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Cheyenne Mountain Shutting Down
WilliamSChips writes "The United States military has announced that they are shutting down the facility at Cheyenne Mountain, home to the high-tech NORAD which tracks every object in the sky. NORAD's operations will be moved to the nearby Peterson Air Force base. The mountain facility is being placed on standby in case they need it again." From the article: "The Cheyenne Mountain center, at the eastern foot of the Rockies near the base of Pikes Peak, was constructed underground in the mid-1960s. Fearing nuclear attacks at the time, the United States built sites such as the Cheyenne Mountain complex. The Navy prepared a floating White House aboard the communications cruiser USS Northampton, in case the president needed to be evacuated from U.S. soil. Another protective bunker was created near White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., for members of Congress."
The stargate program is being expanded...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Let's put it up for auction! This would be a really cool geek house. It would be even better than living in an old missile silo!
That's all we care about here.
I hope they're taking the Santa tracking equipment with them!
Stargate command is humanities first and last line of defense against the Goa'uld^H^H^HOri threat.
Ahh. Who am I kidding. The show ended in the eighth season. The last two episodes caped it perfectly. It was time to decommission. Adios.
May the Maths Be with you!
"Let's go burn down the observatory so this never happens again!"
They probably have another "secret" base to do this work from.
It's just like them abandoning area 51. It's too public. The whole world knows about Cheyenne mountian.
You can probably find some good satellite photos on Google.
Where are they going to move the Stargate to then?
Will WOPR have the same phone number if it's moved too?
Will they auction off the contents? I've always wanted a stargate or *gasp* even better... a Puddle jumper!
But Wait... where does this leave Atlantis?
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
I bet that would make a good house. I wonder how long before the US sells this former base.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Maybe now we can take time out to port Linux to the WOPR. How about a nice game of GnuChess?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Wouldn't be a bad job to be one of the handful of people maintaining the facility. You've got your own underground world that you only have to shave with a dozen othre people. Install some fun tubes, slides, and ball pits, and you've got yourself a cool clubhouse.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
What is the Canadian military doing inside the complex? As a European I simply can't understand that part.
"Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Defense Department has spent about $700 million to upgrade early-warning systems at the Cheyenne Mountain center. A report this month by the Government Accountability Office said the upgrade has been "fraught with cost increases, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls." But a few paragraphs down you read: ' "A missile attack from China or Russia is very unlikely," Keating said, according to a transcript of a recent interview with the Denver Post.' I dont know about all of you, but it makes me wonder why their is such a "necessity" to spend billions upon a "missle defence" program, when the two countries who would pose the most serious threat of such an attack (I mean from a technological/monetary standpoint. Sure other countries would gladly launch ICBM's etc, into the US, but -can- they?) can be labelled as unlikely to launch such an attack...
It looks like Ill have to find a new place to play bridge, poker, checkers, tic-tac-toe, chess, and global thermonuclear war.
They're clearing it out so when Skynet goes online, John Connor will have somewhere to go and lead the rest of us to victory.
You mean "deep space telemetry" program.
So, if I was a hostile nation that could sneak one suitcase bomb into the US, couldn't I just set it off near the AFB they're moving NORAD to before launching my missles?
I'd kill all the NORAD personnel, and even if they were others it'd take them a few hours to get the mountain up and running. By then the missles will have already flown.
The Internet is generally stupid
So much protection for the president and to preserve the politics and office of the U.S. Whitehouse but trampling all over citizens' rights. Nice.
DIBBS on it! Mine, mine, mine. What a party shack that would be. Man, no noise complaints with that big assed door they have.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
Nooo! Wherever will we shoot our 1980's cult films now?!
My fearless leader.....Dick Cheney....keeps telling me how we are in imminent danger of some rogue state, North Korea, Iraq, Iran or terrorist group, lobbing a nuke at us. On the one hand we have the whole "mushroom cloud" syndrome, and now the Pentagon tells me our penultimate bunker isn't really needed any more to defend our command and control center from a "mushroom cloud". Cheyenne Mountain actually wasn't worth much during the cold war when our main adversary had multi megaton nukes. It actually might stand up to the kiloton class nukes rogue states and terrorist groups are most likely to get. So we move command and control to a place where it will be relatively easy to destroy and decapitate one of the most critical command and control centers we have. And we do it AFTER we spend $700 million in a failed attempt to upgrade the one we are closing down. You really have to wonder if the people in charge really are completely incompetent to manage their own affairs let alone those of a superpower.
@de_machina
I am sure some narcistic, evil doctor would be very interested in acquiring a cave of his own (raises pink) muhahaha !
Or, on a more serious note, we could just make a nice secure colocation facility there, beats Sealand or something like Virtu (and there are more like that)...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
According to wikipedia, it was the home of Skynet.
Just as well it's closing.
The Machine stops.
It seems to me as if this facility has outlived it's usefulness anyways. It's not so much a "secret" facility that few people know about, rather it's security comes basically from the fact that it's in a mountain. If some country wanted to attack us, all it would take would be to rain a couple nukes down on that mountain and it's out of commission. I'd like to see the work that this facility handles be moved to a top-secret location, it's simply too important to be common knowledge anymore. In actuality, it's probably one of the top 10 targets in a first-strike against the US -- and I think slapping it into some office building at an airbase is strategically irresponsible.
I wonder what they will really use it for, now that they're saying they're moving NORAD
Na, all you need is faith the size of a mustard seed.
Cheyanne Mountain is in Colorado Springs near Ft. Carson. and about an one hour and fourty minutes away from Pike's Peak (by car).
No one of consequence
for them to realize the cold war is over. Pretty damn speedy for the military actually...
Monstar L
goose
BLASPHEMY. Teal is an Alien dammit.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Yes yes, military business and nuclear weapons are all well and good, but answer me this: Will they still be tracking Santa?
Sorry, that was supposed to read USA (isin) North America using the proper HTML entity name, but evidently Slashdot can't handle high school math.
If I recall the History Channel correctly, it would take more than a couple nukes to reach the facility...
The disposal of one of our local bunkers made the papers a while ago. The bunker would be useless in a nuclear war. On the other hand, it would provide a real problem for the local police if it got into the hands of the Hell's Angels or someone like that. The bottom line was that there was no way the bunker was going to end up in private hands.
Someone needs to keep an eye on the BTC pipeline, if only the US were at war with Syria and Iran.
The bunker in White Sulphur Springs has the "pos" Green Brier resort above it, and you can take tours of the facility.
Cheyenne was built for a massive nuclear exchange between powers - when one could rely on most of the U.S. being wiped off the earth and the U.S. needed to maintain the capability to strike back in that event as a deterrent.
Present threats - including those that you describe - do not have that capability. They have the ability to destroy a handful of cities at most, and a response is ensured through other means, without having to rely on this particular base any longer.
The threat has changed - the U.S. is adapting to threats armed with only a handful of nukes rather than enough to kill us all.
Is it just me, or is the phrase "Mountain Shutting Down" from the title strange?
It's just that I don't see a huge lot of Mountains shutting down - volcanoes maybe...
The facility was never a secret. It was well known even at the time of construction. The point of choosing the location was that it was very well shielded from nuclear attack.
> The Navy prepared a floating White House aboard the communications cruiser USS Northampton
So _that's_ where Cheney's "undisclosed location" is...
It isnt being shut down per se...
It's just getting its day-to-day stuff put elsewhere, while everything else that doesnt fall under that category is staying running.
DONT WORRY THE STARGATE PROGRAM IS FINE.
Oh ho, I had to say that last thing..
Just imagine, a Communist country run by a dictator who's repeatedly threatened to attack the US is believed to have nuclear weapons. With no warning, an ICBM is launched and according to tracking, is headed towards a US state.
Once upon a time, a response while the missile was in the air would've been expected, now it just means another press secretary task. No immediate action is taken until they see where the missile lands.
vi? Who's that?
I'd love to know what's important enough, and requires the kind of privicy Cheyenne mountain provides, to take Norad's place.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Nope. They'll sell it off to somebody.
There are plenty of old missile silos that were purchased by folks. Can you imagine if this were purchased by any big company. say, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, SCO, or Google?
Can you imagine what they would do?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
GWB has been won over as a Prior of the Ori.
They're shutting the base down to save money, while the wasting of dump trucks full of cash on the Iraq mess (and yes, lives as well) continues unabated as it has since 2003.
I really don't know how anything this administration does still manages to surprise me.
This is where the whole "Commander in Chief" thing really comes in handy. "Ok, Navy, I'm going to need a heavily armored and mobile communications center in case of emergency. Congressfolks -- ah, you all are on your own".
