in my mouth"
The MiG-15 in question, for which the reward money was paid, is now in the Wright Patterson AFB museum in Ohio. I remember seeing it as a kid and just a few days ago read about it in the book I purchased at the museum at that time.
They actually got photos of Area 51-A.
I heard they painted them pink
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I think the parent is on to something. If you check out Google Earth lat: 3714'28.70"N lon: 11549'21.46"W you can make out what appears to be a baseball diamond. Now do you think that the government and the MLB aren't in cahoots?
You can access full-colour, high-quality (well, not thaat bad) from google earth just by typing area 51 into the search bar.
there are a milion diferent ways to say 'lol'. Its a pity that no-ones laughing.
Back when the SR71 Blackbird, U2 Spyplane, B2 Bomber, F117 Nighthawk and other "secret" aircraft were being developed out at Groom Lake, no-one outside of the military knew about them. Therefore, anyone non-military seeing one flying overhead near Area 51 would be able to legitimatly claim that they saw an Unidentified Flying Object. I wouldnt be surprised if the US Air Force is testing (or planning to test) the next "black" aircraft out at Groom Lake. (I saw a documentary somewhere about a "secret" triangular aircraft supposedly called the Aurora)
Try entering just "area 51" in the search dialog box of http://maps.google.com/
I accept that governments have legitimate reasons for keeping secrets from their populace.
However, I think that there is an important bit of self-examination that needs to take place on the part of those in government. This can be summed up in one question: If the people of this country were to find out tomorrow what I've been doing, would they approve?
Developing things like the SR-71 or other advanced defense technologies would probably be seen as legitimate by most of the U.S. population. On the other hand, developing, say, biological weapons to use against civilians would probably not. Sooner or later, every secret will get out. The Blackbird did, the F-117 did, the Trinity project did, Watergate did, and the testing of Syphilis study on poor Blacks did, the use of the Navajo language as a code in WWII did. Secrecy is temporary, but some revelations are met with approval, and some with outrage.
If you are a politician, military leader, intelligence operative, or anything of the sort, consider: Sooner or later, your child or grandchild will learn about what you did, When that happens, will you be proud? If everyone in government asked him/herself this every day, a lot of scandals would be averted.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Do my eyes fail me, or is that a baseball diamond in the NW corner of the Google Earth map of Area 51?
I'd heard that the ballclub from Sirius is looking to do better this year. Last year was a real dog for them... But I'd heard that the team from Betelgeuse are looking to take the Universal Series this year, and I think that they have the arms to do it... Also, I think that the Astros are looking to draft that hot young prospect from Rigel, so... Looks like it'll be a great season!
Cheers...
Don't get caught in hair-splitting.
The primary federal measures, of which FEMA is a tool, were geared toward keeping outside and civilian rescue/aid efforts away, and toward delaying the execution of emergency aid worker duties for several days after Katrina had struck. The Superdome travesty was a direct result of deliberate federal mal-intent.
-FL
It's Somebody Else's Problem.
she's discussing it now, years later, after the president gave her the ok to go and discuss,
after the reporters got the ok to write the story, after EVERYBODY STARTED TALKING ABOUT IT, YEARS AFTER ITS BEEN GOING ON YOU DILLHOLE
Nobody is FEMA's puppet. FEMA is a tool of the Federal government.
However, the stories I read early on during the crisis painted a picture where Blanco was following advisement offered by FEMA to restrict aid to the city in order to expedite evacuation. In this same spirit, the governor was told not to send in the city's fleet of 500 busses, because FEMA advised that they did not have air conditioning which could be dangerous to the victims, and that the state should wait until FEMA supplied better transport. She followed these and other instructions for two days until it became obvious that the feds were not planning to help, at which point she acted on her own.
And keep in mind, it was FEMA which did the bulk of rescue-prevention. They were certainly not acting under state orders or advisement.
The spin which has Blanco deliberately twiddling her thumbs by not making formal requests for federal assistance are also patently false. She asked and was ignored. The feds claimed to have taken two days to process the paperwork.
The stories I've seen which actively villify Blanco seem to be spearheaded by FOX news, one of the least subtle federal psyops assets. Blanco may have made bad calls, but she was a dupe.
-FL