The reality of tunnels

reply to post by AQuestion


OK. but Hyperion was only 8 miles. Again, we are concerned with interstate tunnels, which I claim have never been built.

The Chunnel was about $16 billion and 31 miles. About $516 million a mile. Again, this isn't interstate scale. Further, the Chunnel has an income stream since they run trains in it. At least it has a reason to exist. All the projects stated thus far have some use. But nobody can really explain why we need a tunnel from Roswell to Groom. Hey, even Edwards to Groom would be so expensive it would be laughable.

So I still claim these interstate tunnels are ridiculously expensive and would never get approved, even as a black budget project. The Chunnel employed about 13k people. How do you keep any secrets with a labor force that big? It is one thing for some USAF officer to have doctored up paper work, i.e. show they were working at Edwards when in reality they were working at "I can't say." But it would be a quite a task to give a huge civilian force cover stories that would check out.

Note also that doing anything in secret greatly increases the cost of the project.

reply to post by gariac


Dear gariac,

Look up how many people were involved in the "Manhattan Project". Tell me what cannot be don underground, I look forward to hearing it.

reply to post by AQuestion

Dear gariac, Look up how many people were involved in the "Manhattan Project". Tell me what cannot be don underground, I look forward to hearing it.

You might want to find a better example than the Manhattan project. The security on that was an epic fail. Google Klaus Fuchs, one of many spies.

Ignoring the many infiltrators in the project, the fact a project was underway was not a secret. The nature of the project was. For instance, the nuclear material for the bomb was produced using power from the Tennessee valley, which is why Oakridge NL is where it is located today. Los Alamos wasn't built in a vacuum either. So the project had an incredibly visible footprint, not to mention one hell of an electric bill.

The Manhattan project had around 100k workers, which is why is was a security failure. The development of the Bombe would be a better example, but then again, that was just electronics.

As an aside, funny how they didn't bother to bury the new power lines going to Groom Lake, let alone the original power lines. I guess the TBMs were busy on the super secret underground railroad. ;-)

reply to post by gariac


Dear gariac,

I never claimed there was an underground railway at Area 51, I have no idea what they have underground, only that they do work deep underground quite extensively. I think there is a lot of sensationalism regarding underground activities because when people don't know what is going on there is a tendency to assume extremes. My point was simple, the technology exists, it is used regularly to build all sorts of underground infrastructure and continues to this day.

reply to post by AQuestion


OK, you don't claim there are interstate tunnels, but plenty of people do. I claim the cost is so outrageous that these tunnels do not exist. Further, I claim such a tunnel really can't be built in secret due to the geological studies required, the number of people needed to keep the secret, and the need to dispose of the spoils.

I live right by the tunnels on devils slide. gonna try em out this weekend, see what all that money was for. I will miss the scenic, scary, twisting drive.

reply to post by gariac


hello gariac what im about to say is all word of mouth but the mouths these words came from were people i truly trust, and here it goes , for 1 the military is always 30 or 40 years ahead of us, so what we have seen military wise and any other type of equipment that has been seen publicly is already outdated, i dont know too much about DARPA but things i do know about them, just from a quick visit to their site, says there probally ahead of the military, technology wise(im not quoting the site just an observation) though i do know that they make it a point to be ahead of everyone else, (and this is all what the public knows). and these are just my obseravtions, now 1 thing you should know is i live in Mojave,Ca. and im very close to edwards and northrop( excuse my spelling if not spelled right) but the intersting thing i learned about this area i live in, is that it used to be part of edwards some 20 years ago maybe a bit longer i really do not know ( i cannot verify it at the moment) but the rumor is that there are underground tunnels around this area that lead back to edwards decently close by (i have not seen these entrances personally) i guess i will say "my source" has said that these tunnels goes to a number of places but thats just one person thats told me this (which he is an old timer so i usually listen to what he has to say) , ive heard from many other people about these tunnels, and another person who told me about this, is a friend whos father worked at Palmdale,Ca Northrop, who tells me about how they have at the very least 22 underground levels and i think his father had clearance to work on like the 10th level (or something of that nature) but he also told me that they also have underground tunnels leading to edwards and the whitehouse and other military bases, i can honestly say these guys have no credibility whatso ever but i would trust them with a live grenade in one hand and my child in the other oh and by the way i dont know much about concrete, but couldnt the dirt that would be removed to make the tunnel be recycled to make concrete and expense wise my best anology would be something like... a cd album cost 20 bucks to purchase but it really only cost 2 or 3 to make and that is my 2 cents to add to this thread
i hope the cia computer doesnt pick me up for typing whitehouse