No, teal is a color. Teal'c is an alien.
Yep. No doubt about it; it's closing down alright *wink*
It's now out of action - nothing going on in there anymore *smirk*
Things sure will be different now that Cheyenne Mountain is ceasing all operations *nudge*
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I was sort of disconcerted that someone has moderated me "informative". LMFAO.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
huh, i use to goto the zoo on top of cheyenne mountain as a kid
I looked at the tag "Stargate" and the Stargate reference in the dept heading and looked at the summary.
"Damn kids!" I thought to myself...and I am not that old.
If I had the points today I would have modded it up myself.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I've never watched this Stargate that they're all blabbing about.
I've seen WarGames many times, and that's the visual I get when I think of Cheyenne Mountain.
My mom says I'm cool.
Well, it is an odd character that comes from above.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
#>mput *.moviehumor
#>put "Shall... we... play... a... game...?"?
#>y
#>Sorry Dave, can't do that right now...
But seriously... why would the government/military choose to put it on "warm standby" just now? Is it just budgetary?
Sometimes shutting down stuff saves money, yes... but sometimes the costs aren't readable in print on a budget page...
A Passionate Independent Musician
they had better be damn cool and have fricken laser beams coming out of them
I hear that those damn Loonies have been hurtling down boulders every couple of minutes since 2076...
Isn't this where John Connor ended up in the movie after the robots nuked the entire world?
There were two ships, the Northhampton and the Wright. One was always at sea while the other was in port. I was on the USS Wright for a couple of years and it was a pretty cool place to be if you had to be somewhere in the Navy. During our 2-week cruise we would sail to some vacation resort (St. Thomas, St. Croix, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, etc) and tie up for a week. That was our "cruise". See, it carried so many top brass that us peons had it pretty good too - THEY didn't want to paddle around for 2 weeks at a time, so we always put in at some really nice port along the eastern seaboard. Captain was even nice enough to let us bring our motorcycles along. Like at San Juan, we had to report in at 8AM for a roll call, then we got on our bikes and toured the island until the next morning. The ship though, was something else. It was a converted aircraft carrier with a humongous antenna farm on the flight deck. The entire rear section of the ship was a powerful VLF transmitter, with vacuum tubes taller than I am. Each stage of the transmitter was in its own compartment (like the "Pi Network Room" sign on the door). They had this helicopter with twin interlocking blades (no tail rotor) that hauled a cable to 10,000 feet for the VLF antenna - the most powerful VLF transmitter in the world at that time (talking about ERP). All the pilot did was take off and land, as it was flown from the ship most of the time it was airborne. Most of the ship was off limits to everyone I knew, and all I did was calibrate & repair electronic test equipment. Ever see the bow of a carrier underwater? Like they say, it's an adventure. :)
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
No more short trips to the Pegasus galaxy I guess. Seems I have to rethink my next holiday destination.
Um, I actually thought the question about "what is the Stargate?" was sarcasm.
Looking at the responses, I'm actually supprised that wasn't the case.
I'll throw in my sarcastic explanation of Stargate anyways:
Stargate is where the writers thought, "Hey lets grab the aging McGuyver, give him machine guns and have him fight Aliens throughout the Galaxy. We can team him up with a buxom science babe (doing a military version of the sexy librarian thing), a Stoic warrior guy like Worf (but with fewer head ridges) and a Indiana Jones type academic guy (but more know-it-all). The whole thing can be done with an ancient Egyptian theme with cool pyramids and crystals and stuff. We can make it all work by using a lesser known gaming system like Tri-Tac's Fringeworthy Roleplaying game. We can do a film, maybe even a series or two, with lots of explosions and special effects stuff, it'll be really cool".
Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.
Now everyone and their dog knows exactly where it is, they've built a new one somewhere that's actually secret.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
...in the 90's when I was an exchange cadet at the US Air Force Academy. They gave us a tour of the place -- it really was quite amazing.
The coolest thing was seeing all the "buildings" in there (yes, it is like a big open cave with buildings inside) mounted on massive steel springs. Also cool was seeing that the main access shaft goes (IIRC) completely through the mountain. The internal rooms are built behind a massive blast door or two (i.e. huge bank-vault-style doors) off to the side of the tunnel. That is to let a blast wave pass right through the mountain supposedly and not just bash against the blast doors.
