Area 51 'declassified' in U-2 spy plane history | Hacker News Reader

Area 51 'declassified' in U-2 spy plane history

bbc.co.uk

100 pointsmumbi45 comments

In 1994 there was a court case where some workers who were poisoned working at Groom Lake sued the gov't. [1]

Apparently at one point a government lawyer, in using the state secrets privilege to deny examination of relevant witnesses referred to "The alleged facility, if it indeed exists", at which point the opposing council offered to load up his car and drive everyone to the damn base =).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51#Environmental_lawsuit

Stories like this always remind me that large groups of people can work on unknown projects without the public finding out.

'Project Oxcart' known as the A-12 was the first stealth plane built in Burbank, CA by thousands at Locheed and kept in secrecy - then later transported to A51/Groom Lake. It was the predecessor to the Blackbird.

Bletchley Park. www.bletchleypark.org.uk

> It was the successor to the Blackbird.

Predecessor actually. It came first.

Whoops, got my noun and tenses mixed up. Updated, Thanks!

Except, governmental delusion aside, the existence of Area 51 was not actually secret. Everyone knew the place was there, and the most reasonable explanation for it (spy planes) turned out to be correct.

Also, A only implies B when there is some actual connection between A and B.

Except, I didn't mean A51, I meant the Locheed stealth plane programs.

lol... that was funny.

"...large groups of people can work on unknown projects without the public finding out" I completely agree. I have heard the opposite line of reasoning used to "refute" actual evidence many too many times.

Bad example. This has been an open secret for quite a long time, and the final revealtion surprised only the "I want to believe" crowd

"Area 51 therefore chemtrails" isn't a sound logical chain. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

That was a very long time ago, though. I imagine it is much harder to keep secrets these days. Not that people with clearances are more likely to divulge anything, but when the only way you have to document a project is with paper and blueprints, it's relatively easy to track those. When it's on your intranet, on people's local hard drives, on thumb drives, etc. it becomes harder to keep track of each copy and stuff gets out that way.

Yeah I agree, too much technology can get in the way of keeping things secret now. On the other hand, it's very easy to track leakers now too.

More people know about things like this than you realize. When you end up passing it everyday you become immune to what's really going on. It turns into, "Oh they build planes over there" when someone from our of the environment notices.

Here are pictures of the A-12 being driven by cargo truck from LA to Groom lake in the early 60's. Quite a hoot if you are familiar with the freeway system out here.

http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.h...

That's fascinating. Can anyone explain what is going on here: http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12_v...

The truck was crawling along while a guy was out in front probably just checking out the road or getting stuff out of the way. If you've ever seen a house or large sections of bridge being moved the same thing happens.

The weird thing is that it looks like he's running, and he doesn't show up in any of the other pics.

I've been curious about that fellows job description as well. I just emailed that question to the website. I'll post the answer if/when I get a reply.

>Stories like this always remind me that large groups of people can work on unknown projects without the public finding out.

Yes. Between this and secret Apple product launches, so much for the common anti-conspiracy argument that says: "Do you think a fake moon landing would have been kept secret while requiring so many people working on it?"

:-)

It's actually interesting how not secret most of those projects actually were.

President Johnson couldn't resist blabbing about the SR-71 in 1964, only one year after A-12 operations had begun and 2 years before SR-71 operations began.

The U-2 began operations in 1957 and was revealed to the world, along with the equally secret mission of overflying the Soviet Union, in the Gary Powers incident in 1962.

The F-117 was introduced in 1983 and was revealed in 1988.

It's possible that there are additional still secret projects that operated out of Groom Lake, but I find it interesting that most of the super secret projects there were only completely secret for a period of a few years.

They were not secret as you and other point out.

It was only classified internaly as secret, probably to get funding without filling reports.

Everyone knew where the damn base was. But officially there was a lot of money being assigned to keep it 'hidden'.

Its just gov bureocracy/money shenanigans.

Reminds me of BT Tower in London, built in the 60s. Despite being quite a tall and recognisable structure that obviously exists, it was considered an official secret and didn't appear on any maps until the mid-90s.

I drilled several of the water wells at Area 51 and TTR.

I guess I can talk about it now. :-)

Tell us about it!

I'm reading a fun book at the moment about the true story of how the USAF had a squadron of MIGs for aggressor training there too...

Red Eagles? I'll second the "fun book" comment. I'd recommend it to anyone who has ever enjoyed a Tom Clancy novel.

On the subject of fun nonfiction, I have to recommend "blind man's bluff"; its the best of the genre, IMO. Any others?

Also, broader away from recent military skunk works is anything by Simon Singh, particularly The Code Book and Fermet's Last Theorum.

It looks like there are two books with similar titles - which one are you reading?

Blind Man's Bluff is good, as another poster suggests.

Another fun one is "The theory that would not die," about the history of Bayes rule.

I'm reading the one by Steve Davies. Its not really written as a page turner but the content makes it so!

Excellent ... now show us "Area 50" ...

It was just named that because it fell under square #51 on a map. It was totally arbitrary way to name it and doesn't imply the existance of Areas 0-51.

Some of them do. The Nevada Test Site includes several.

http://m.flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/15521786/lightbox/

That road heading northeast past sedan crater leads to Area 51.

I'd be more interested in Area 52.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range ?

Tonopah Test Range: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range

Does it mean we are alone?

In our solar system? Yes, it's just 7 billion of us, some animals, and one green/blue rock.

In our galaxy? Maybe. There is definitely potential for there to be alien life, it's just a long way away. Then there is always the possibility that we are the first intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

In the universe? Odds are that there are millions of other intelligent civilizations. The speed of light and the amount of distance to cover is a big reason why they probably haven't visited us and we will probably never visit them.

In our solar system? We don't know.

In our galaxy? We don't know.

In the universe? We don't know.

Indeed. I don't see how we can even get a reasonable bound on the exponent of P(alien life). That kind of uncertainty behaves counter-intuitively - multiplying it by the size of the universe leaves it essentially unchanged.

Not really much of a secret anymore, for a plane that has had parts in Cuban museums for the last 50 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Anderson#Wreckage

So the Independence Day movie was lying? I'm so disappointed!

You mean it WASNT aliens faints in surprise

That's just what they want you to think.

That's what aliens want you to think.

It's never aliens.

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