God, I'm so tired of people always saying, "the military is 30 or 40 years ahead" of current technology. It makes it sound like there are secret squadrons of high tech airplanes (or spaceplanes), or fleets of ships, or super tanks, or whatever. But, for some reason, we never see any troops training to use this equipment and it never appears in the order of battle (war plans), and it never gets used against our enemies in battle. We just continue to sacrifice our soldiers, sailors, and airmen, exposing them to harm by letting them use only what these Internet mavens are apparently claiming is outdated gear. The truth is that we are using the best available equipment that has acquired, tested, and proven. Ideas that sound like revolutionary modern technology usually turn out to be 30 or 40 years old. Take the example of linear aerospike propulsion that was planned to be used on the X-33 demonstrator (a prototype for the proposed VentureStar space shuttle). The X-33 and its revolutionary new engine were being built in the late 1990s, but linear aerospike technology had been invented in the 1960s. Sure, various national laboratories, industry, and agencies like DARPA are working to develop fantastic technological advances, but these are experimental projects and prototypes (and many of them turn out to be failures). There are rarely any "silver bullet" systems that become operational in secret like the F-117A or the stealth helicopters used in the raid on Bin Laden's compound. I should note that both of those were poorly kept secrets. The media widely reported stories about both aircraft years before they were revealed to the public, and these programs had a sizable industrial and logistical footprint (manufacturing, test, training, and support activities that hinted at what was going on).

As to the tunnels, there always seem to be a lot of "old-timers" telling tall tales about secret underground tunnels and facilities, but they never seem to be able to pinpoint the locations even when claiming that they worked in them. I have spent a lot of time exploring manmade subterranean realms (mines, fallout shelters, missile silos, etc.), and have pursued many of the stories. It is a lot more difficult - and expensive - to build underground than most people imagine, and such facilities are only constructed when there is a specific requirement. Stories of tunnels running between Edwards AFB and Plant 42 in Palmdale, for example, make no sense when you can just move people and cargo those few miles by land or air. The same is true for transporting personnel and materiel between Edwards and Area 51, plus you add the extraordinary expense and difficulty of constructing interstate tunnels through geology that includes ever faulting, alluvial deposits, and other obstacles. There would simply be no practical value to attempting such a feat.

Most of the components used in military products is COTS (commercial off the shelf). Now maybe how they are put together is unique, but the basic guts are standard. These military products take so long to develop that the military is often behind the times, not 40 years ahead. Now if the product needs something not commercially practical. then the DoD has a lead. For instance, making the product rugged. Extreme temperatures. Shock. Exotic materials are just that, exotic, but not 40 years in advance. Rather the stuff is so expensive it is not commercial practical.

The DoD also orders custom parts, having been on that side of the business. But the custom stuff is just made out of real world material. When the U2 was designed, they needed altimeters that went higher than COTS. So they made up some BS story about balloon testing, and went to the altimeter manufacturers to get a custom product. The DoD spreads the business around to so many vendors that nobody knows what the final product is. You get a boiler plate (a standard document insertion) and a spec with in my case electrical definitions.

Case in point is the NSA. They used to run their own wafer fab to stay a generation ahead of the commercial sector. Well in theory. The NSA, an organization not known for cost efficiency, still couldn't keep up with the commercial sector. The problem is the hardware used in the fab is COTS, so really they couldn't outpace the commercial sector. They shut down the effort. The NSA does build custom computers, CUDA clusters, stuff like that.

The so-called DoD that is 40 years ahead of the rest of us just started using tablets in the cockpit last year. They are trying to get ruggedized Android phones for battlefield use. Basically the pace of military design is so slow that they often lag the commercial world.

Counterpunch did a rather long article on the F-35, a rather troubled product, but it does show how slowly the DoD moves.

Counterpunch article

I liked how the article compared X planes to "concept cars". Other than the concept car is self proposed and the X plane usually is done by request, the comparison sounds reasonable. Once in a while the military vendors design technology test vehicles on their own dime.

reply to post by gariac


Exactly right. Sometimes people think the "Military is so far ahead", when in truth it's nothing of the sort. What is happening is that the military sometimes pays for development of science or technology originally invented in the lab which was too expensive for commercial applications, or just never got traction or the right business model. The science or technology could easily be 20-30 years old. Who is actually so far ahead? University professors.

The average person just is unaware of the depth of existing scientific knowledge which has yet to be applied in the real world or known to the average person.

Remember the Star Trek movie where Scotty helped the company invent "Transparent Aluminium"? Well it is a real thing, aluminium oxynitride.

www.surmet.com...

It was invented before the film. There's a patent for industrial manufacturing process from 1980.

It's used in the transparent dome for a missile which has a IR or optical sensor.