June 10, 2016 • 58 mins
For millennia humankind has dreamed of reaching the heavens, and in recent decades several countries have begun turning these dreams into reality. Yet the path to the stars isn't all altruism and noble scientific advancement -- in fact, human activities in space have often been shrouded in secrecy, and the practice continues today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:20):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. And although I insisted on keeping our
show from getting to air at the time it should
because I had to play some dumb YouTube songs, I'm
still Ben, hopefully you're still you. And today we are
looking at something that touches on a lot of basis
(00:43):
for things that we have covered in the past. So
I figured maybe one of the best ways to start
is I wanted to ask you guys. I don't know
if we've ever talked about this on air, did you
ever want to be an asked or not? When you
grew up. I watched a lot of Nickelodeon when I
was a kid, and as you may or may not remember,
a lot of those shows were sponsored by space Camp,
(01:05):
and um, you know that was the big grand prize
if you went on Doubledare you got to go to
space Camp. And I think we all remember seeing the
commercial where these kids were just floating, you know, weightlifts,
and we're like, I want to go to there. That
seems totally awesome. Spoiler alert. My roommate went to space camp.
No such room, no such anti gravity room. You know
(01:25):
who else went to space camp? Here's that? This guy? Yeah? Yeah,
I was a young astronaut. I was fascinated by I
went to a couple of camps and I think Huntsville,
Alabama is where they have a lot of that stuff,
and it was it was great. I mean that was
my dream, man, I was I was either going to
be a marine biologist or an astronaut. What did you
think being an astronaut really meant? Did you Did you
(01:47):
have the concept of space scientists or were you thinking
you were going to be like, you know, battling extra No,
I was hoping scientists. That's that was the track I
wanted to be on. I didn't need to talk down
to your younger self. Their right, Yeah, I also know
you know this. I also went to space camp. In
(02:08):
the mass everybody went to space camp except me. So
I think we should take you to space camp right
af there we go to David Busters. Look, I'm not
joking about either of those. And I see your smirks
from across the table, Ladies, and gentlemen of the Internet,
(02:28):
our but the steamed co host by close friends outside
of work. I think I'm joking about David Busters and
the Space program. I'm not joking about either of those.
Visiting space related stuff is so cool. And No, you
are a meticulous person when it comes to your work
ethic and a lot of people might not know this
(02:49):
because you're You're very relaxed and personable and and chill.
When you know, when we're hanging out, we're talking from
time you do, we do know what buttons you have?
You guys, there's an adult space camp in Huntsville, Alabama,
and it is available and we can go Adult is
in for grown ups or adult is in like Showtime
(03:10):
after Dark? Maybe both. Hopefully it is uh for a
four day space camp. It's six dollars. That seems like
a lot of money. Did they cover the food? I
hope so all that freeze dried ice cream. Man cannot
live on freeze dried ice cream alone. But if you're
(03:30):
like us, then you probably at some point when you
were a kid, thought of being an astronaut. How cool
is it to go where no one has gone before?
And even even in adulthood, many of us retain this
fascination without space, right Uh. And we've seen the resurgence
of this with the whole mission to Mars Idea, all
(03:52):
the all of the volunteers who are coming out from
everywhere just saying yeah, I'll do it. And Ellen Musk,
the founder of PayPal and and Tesla Motors, just declared
recently or reiterated again more definitively that he aims to
take some people to Mars. And who knows, maybe one
of us, maybe one one of us, whether listening or
(04:14):
podcasting today, could be on that ship. What we know
is that humanity has always been fascinated by space, and
it's um, it's up there with the ocean as the
least explored environment that we have encountered. We went House
of Works went to NASA's Goddard Space Center, uh several
(04:34):
months back to check out the successor to the Hubble telescope,
that James Webb telescope. And when we were there, we
have videos that will go ahead and plug that you
can find on the how Stuff Works YouTube channel, which
is you know, kind of the full disclosure. I'm in
a couple of them, the bad interviews. I'm the one
(04:56):
doing the bad interviews. But then our our our friend,
uh and maybe future guest host, right, no, Holly Fry,
Yeah is on there from stuff you missed in history class,
so you can learn more about the science of exploring space,
at least the publicly acknowledged stuff. Today's question is a
(05:19):
little bit different. But before we go into that, let's
let's talk about some of the things we know about
publicly acknowledged space exploration today. Like, first off, it's expensive, Yeah,
it's crazy expensive in the cost of development and five
years of operation was estimated to be eight point eight
(05:42):
three five billion dollars with a B for the James
Webb for this telescope to you the one, yeah, the
one that you got to go look at and when
you were in there, it's this massive facility with people
just working around the clock. Just I mean, because not
only did the old the thing, you have to test
it so vigorously for years because once it's up there,
(06:05):
it's up there. Yeah, what are you gonna do? Right?
