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Protesters Launch a 135-Foot Blimp Over the NSA's Utah Data Center
Dega704 sends this news from Wired:
Plenty of nightmare surveillance theories surround the million-square-foot NSA facility opened last year in Bluffdale, Utah. Any locals driving by the massive complex Friday morning saw something that may inspire new ones: A massive blimp hovering over the center, with the letters NSA printed on its side.
Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the 135-foot thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency's mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform. The full message on the blimp reads 'NSA: Illegal Spying Below' along with an arrow pointing downward and the Stand Against Spying URL."
Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the 135-foot thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency's mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform. The full message on the blimp reads 'NSA: Illegal Spying Below' along with an arrow pointing downward and the Stand Against Spying URL."
Salt Lake area resident here. The data center is easily visible from I-15, on a busy commute from Salt Lake County to Utah County. I am sure the blimp would have been visible to tens of thousands of people on their commutes to work.
Correct. The blimp in question is a four-seater GEFA-FLUG AS 105 GD/4 with a 41-meter Hyperlast envelope that inflates using two Cameron Shadow burners. It's powered by a Rotax 582 UL engine putting out 65 horsepower, mounted in pusher configuration with a four-bladed, fixed-pitch Helix H50F prop. (That's an ultralight engine and a lightweight glass / carbon-fiber prop, incidentally. Dy weight is under 1,100 pounds, and maximum takeoff weight is under 2,000 pounds.)
http://www.gefa-flug.de/index....
It couldn't have been built there if it was going to get restricted airspace. It's right under the northbound flight path for aircraft landing at Salt Lake International Airport. Not to mention being right at the junction of two valleys it's the major through way for general aviation flights north and south, forcing new deviations around that site simply is not an option as to the west is a military reservation and to the east the terrain gets tall really quickly.