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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.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Area 51 on google maps
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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
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
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-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.
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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
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.
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.
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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-
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
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