And then there's you know, there's a huge history of
of of space exploration, right, the space race. May have
heard that term before, right, Cold War USSR versus the
United States began in nineteen fifty five, but it continues
today and there are more people in the game. Yes. So,
as of they're an estimated seventy different state sponsored space agencies,
(06:30):
thirteen of those have a known ability to launch vessels
out into space. Okay, that makes sense. So what we're
saying there is that of those seventy, the majority of
the agencies don't themselves have the ability to launch their
own thing. They partner with other agencies like NASA, that
(06:51):
is the idea. So of those thirteen, though, only six
have what's known as full launch capability. That means they
can actually get back some of the things they shoot
out to space, like recovering satellites for example. I mean,
it's not a one and done scenario where you put
it out there and we're never going to see that
guy again. Um. They can actually deploy cryogenic rocket engines um.
(07:16):
And they can also operate probes remotely. Yeah. So once
it's once it's out there in space, you've got to
handle on how to make it work. Or you can
drop a vehicle remotely right to voyage around Mars. Uh. Yes,
that that's strange that when you think of the rate
of attrition there seventy different agencies, thirteen can put something
(07:40):
up and six can do something effective with it. Yeah,
so six out of all the countries on Earth. And
we know, of course that state sponsored agencies are not
the only ones in the game that you alluded to
this earlier, right. Oh yes, billionaires and well not just billionaires,
a lot of billionaires though, and their private corporations are
(08:01):
getting into this, this whole space game we saw. Let's
see space X. That's the again founded by Elon Musk,
like you you mentioned. They just launched another satellite, the
second in just a couple of weeks here. I think
it was a Thaie communication satellite. Previously there was a
Japanese satellite that went up. Um. And the crazy thing
(08:22):
about space x is that they can, like you're saying,
reusing the materials, they bring their entire rocket back down
and landed. Someone looks made up. It's like this vertical
rocket coming down onto a little like a drone boat,
drone platform out in the middle of the ocean. It's bizarre.
It looks like someone played the clip in reverse and
it launching. It's very strange. And I mean, all of
(08:42):
this is so fascinating because we're entering a time now
where I mean this in the past has been in
the realm exclusively of big government agencies that have all
of this budget for this stuff. And as we know,
you know, focus on space exploration has kind of waxed
and waned over the years a bit, and now it's
kind of sitting squarely in the realm of these billionaires
(09:07):
who are able to raise their own money, use their
own capital to do their own research, and it seems
like some of them are doing a pretty good job. Well, yeah,
the day we're recording this, Jeff Bezos is Blue Origin.
Another one they just launched an unmanned aircraft are excusing spacecraft.
Uh it's a prototype rocket that's apparently supposed to be reusable,
(09:29):
just like the other ones, and they again landed it
back on Earth. So another company with another billionaire in
Bezos is the Emperor of Amazon. And those aren't the
only private space flight or uh, space ears, space space tycoons.
I can't call them space tycoons yet. How about space
katiers space gatiers perfect like Rocketeer. Sure you don't seem
(09:55):
as happy with that. I like it all right? Who
else is in this game? Oh, you've got Virgin Galactic,
another billionaire there, Bigelow Aerospace, X Core Aerospace, Orbital Sciences.
I mean, the list goes on. There's ARCA, they're they're
all kinds of other ones that are from different countries.
Sometimes a lot of these are based in the US, um,
(10:15):
but they're they're all over the planet, right, and just
being based in the US, of course, does not restrict
their operations there. There are optimal places around the globe
from which to launch something into space, so they travel
widely there on a world tour. So given the lessons
learned from the private entities and from the history of
(10:40):
state sponsored space agencies, we found, uh, we found some
some pretty interesting things about space travel. If you are
interested in the idea of space travel, we'd also like
you to check out how Stuff works other podcast particularly well,
I don't know, I think almost everybody has something of
(11:00):
space travel. Absolutely. Our friends over at Stuff Mom never
told you have done some great work on female astronauts,
women in the airspace industry in general. Yeah, and so
so it goes across the board. Every every podcast we
have as something about space has done a couple of things. Yeah,
yeah as well. So we did lunar rovers. So what
(11:25):
we found is that despite the evolution of space travel,
there's still a few things that are true. And here
they are just across the board. I'll go first. It's
terrifyingly easy for something to go wrong, frighteningly easy. For example,
the Challenger disaster, and that's not that's not that's just
(11:47):
one that's in the public sphere. There are multiple classified
accidents that occurred during the Soviet space programs. You've learned
about a few of those cosmonauts, and we have done
work before on a lost cos not theories, and I
think Jonathan Strickland from tech Stuff has covered it. But
definitely people died in training, and as we mentioned earlier
(12:09):
podcasts were literally erased from history. There's some fascinating stories
in within that topic, so I would encourage you to
go check that out if you're listening to this. So
a big part, like what I was leading to earlier,
that makes this so difficult to do, is that these voyages,
this equipment, everything that goes into doing this stuff incredibly
(12:30):
prohibitively expensive. So the average cost of a man space
launch was estimated to be four hundred and fifty million
dollars in twenty eleven. That's for a single launch, and
that's by NASA. That's by NASA. And then the overall
cost for a shuttle's thirty year lifespan. So if you're
in it for the long haul, you're looking at a
one hundred and nineties six billion dollar tab, which is
(12:54):
adjusted for inflation for for right now. But still, how
is that a number? That's that's amazing. But then there's
there's a third thing here about every kind of space endeavor,
which we were startled to find in some of our
earlier work. Yeah, how in the heck do you keep
it a secret that you are using fuel, very loud,
(13:18):
very bright, uh fuel to launch things up into and
beyond the atmosphere? How do you keep that a secret?
