What about this area 51 stuff?

There is supposed to be a secret installation somewhere on the huge Nellis AFB in Nevada- so secret that no one spends the night there and personnel are flown in and out every day from Las Vegas. There definitely are buildings and a landing strip at Groom Lake (Area 51) visible at a great distance from public land. Whether those buildings are the secret base or not, no one can prove. Maybe it is a convient decoy, since Nellis is certainly large enough to have areas NOT visible from public land.

Most likely if a secret base exists, it is a test site for secret aircraft experiments. There is no direct evidence, only speculation, that extraterrestrial technology is hidden there.

If anyone were staking out a secret base, it wouldn't be very damned secret, now would it . . .

Now i got nothin' 'gainst the press
They wouldn't print it if wasn't true . . .

the base isn't secret, obviously... but i'm just curious what everyone thinks about the "secret experiments" that go on there. i thought it was funny that these guys had radio scanners and were trying to listen to the base radios... they kept saying there heard the security teams. which i thought was funny, since the military radios are encrypted.

About the ET stuff... I HIGHLY doubt that there is any alient technology in use. My number one raeason is that the nearest system that could support life as we know it is 40 lightyears away. There is no way to traverse that span unless they started their pilgrimage a few thousand years ago... which would make the aliens really old...

nah, nothing inherently improbable about interstellar travel, if you don't assume that ETs have human lifespans, or that ETs don't use "unmanned" (unETed?) vessels.

about area 51, i went there and lived to tell the tale, which mainly consists of driving about 20 miles on a dirt road till you get to the Nellis base signage, and a couple of guys in mirror shades drive up a nearby hill to keep an eye on you until you go back the way you came.

Some of the hardcore conspiracy nuts think that the classic ETs (greys) are actually robots sent over here by their creators.

I admire the way you point out the glaring obvious

Actually, a lot of the mystique surrounding Area 51 arose from the fact that the government continued to deny its existence for so many years--up until and past the time commercially available satellite photographs clearly showed a military base there. That and the fact that some spectactularly futuristic aircraft have been tested there (the SR-71 Blackbird, the stealth bomber, and the stealth fighter to name a few--civilian aircraft and UFO enthusiasts would see these craft long before they were made public). There's also that guy who claimed to have been a physicist working at Area 51--I think his name's Bob Lazar. He went public claiming to have worked on alien anti-gravity technology at Area 51.

USAFHokie80: on the tail number item--are you sure they were talking about official military craft not having numbers? I've seen a couple different programs on Area 51; some of the people who work at the 'secret' base there are flown in from McCarran Airport in Las Vegas; while normal commercial aircraft have tail numbers, these planes don't--they look like regular commercial airline jets, but have no identifying information painted on them (they showed video of the planes devoid of tail numbers at McCarran Airport on the program I saw).

I live in the Las Vegas Area and have been to the "Back Gate" of Area 51 a couple of times--that's the gate near Rachel, NV. I and my fellow nerd friends have had our picture taken in front of the sign that reads "Warning Restricted Area Deadly Force Authorized" and another that read "No Photography of this Area" or something to that effect. We, unfortunately, did not witness any security activity whatsoever on either trip (made me feel pretty damn insignificant ).

Route 375, the "Extraterrestrial Highway," is fun--there's lots of cattle ranches in southern Nevada so you see caution signs with steers painted on them all over the place, especially on out-of-the-way highways; the ones along Route 375 have little UFOs painted in the background. The Little A'Le'Inn is a bit of dive, but the food's edible and they have a nice selection of geek/ufo paraphenalia there. If your in Las Vegas and have a day to kill (i.e., got tired of the casinos and topless/nude shows), it's a fairly pleasant three hour drive one-way.

The truth about Area 51:

It is a secret, private casino/ brothel. The stuff about aliens, etc. is an intentional rumor to justify the armed guard perimeter. Government bigwigs, big business profiteers, and certain other celebrities are unable to go to public casinos, bars, etc. for fear of the press. Area 51 is a special recreation area where luminaries can relax and enjoy their favorite vices without the prying eyes of the public. Its location in Nevada is no accident, making the casino and brothel there perfectly legal.

So that's where J. Edgar Hoover's 'alternative' wardrobe is hidden...