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."

Comments

A fun little theory

[grasshoppa]

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

Re:A fun little theory

[njfuzzy]

Area 51 is the site that publically "doesn't exist". Probably a good way to draw attention away from more classified places.

Government Secrecy

[ranton]

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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Re:Government Secrecy

[Surt]

It could be so that your average uneducated person does not form irrational beliefs that could cause civil disorder.

That's not a valid reason. Follow that path far enough and the government can keep you deliberately uneducated to prevent civil disorder. A government that does this is evil.

It could be because the government themselves do not have all of the info yet, and do not want to spread disinformation.

That's semi-valid, though in most cases it would be preferable for the government to release any information that only fell into this category couched in phrasing that makes it clear that the information is not reliable or incomplete.

It could also be because the information has to be kept hidden from foreign governments.

That's valid, though a well designed government should require that such information be reviewed regularly, so that it can be released as soon as it is stale.

In general, the government should keep as few secrets from its people as possible, otherwise you're on your way to fascism.

Re:Government Secrecy

[bear_phillips]

The problem is not in keeping secrets from the general public. The problem is certain parts of the government keeping secrets from ELECTED officials. With the current administration a large number examples have popped up where elected officials where kept in the dark. When certain parts of the government hide information from elected officials, then the government looses any accountabilty. Without accountability then we don't have a democracy. The current administrations secret wiretaps, prisons etc.. is a huge example. I am not so much upset that the general public didn't know, but my elected official sure as hell should have known about it.

Re:Government Secrecy

[ScentCone]

Trusting your government is not a good idea, at least not until they've earned it, and then only two years at a time.

So, what... do we declassify everything every two years just to make sure it's all completely benign by everyone's standards, everywhere? The whole point of intelligence committees made up of your elected representatives is to regularly rotate in some people that can do a sanity check on the policies that are at work, here. Likewise, you can't operate a place like Area 51 without the bugetary approval of a lot of people. And it's not like they get one big bank transfer every year... their funds are approved/disapproved on a project-by-project basis.

The whole point of being able to quietly work on things like the SR-71 (and its more recent offspring) is to have the ability to actually use it for a while before the people it's intended to help watch fully understand the capability. Don't you think it's helpful to know as much as possible about where North Korea and Iran are parking specific pieces of their nuke infrastructures? Sure, we're getting more of that from orbit than from things being flown out of the Nevada desert, but the principle is the same: operational details made public to every citizen are thus made public to every person in the world.

I'm intensely curious about this sort of stuff, and know people in the intel line of work, but I'm very glad that I can't personally get all the details... because I don't want the guys running Taiwan-aimed Chinese missile batteries knowing them, either.

That being said, I vote every chance I get, and think long and hard about each candidate's posture on intel, degrees of budget transparency, etc. It's a fine line to walk. I don't like wasting money, I don't like pointless power grabs... but I also like knowing that, when guys on the ground in northern Pakistan sieze a laptop from a local Al Queda franchise office, that we can be - in very short order - listening in on the calls to/from the phone numbers that were stored that same day in someone's cheesily encrypted ZIPped jihaddi speed-dial spreadsheet that includes Long Island zip codes. And park a drone over the little hut in the Afghani countryside (or Syrian suburb) that's handling the calls.

Or, if you're not into that sort of thing, how about knowing that there are undercover cops infiltrating urban gangs? My city has a huge problem with central American gangs. Rapes, murder, robbery - the whole gambit. I do not want the general public knowing the names, faces, and addresses of the men and women who are tasked with breaking up those little fiefdoms. So, I trust my city and county governments with some somewhat more localized secret stuff. I have to. So, I vote for decent people to run the show. And I vote for decent people to have a hand in the legislative process that funds the executive people. It's not perfect, but it's necessary.

Re:A Closer Look

[JasonBee]

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

Re:Timely piece

[murderlegendre]

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.

Protect and Serve

[Tony]

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.

Re:A Closer Look

[Syberghost]

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.