Talk:Area 51/Archive2

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Photos

Just thought I would chime in that, thanks to the Co-ordinates given on this article and thanks to a program I just downloaded, Google Earth, I can see hi-res, color, and as close as 1000 ft off the ground images of Area-51. I notice that this was brought up above, but my images are clear. That is so cool, I am busy exploring the place right now. I was just wondering if this page could do with any of those pics if you guys want them. Thanks. P.S. The C.I.A. cant find me from the internet can they? I dont want an elite hit squad sent after me! Banes 17:11, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Images on Google maps are copyrighted (and defended fiercely by the satellite imagery companies that own them) - you've far more to fear from SpaceImaging than the CIA :) The images we do have (a 1960s Corona spy satellite image, and a 1990s Landsat-based NASA World Wind image) really will have to suffice. I'm working on a fancy political_topographic map of the whole NAFR/NTS area, but it'll be while yet. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:56, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I wasnt sure about the copyright policies regarding satellite images. But I was rather amazed at the detail on these satellite images, you can see clearly the cars and jets the employees use to commute. Too bad about the copyrights, best stay out of trouble. Banes 20:33, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure those aren't employee cars (it is a curiously large car park, I'll admit). Most of them are white, and most look (I think) like trucks or vans. The ones that aren't white all look like some muted colour (khaki or grey, perhaps); I can't see any that are red or blue or green (the colours normal people choose for their vehicles). So I think these must be various facilities vehicles, tenders, shuttlebusses, etc. I don't think anyone commutes overland from Vegas (only the JANETs, as it's so far) and there's no mention anywhere I can find of folks commuting from Alamo etc. by car (they seem to park in city lots near the NAFR shuttle and take it). You're right about the detail, there's all kinds of interesting stuff. Dreamland Resorts have an annotated map here based on their analysis of the satellite photos. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:00, August 27, 2005 (UTC)i think that this is a great articel!
That map is very good. I could almost swear that I can see cars there, but you are right, all the vehicles are dim, either white, army green, or some form of grey. But these images sure are fascinating. One question, though. Does this article consist of facts, if there are any, or is it a combination of rumors and a few facts? I guess its hard to know really. Banes 14:02, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Everything here is derived from pretty good sources. The geography stuff comes from maps and satellite photos. The history is mostly from Ben Rich's book (which is why it mostly stops with F117, which was 1970s stuff), and some from David Darlington's book. The FAS page was a source for some, and a fact check for others. JANET and base security stuff come from Glen Campbell's website and the Dreamland Resort website. Ideally we'd have something more official than Dreamland Resorts and Glen Campbell, but both are long time respected experts in the field (they're as good as we're likely to get), and all these sources tell pretty much the same story. The article really doesn't say much about what happened at Groom since F117 (because none of these reliable sources say anything much on that subject), and resorts to a little "sourced handwaving" (sources being Darlington, Campbell, Tom Mahood, and Dreamland Resort). We don't say how many people work there, or how many commute, but the buildings Dreamland Resorts thinks are barracks would hold a thousand or more, and the JANET flights (confirmed from numerous sources) would take at least that many again. Absolutely none of this comes from Bob Lazar or the UFO talk show conspiracy guys. We do have to mention the UFO and conspiracy stuff, but it's in its own little box (where I'm very glad to day it's stayed). Ditto for the popular culture stuff. Overall I think the article is pretty conservative about what it says (no claims of death rays, alien visitors, secret prisons, transcontinental underground railroads, etc.). Frankly I think the article is featured-article quality (a translation of it in German is featured on the DE wikipedia, btw), but I've never nominated it, mostly because the sources (while good, and checked against one another) aren't of the same caliber as many articles have available to them (there's no "USAF Guide to Groom Lake", for example). If you find anything that isn't addressed by the exlinks and references quoted in the article, let me know and I'll track down where it came from ASAP. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:31, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
Thats good to hear, I can see the article does indeed steer clear of the nutty rumors. Overall I agree with you, its featured article standard.Banes 16:13, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Move proposed

  • Strong oppose - keep Area 51 where it is. The article about the base is overwhelmingly what people will expect when they search for "Area 51" - everything else on the disambig page is named after it, and is trivial by comparison. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per Finlay McWalter. -- Curps 17:17, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose — no reason has been given for this move; if there's a good one it's lost on me. --Gareth Hughes 21:37, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
clearly if you were experienced enough to make a claim like that, you would have noticed that the move was requested with the reason simply as "disambuguation" (with other Area 51 (disambiguation) articles. )
I've removed the move request since I feel it's wholly unreasonable and is obviously not garnering any kind of support. And there hasn't even been any attempt to motivate it.
Peter Isotalo 10:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I do not think that this should have been removed until the five days that the WP:RM guidelines suggest. If Fsdfs reinstates it I will support him/her in the decision to re-instate. Philip Baird Shearer 11:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
If you check this user's contribution history, you can see that the reason he wants to move Area 51 may be so that he can promote Alienware Area 51, a computer brand [1]. He is also creating articles and links for other Alienware computer brands [2] [3]. Meanwhile, he has nominated various Dell computer brands for AfD. ([4] [5] [6] and several others). -- Curps 19:21, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I wondered why Fsdfs was a "visited link" in my web browser, and that's the same person who's single-handedly changed vast swathes of Free Software / Open Source and related articles. While most of the edits are reasonable, it might be worth finding a VIP-like area to watch these contributions (I wouldn't call them vandalism, just worth an extra-careful watch). Ojw 20:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Can I propose WP:SATAN (wikipedia:Spammers, AstroTurfers, Autobiographers, and Nutcases)? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:57, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
This user (Fsdfs) now agrees that the page should not be moved [7]. For a long polemical essay on his philosophy concerning open source, see [8]. -- Curps 10:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

SUGGESTED REVISION

Notice Image:Area51drylake.jpg There are two runways inside the lake next to the bigest one. In this image their names are visible:Image:Area51drylake2.jpg

What about saying something about them in the article? Thanks

sorry but i've just found out that google earth images cannot be distributed, i'm just a rookie here, could someone remove the image i've uploaded? thanks

The two images referred to above are clear violations of Google Earth (and / or their imagery vendors) copyrights, and will shortly be deleted. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:04, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Worldwind URLs

Someone kindly added a NASA World Wind URL to this article, but our mediawiki installation doesn't support that URL scheme. I've asked the developers to consider adding it (worldwind's own mediawiki wiki does support it, so it can't be too hard). If they do, I'll uncomment this one. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 17:42, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Clarifying satelite images

I've removed the stuff about google containing lower-resolution landsat images - this is true, but it's because google presents lower resolution landsat imagery than the original source in general. Worldwind doesn't do this, and show the same resolution imagery for Groom as for anywhere else. Worldwind users (and google maps users too) shouldn't be confused by the very highly detailed images available for most major metropolises in the US - these aren't satellite photos at all, but montages USGS aerial photography (and are available only for major cities, due to the expense of generating them). So there's no conspiracy to be had in analysing google - they're just saving on bandwidth costs. Worldwind sees the same redacted USGS 1m imagery as MS Terraserver (they share the same datasource) - as the whole Nellis range is blocked out this isn't prima facie evidence of dark doings at Groom. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 20:34, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but I think that this didn't used to be the case. I'm pretty sure that the redaction wasn't in place until a couple of years ago (as commented above). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:22, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Aimless Links

I can see the point of wikifying an article but making links to articles that dont exist and probably never will because there is no important information about them is aimless. A user has made a link to groom dry lake, what information is there about groom dry lake than cannot be included in this article, and in the same vein what information is there about groom and papose mountain ranges. I think if no one creates an article these edits should be reverted. Gfad1 15:13, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I unlinked the valley/mountain ones. Two incredibly dull little ranges of mountains, and one dull valley. They're all remotely notable only by proximity to this page, and there's really nothing worthwhile to say about them. -Finlay McWalter | Talk July 8, 2005 12:33 (UTC)

The white bus

"A chartered bus (reportedly with whited-out windows) runs a commuter service along Groom Lake Road..."