The most disappointing thing was finding out that the War Room was nothing like in the movies -- it is a tiny room about the size of a normal living room stuffed with computers (no "big board" or giant screens). There are only about 6-10 people working in there at any one time (lead by a one-star general/admiral).
Some people just aren't creative enough to write funny posts. It's okay. I'm sure you are good at other things.
There goes The Big Board.
qz
Stargate SG-1 will follow suit
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Wow.
Sarcasm usually has some basis in reality, unlike your post.
As far as I know, Kurt Russell never played McGuyver....
Check out the entrance to Cheyenne Mountain using Google Earth or Google Maps. Here's the link for maps.google.com.
The GPS coordinates are 38 deg. 44.6568 min. N. 104 deg. 50.8083 min. W.
Nice resolution, Google!
With highly redundant networks, the
destruction of one command center isn't as important as it was when
information was limited to one location. Also there may be a new super
secret command center no-one knows about.
I'm not a cop so I don't know all the ins and outs of the situation. I do know that law enforcement has a problem with fortified houses and bunkers. They're illegal in lots of places. The first time this came to my attention was when the cops tried to raid such a house. It was part of a complex of row houses and the cops ended up burning down the whole block (by accident) trying to arrest the inhabitants.
g s/evidence/justev16-e.htm
The link below is to a debate in the Canadian house of parlament where the issue is discussed.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/infocomdoc/37/1/just/meetin
the imminent inevitable nuclear attack by tourists that all you yanks fear?
It isn't that impressive. It's tunneled out of rock. There are mobile homes on springs, and triple-redundant communications, utilities, alternate methods for air, water, food, etc. The big steel door is huge, something like 50 tons, but it's perfectly balanced, you could move it with one had... though it'd take a bit to get it started and stopped.
There are cracks in the stone above and all around, water drips every so often, and periodically, little rocks fall from the cracks. In places, they have bolts and fence holding the rocks UP. I visited in the mid-90's, after they had just spent $1.5 billion "refurbishing" the place.
I doubt that it would ever have held up to a thermonuclear blast. Fission, maybe, but not one of the big 40 megaton bombs.
They could just as well monitor this stuff from the Pentagon.
An actual piece of equipment was issued the asset tag WOPR-{numbers}....
It's a transformer located in a alcove in a back corridor.
I've seen it and some wag reprinted the asset tag with 24point type.
I was stationed in NORAD in the mid '80s, so it may no longer exist.
I think you mean Global ThermoGNU/clear War.
This story was rejected a couple days ago when I submitted it. Go ahead. Mod me down. LOL.
But you're forgetting about the principle of sunk cost.
Hypothetically, if we've spent $700 million to upgrade a facility in the past, this is no reason to spend much more to maintain that facility in the future when cheaper alternatives exist now. I can imagine that keeping Cheyenne properly stocked is an expensive proposal when compared with the new plan. If a cheaper proposal exists that suffices present needs, then it should reasonably be used.
In any case, Cheyenne is not entirely deactivated, just temporarily moth-balled against future needs. We can't get back the $700 million already spent on upgrades, so why should we continue to pay more into the future simply because we've made an investment?
I'd agree that Russia is not completely out of the picture, however the odds of a Russian missile launch now are much lower when compared with other threats. In any case, one could reasonbly assume that a political development of the type you describe would occur with enough time to anticipate the potential problem and reactivate Cheyenne. From a brief look around, it does not appear that ABMs are controlled from Cheyenne, either, although their forward control is listed as being in Colorado Springs (near Cheyenne).
In any case, thanks for pointing out some faults in my original post. I failed to elaborate.
On the serious side, I could care less if the commander has to sit in traffic. That sucks for him..Suck it up and do your job!
On the crazy side..Who says they are REALLY closing it? Sounds like the perfect cover story to use it for something else. It seems rather odd they would spend all that money just to close it down
I bet they've actually moved operations somewhere that nobody could ever conceive of...
Like maybe an oil rig out in the middle of the ocean... of course they'd be running back and forth in special tankers equipped with real secure 1GB 802.99z encryption keys...
Cheyenne Mountain will probably be turned into some sort of experimental Vault where people can maybe ride out a nuclear war. I wonder what number they'd give it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
If the aliens can take it out, whats the point of having it under the mountain?
