The Skylab-Area 51 Incident 334
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."
Move along (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A fun little theory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A fun little theory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A fun little theory (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A fun little theory (Score:1, Funny)
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A word from the Anonymous Coward 'which' succesfully confirmed
not to be a script by guessing the word 'revival'.
Re:Not as big as some other projects tho... (Score:5, Funny)
X-Files already did it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oldest trick in the book (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Government Secrecy (Score:2, Funny)
Please give me 33% of your income.
I can't tell you why.
Re:A fun little theory (Score:5, Funny)
What's Dougway? (about 250 pounds! *rimshot*)
Re:Timely piece (Score:3, Funny)
Da, tovarisch! Only bourgeois capitalist running-dog counter-revolutionaries will be detained, phone-tapped, and beaten! We glorious workers and peasants of the new socialist brotherhood of man have nothing to fair from our wise and just leaders! FOR THE MOTHERLAND!
Re:Typical on conspiracy stories (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, talk about quiet desperation!
Tried zooming in to close (Score:3, Funny)
Than I...? (Score:2, Funny)
I am sorry i made a common spelling error, but English isn't my first language and I'd like to see you write fluent Dutch.
Lame Anonymous Coward.
Re:Area 51 is not Unidentified (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but don't worry, the sarcism police will catch you soon enough.
The best kept secrets... (Score:2, Funny)
I mean, this is site number 51 - what's going on at the first fifty?!
Area 51? Been there. (Score:5, Funny)
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-
Re:Not as big as some other projects tho... (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, everyone has heard of the The Harriet Tubman Memorial Highway.
Re:A Closer Look (Score:3, Funny)
Do they have Dick Cheney's house? Because a friend told me he has really nice roof tiles...and I, uh, can't quite make 'em out in Google Earth.
(Waves at the NSA.)
Hehe, I spent all day Saturday running new phone cable for a co-worker whose DSL wouldn't work. I found cloth wiring that dated to at least the 20s.
So I'm telling this story to a friend (who is also a telco weenie) and marveling at how the POTS service kept working on those degraded lines. I said "Yeah, you just can't kill POTUS, it's bulletproof". Obviously I meant to say "POTS" and not "POTUS" ;)
I kinda wonder how much fuel that NSA satellite had to burn to get a better read on my conversation that day :)
Re:Area 51 is not Unidentified (Score:3, Funny)
A severe shortage of dilithium crystals.
Also, the naquada was all mined out several thousand years ago...
Re:Engine mechanics of alien ships. . . (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hehe P&T:Bullshit was right. (Score:2, Funny)
The tip of the iceberg my friend. Area 51 IS underground! In fact I'm typing this out of the underground facility as we speak and my fascist boss, sitting in the cubicle next to me has no idea I'm postinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn