So, given the lack of sci-fi content out there for me at the moment I started watching these as a kind of substitute. They are all wild conjecture with no evidence, but they spin really fun tales at times. I just watched The Secret Mars Colony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKAyH6_96oQ It is a decent story with a plot line we have seen many times before. However, it made me wonder, if a nation or hypothetical group - call them the Sublilluminati - wanted to send pay loads to mars to establish even a very brief human presence, is there a conceivable way this could be done in secret? Never-mind the difficultly of pulling off the conspiracy, could it be done in way that nobody else would notice?
"Never mind the secrecy, could it be done in secret?" You must have been awfully bored to sit through something like that. Do you mean "could this scenario have been pulled off as described?"—these people, these circumstances, especially with all the leakers allegedly quoted in the piece—or do you mean "could something of this sort have been pulled off without such high profile people and operations, like NASA as a front?" On the former, the purloined letter method is one way to cover up a conspiracy too big to be covered up—sleight of hand, the way a magician works, distracting one's focus. But in this case, why would the US and Soviet Russia, allegedly working together, permit an actual Moon landing in 1969 if a Mars colony already existed by 1962? Why tip their mitt, rather than continue to make space efforts "fail"? And if such an influential and world-spanning secret organization was working in such a unified way, why waste valuable people and resources in all this nonsense, rather than focus all of it toward the alleged goal—saving humanity? As to the latter, it posits a massive leap in technology over everyone else, always neatly attributed to a reverse engineered alien spaceship. Secrets of technology tend to be the hardest to keep. The Manhattan Project, the US's focused response to scientific developments largely from Germany, had spies in it from day one, funneling information to the Soviets. The reverse engineered alien spaceship is a favorite of people who do not understand the advances in physical sciences and engineering. Still, one must have some understanding of physical principles and a suitable engineering technology to be able to reverse engineer something. If we dropped some semiconductors or even vacuum tubes on the best and brightest in the 1700s, would they have broadcast television by 1800? Even assuming the nature of the devices could be puzzled out, there was no technology available to duplicate them. The video was a disjointed mishmash of statements. For example, the opening sequence alluded to a couple of sci-fi movies, then marveled how life imitates art. (Huh? What real life events imitated the movies?) One could go on for days about the non sequiturs—such as teleportation is for people, while cargo must be sent by ships. It reminds me of one former co-worker who believed the hoverboards in BACK TO THE FUTURE II were real. Then why hasn't the technology completely remade our shipping and transportation systems? "Because it only works on toys." Right. If any group develops a certain technology, the rest of humanity is typically not far behind. Reverse engineering alien technology could potentially give one group a massive boost, but that's completely speculative. (Remember the Manhattan Project.) The hardest pill to swallow is the idea that a secret group of people from all over the world are working together to keep the rest of humanity in the dark. Such a group would understand that "wealth" is not some limited resource, but generated like electricity. It would then be in their best interest to educate everyone, rather than bamboozle them. And that's the real paradigm shift—getting those people who believe that all resources and wealth are a limited pie to be hoarded to understanding that intelligence and technology are what bring those resources into being.
I guess that makes two of us who were bored. I could have worded the quoted part better, as I think pulling off the conspiracy cover-up for funding and resources would be an insurmountable barrier all on its own, but wanted to focus more on the physical aspects of how a series of launches could be hidden. Certainly it could not be done as described. They are claiming a long term sustainable base has been populated by people since the 70s. Piggybacking payloads on other launches or launching from a remote secret base are the types of things I was thinking about. Everything thing I try to come up with has pretty obvious flaws (even kicked around the idea of another secret base in Antarctica for launching, but that's not workable). I am writing a short story for an article and was already considering doing one about a secret mars base, which is why this vid caught my eye. Also, if I haven't been clear on this point, I don't take these conspiracy theories serious at all. I view them like the b-plots to cheesy sci-fi shows, yet I do still enjoy them. I think they have as little basis in reality as religious claims. No evidence + wild speculation/fantasy.
I didn't imagine you did. Your posts have been coherent with no drool. That would be extremely difficult, at least with chemical rockets. They're big and noisy (I read that one Saturn V test launch registered on a recording barometer in upstate New York), and launching them from an out-of-the-way place like Antarctica would only exacerbate the problem. You'd have to find a way to ship all those boosters, fuel and other supplies to the secret base. Now, if you had nuclear thermal rockets, like the Nazis in Heinlein's ROCKET SHIP GALILEO, or perhaps the reverse engineered alien spacecraft that creates an anti-gravity field with spinning magnets... Hey, why not? I know a few B-movies that are guilty pleasures. But even a well-written tale can be spiced up with a secret "organization" pushing a Mars colony, like Frederik Pohl's MAN PLUS. (Fifty years later, in the sequel MARS PLUS, the secret organization is shooting for the stars.)
I think someone once added up the cost of Drax's space program from Moonraker http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1870/1 But I can't remember the dollar figure. Even Gates would have been broke.
I live near Miami and can see launches from Canaveral from my house. Now tell me how anyone could keep launches "secret"....
Lift off from a floating platform in the middle of the Pacific. In the worst possible weather. Cover your craft with overcooled vantablack. You should be OK. For a while. The problems with pulling this off are a few: - Mars spacecraft cannot be tiny, so it will reflect enough light to be visible by small telescopes or even the naked eye. Random people will see it and report it. Vantablack – which is basically a nanoscale version of the cavity used to cheaply simulate an absolute black body – makes sure that won't happen. - You'd be picked up by RADAR. Vantablack should take care of that too. - Somebody will see your propulsion, exhaust trail and so on. You need to be as far as possible from inhabited land, and if there's a impenetrable storm you'd might go unnoticed. - I don't think there's anyone scanning the sky in infrared, but superfreeze your outer hull to ensure if someone does, they may not see you. On the other hand, there are probably a million of other things that you would not account for. After too many launches, there would be detectable pollution around the launch site. Launch signatures might be picked in other ways. Some radiation might penetrate storms and be visible to satellites, or someone might pick the soundwaves in the water. You'd get in big trouble with covering your expenses or such large amounts of rocket fuel. It's probably best not to use rockets at all, or use unconventional ones – LOX/VegOil, LOX/Bacon – something that, you know, won't immediately scream "space" when discovered, which it will be. A good cover story, if you really want to hide it you need to have the balls to lie you had ICBMs that you lost in space. Once on Mars, you'd have to immediately go underground before MRO has seen you, which will be soon. You'd also need to do a pretty good job of hiding your tracks on your landing site. It is also absolutely critical that you land in the spot with the most dust devils. You'd probably need to breed most your recruits in situ – you can't afford repeating this procedure over and over, and if you do, you'd get caught. Finally, no communication. You can't have a dish on the surface, you can't use RF with any reasonable power. You might try neutrinos, but you don't have the resources to lift a neutrino detector to Mars. So your entire plan needs to be prewritten and given to your colonists. No changes allowed. (Alternatively, maybe they did try to communicate, and we picked it and called it the WOW! signal) In your favour, however, if you are a country, countries spying on you might decide to keep their intelligence to themselves and unknowingly participate in your conspiracy.
The video makes the case that the colony effort was started in President Eisenhower's time—which means the sensor network we have today did not yet exist. This is the "way ahead of everybody else's technology" scenario. (You have spaceflight to Mars, but no one else has even echo satellites.) In that case, you can make wild arguments like those above. But if you're constrained by reality—meaning Marsflight today against today's sensor nets—there ain't no stealth in space, and certainly not within the Earth's atmosphere. If you try for invisibility, you'll fail. Camouflage (misdirection), on the other hand, might work. However, launching within a heavy storm is verging on that "super technology" theme—aircraft typically don't like storms, and rockets even less so.
Amateur astronomers would have still seen it even in Eisenhower's time. Unless they had crazy unreflective materials back then. But it would explain how we picked their signal in 77! Besides, using, say, the Big Ear telescope to communicate with a relay in a strange position in the sky might make sense if you're trying to hide you're on Mars.
That was my point. The only advantage to making the flight in the 1950s was that you stood a better chance of not being noticed (not that you could not be noticed at all). Today your launch would be caught by storefront and crosswalk cameras. Don't forget that this great leap in technology over everyone else—such as being able to make routine flights to Mars while everyone else can't even reach orbit yet—has infrastructure requirements, too. An industrial plant capable of cranking out untold tons of fuel needs time to be developed and built—pushing the alleged leap in technology even farther back. Given proper backing, Goddard might have produced an orbital rocket long before WWII, but it wouldn't have reached Mars. And infrastructure to back a Mars flight, or even closer space operations, would require "infrastructure" as simple as highways, which were only just being built at the time the video alleges a complete Mars colony. But it wouldn't hide the fact that human communication from somewhere in space was going on. With today's spy-sats, your communication network would be pin-pointed and mapped out in short order. Again, as noted in my first post above, the absurd "what ifs" of the whole idea are short circuited by the alleged reason for the secret Mars colony—preserving humanity. "We're going to conquer the world, only the world won't know it!"
Sending directed signal through a telescopic antenna wouldn't be easily detected. A signal back to Earth is also difficult to pick among the noise of signals around us unless you're looking for it, especially if it is weak enough. Of course that implies you're rarely transmitting. Actually, a secret Mars base is so insanely ridiculous and pointless exercise that Occam's razor might even work in your favour. When you're discovered, whoever picked your RF and flights will never suspect you're that insane and will make up a cover story for you. Perhaps even members of your conspiracy team will think that the Mars base is the cover story and doesn't exist. Imagine the shock of your colonists when they learn that indeed it was a Mars base they were being sent to.
From the Project Rho page linked above: And if we follow the "Green Bank" link from the Project Rho page we find: Unless you mean to suggest that all the non-human Martian broadcasts (Orson Welles' WAR OF THE WORLDS, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN television show, etc.) might hide the email and Facebook postings from the colony? "You are reduced two steps in rank. Return to your post!"
I don't see how that contradicts what I said. It requires a telescope pointed at the signal in the 10 seconds you're transmitting it. You can't pick it with an omnidirectional antenna because of all the noise around us, which is significantly stronger than the weak Voyager signal. So unless you have a radio telescope pointed at all points in the sky simultaneously, you'll never know it's there. And your Facebook suggestion might work in reverse. Embed your Facebook postings inside the non-human Martian broadcasts using steganography. Better yet, repurpose steganography and embed the message in naturally occurring radio waves and other detectable phenomena. If your messages are short, you don't need sophisticated steganography techniques. Just move some rocks before MRO flies over them and then use the photographic images to read the message.
Who is to say that they don't have more than one secret base? At least that is what I'd do, if I were doing secret space missions. And maybe use moveable launch pads at sea, which constantly move to new areas, so there isn't any pollution build-up. Though unless your willing to kill any hapless victims, and then bride some official to blame it on pirates, sooner or later, someone is going to see your unique launch pads. The Bermuda and Dragon's Triangle would be a favorite launch site of mine. Jam any aircraft or ships that are potential witnesses, before they notice that they are being jammed or they have time to even try to send out any messages, then, I don't know, use a electro-magetic pulse to make it look like a mechanical failure, or board the ship, and leave no one alive, and either sink or take the ship for later disposal. Then again, conspiracy theorists constantly say that people constantly disappear or die mysteriously, for one reason or another. If there were a base on Mars, what happens when some crazy entrepreneur(s) finally funds a successful manned mission? Are the base occupants or secret organization going to somehow sabotage the mission in order to keep their base secret?