That's damn funny stuff - I'm still laughing here. Well played =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'll buy it for one million dollars and use it for my underground lair.
How is that sarcasm? It's the truth, and now they're rich.
hm, I'd consider a nuclear war (or nukular, if you're a moron) a great opportunity to rid ourselves of the wasted space passing for politicians. Protecting them, especially since they're the ones who probably brought the war on in the first place, is just crazy talk. Reminds me of "Doctor Strangelove"
I thought they were just playing Jepoardy!
...(paranoia mode on) just constructed this giant bunker housing 200000 people.
Now lets see, do the US AND China plan on something ? (paranoia mode off)
In the future, America/Canada and mexico will form one EU style AUnion. Its
all documented at spp.gov . And many points are still secret btw. This
whole thing is gona really shake up usa in terms of that lots of new laws/regulations
will be made that are written by 'neocons' that are not voted in. And we know
the house just passes bills without reading them... so there is no real democracy, just a sharade.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Last year, however, they apparently unveiled a bigger room: http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2005-03-10/news.html. The picture is small, but it looks like they might have cut out the conference room and added the space that used to be that room and whatever was under it to the control room.
Another neat thing was the water reservoir; I don't know if there was more than the one we saw. It was an open pool, not very deep, in a long side tunnel with a bare rock roof.
The mountain facility is being placed on standby in case they need it again
John Connor will use it. Just wait and see.
It's been known for quite some time now...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
What about shelters for the general population? Where's the civil defense corps?
Constitutionally Correct
Please don't waste mod points modding this up funny, all I did was notice that it only took a couple of hours for the mods to ignore P's request.
In addition, please don't donate money to my PayPal acct.
...and you can keep your pron, too.
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
I don't think "buxom" is the fisrt word that comes to mind when describing Samantha Carter... More like soccer mom, but without the kids, or minivan, or soccer. Basically all the good and none of the bad.
Except wasn't it movie first, then tv series?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
There's a really cool derelict facility about an hour north of Great Falls Montana. It's in the middle of stinking nowhere but the place is HUGE. The part that's above ground has steel-reinforced concrete about 5-6 feet think with rebar about 3 inches in diameter. Rumor has it that there are numerous subterrainean level but there isn't any exposed access.
I bet you lose a lot of money a poker. It doesn't matter how much you've sunk into the pot, if it's time to fold, you fold.
Not that they are exactly mothballing the place. Just moving the day to day operations out.
But will John Connor still track Santa when he jumps through a Stargate with the WOPR? Shall...we...auction...it...off? Or we could rent it out! We could rent it! Rent! We!
Penultimate means next to last rather than last. Unless there's some last resort beyond Cheyene Mountain, the word you want is ultimate.
Trivia: Antepenultimate is second to last.
You know, you're right. The movie was first. It was series writers who thought most of that.
The movie writers probably thought something like: "hey lets do a movie and put Snake Blisken and an Academic Indians Jones in outer space fighting Egyptian aliens..."
After the semi-successful movie, the SG1 series writers then probably thought: "Well Snake's (Kurt Russel) Agent says he's not available for TV work, lets get McGuyver, add a ridge-challenged Worf and Some science hottie babe. They looked around and didn't find anyone with big enough breasts who could do a military scientist type and eventually settled on Amanda Tapping who is buxom enough (NSFW and it's a joke) to satisfy most geeks while being able to speak two technobable sentences in a row without too much embarrassment."
It wasn't until later that they hired 7 of 9 and put her in a leather bodice to be Worf's (T'elk's) babe de'jour. With the series writers thinking "Wow ratings are good, but they could be even better, if we add even bigger breasts to the cast. Who's on the Sci-fi big boobs call list? Oh yeah, Jeri Ryan (7of 9)"
Note BTW that, snideness aside, I love the Stargate and Atlantis Series and while I do claim to be sarcastic, I don't claim to be very funny
Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.
In the second story of the "All-New, All-Different" X-MEN (the run which changed the X-Men from a failed 60's team to its current mega-star status), a villain assaulted Cheyenne Mountain; in the process of defeating him, one of the new team (Thunderbird) was killed. Interestingly enough, this info is in the Wiki entry for Cheyenne Mountain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain).
R David Francis
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
Interesting, I didn't realize that karma was flammable. Maybe that is why they are moving operations out of Cheyenne Mountain; to provide better notice of impending karma attacks!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.