Trivial I know, but Dreamland Resort disagrees:

"The windows are tinted as protection from the desert sun, but contrary to common belief not blacked out."

-- Andy29 21:29, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Specifically the page is http://www.dreamlandresort.com/area51/bus.html . Thanks, I'll amend the page to say nothing about the windows. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:43, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Nellis Range Complex?

The article says: "It is part of the vast (4687 sq. mi. / 12139 km²) Nellis Range Complex (NRC)" - which does not (yet) have its own article. However, those dimensions are the same dimensions as are given for the Nellis Air Force Range in the NAFR article. The NAFR article also states that NAFR is a small part of the larger NRC. Needless to say, I'm a bit confused.

As far as I can tell the Nellis Range Complex also includes the Nevada Test Site whereas NAFR doesn't. Perhaps the Area 51 article should simply say that it is part of NAFR, which people can then read more about for themselves, rather than the NRC which at the moment links nowhere? --LemonAndLime 15:42, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

You are (as far as one can really tell) correct. The informal term "Nellis Range" does generally mean NAFR+NTS. At some point I plan to produce a map that shows NTS, NAFR, Area 51, and maybe the Desert National Wildlife Reserve and the National Wildhorse Management Area (the latter two overlap the former three in a hard-to-draw way) - that map and a small amount of text would be the "nellis range" article. The reason I say "as far as one an really tell" is that different sources place Area 51 either as part of NAFR or as some weird hybrid NAFR/NTS controlled area. Anyway, in the meantime I'll make the change you suggest. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:49, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

USGS images *REMOVED* from microsoft terraserver.

Now this is interesting. A couple months ago, the MS Terraserver had area 51 in it's famous places list. I was going to get an ariel shot for this site, since USGS images are public domain. I went to the famous places section...and it was gone! So, I tried going to the coordinates...got a white screen! It appears they removed them, and a fairly large area around area 51!

Here is an image of [http://terraserver.microsoft.com/GetImageArea.ashx?t=1&s=17&lon=-115.81666666666666&lat=37.233333333333334&w=600&h=400&f=Tahoma,Verdana,Sans-serif&fs=10&fc=Wuka wuka boom boom bitch

Very interesting.

/me *double* wraps his head in tinfoil.

Brandon.irwin 17:58, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Damn, we should have grabbed the image while we could. As that's both CORONA and TERRA images that have (illegally, IMO) gone missing, I've added info on said redactions to the article. Thanks! -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:23, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I found an image at http://www.fas.org/irp/overhead/a51-680828-1_5.jpg or perhaps this: http://www.fas.org/irp/overhead/a51-680828-1_2.jpg which I guess could be used on this page. Both pictures found here: http://www.fas.org/irp/overhead/ Anybody want to add it? Nrbelex 10:09, 21, Nov 2004 (UTC)
I wonder if there was some under the table sort of deal made between Microsoft and the government for manipulating the photo.

JesseG 05:13, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Google Maps has also removed it throughout this week, their Photo was in colour so i wanted to put it here. Too sad it went down too.

Christian 21:25, Jul 18, 2005 (UTC)

Note that Google Maps images are copyrighted, so they can't be used on wikipedia. Anyway, google defaces them with little "google" watermarks, so they're ugly anyway. Frankly the existing satellite images are quite sufficient, and I'm currently working on other images which the article needs. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:31, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Russian satellite pics

"photographs from Russian satellites and the commercial IKONOS system are, however, easily available (and abound on the Internet)." Can we post links or the images themselves. i think it would make a nice addition. thanks! Jm51 04:41, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)