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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."
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!
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.
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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The article states the the picture taken by those astronauts wasn't of high resolution, therefore nothing could really be seen from the photo (other than the fact that it was there). It was more the fact that the photo itself was taken against the rules laid out and that they were able to take the photo and see where it was.
Fractured Element
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 guess public space imagery matters if your biggest military rivals don't have their own satellites. Our biggest rival in 1974 was in space before we were, so I don't see what made this such an issue.
Well fie on them - Google doesn't own any satellites last I checked.
If you want to buy sub 1-metre resolution satellite pics just go the SPOT consortium in
France. Any interested parties will BUY their data at FAR greater resolution than what
Google supplies.
Meh
Pity your opinion is held by such a large number of people.
Method of processing duck feet
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.
Careful now.. if and when they come for you, there may be no one left to say anything.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
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.
OMFG mod that one FUNNY!!!! ROFL!!!
I was being serious....
There are too many problems with your statement.
For one thing, it's in the form of the classic "friend of a friend" urban myth.
For another thing, of course that's what a responsible Area 51 staffer would say, whether it was true or not.
For another thing, it's entirely possible that the alleged staffer was not cleared to know about the non-man-made things that may or may not be there, and so may not actually know what he's talking about.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
You know, for someone who knows you can look at it from above, you appear to never have actually done so.
It quite clearly has a concrete runway extending across that dried lake bed. There are even lines painted on it, and there are X's painted on it at 1000 foot intervals.
According to Google Earth, that length of concrete is slightly more than 24,000 feet, with 13,000 of it paved on normal ground and 11,000 paved on the lake bed.
However, looking that the markings of the arrow, and the fact the X's mark off 1000 feet from the arrow, and the fact there is sand that has blown over the edge at one end, it looks like only the 18,000 feet past the arrow are used, about 11,000 feet on normal ground and 7000 feet on the lake bed. Which still beats everything else. (And, on top of that, it has an unpaved 2500 foot area that is clearly for planes that go off the end.)
Now, there are two other runways of 10,000 and 11,000 feet, respectively, that are merely outlines on a lakebed. And there is a 14,000 foot runway on normal groud, and something that's 7500 feet that might be a runway, or might just be a taxiway, I can't tell. (There's a plane parked there on Google Earth! It looks like a standard airplane, but has something weird going on with a wing.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I guess public space imagery matters if your biggest military rivals don't have their own satellites. Our biggest rival in 1974 was in space before we were, so I don't see what made this such an issue.
Your biggest rivals are not your only rivals, and what they think they know may not be 100% correct.
Torture is about expediently forcing someone to sign a bit of paper so you can tell everyone the crime is solved, it isn't about law enforcement.
Well, it would have been pretty stupid to set up a secret facility such that any asshat could land there with impunity, simply by faking mechanical difficulties with their aircraft.
Seems to me the civilian pilot community is much better off being absolutely clear that Area 51 isn't an option, and getting in the habit of having other contingency plans besides landing at Groom Lake.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.