And then how do you keep a satellite a secret?
And when it's orbit in the sky, which at this
point is still uncensored. Today's question, ladies and gentlemen, do
world governments and corporations have secret space programs? Given the cost,
(13:44):
given how incredibly difficult it is. It's like, I'm gonna
try to make a video game reference. Tell me if
I get it. It's like if there were Dark Souls fourteen,
does that work? I? Think so. I mean, so it's
a little different, but I'm gonna go Souls is the
tough one, right, Yeah, that's the tough one. I'm so
out of it. Well, yeah, because in a way, every time,
(14:08):
if you really want to get into the space program,
much like if you really want to get into Dark Souls,
you basically have to take up the controller and attempt
as many times as you possibly can, and you'll get
things right as you go along, little by little by
little by little. But ultimately you can't just jump in
and get the whole thing right. You can't just win
(14:29):
by starting the space race. I'm sorry that I gave
you this albatross of the metaphor. I'm trying to work
with it. Let's just let it go. I apologize. I
guess what I'm saying is ultimately you end up throwing
the controller against the wall in both cases. I guess, Yeah,
that's familiar, the controller or the or the lander. Right,
what we know for sure that we know for sure
(14:52):
that secret space programs did exist, and historically the origins
and really space programs or shrouded in secret. Began his
research into rocketry and rockets. The idea of a rocket
is ancient dates all the way back to the first
(15:13):
principles essential to rocket flight came from the writings of
a Roman named ALUs Gellius, who told a story about
a Greek guy named Arcitas who lived in a city
called Tarantum is now part of southern Italy, somewhere around
four b C. According to this story, he uh he
made a pigeon out of wood and amused people by
(15:36):
flying it using the principles of rocketry, the action reaction principle,
which wasn't a scientific law until the seventeenth century. The
point is, maybe this metaphor is not or this excuse me,
comparison is not that far off, because you were You
are absolutely right about baby steps. So we know that
people began working on rockets way before they thought about
(16:01):
taking them to space. But we know that given the
research of rocketry and the enormous jump it had during
World War Two, the foundations of the US rocketry programs,
the U s s R, which was the big the
big other agency at the Cold War UH and what
(16:23):
ultimately became a space program, what ultimately lead to atomic bombs,
involved some shady stuff, in particular something known as Operation
paper Clip. Yes, that's when Nazi scientists and scientists from
other non allied countries were brought to both to the
to the United States, to the United Kingdoms and other
parts of the world where they were secreted away. You know,
(16:45):
these are people who were working on specialized projects for
let's say, for bad people doing bad things like then
or Brown. Yeah, but they had an amazing amount of
research and intelligence, and strategically, I guess it just made
a lot of sense to keep them around and just
(17:08):
to jump on the the rocketry programs that the world had.
It was all about launching a missile or launching, you know,
a bomb. How do I get this bomb all the
way over here where I wanted to explode and you know,
not have to take a ship over there or a
plane or something. That's that is why we have space flight.
(17:28):
It's because we wanted to figure out how to more
effectively bomb people from far away, which is kind of
strange to think about. And the US government as a
history of this as well. I mean, the CIA actually
ran a secret satellite surveillance network A have a fun
thing to say three times fast from fifty nine to
nineteen two, where and they spied on the USSR and
(17:52):
the People's reblic of China from you guessed it out
of space UM. And this is a story I love
so much because it just goes to know the scrappy
nature of you know, getting things done by the U. S. Government.
So the UM satellites didn't actually have the ability to
transmit photographs remotely, you know, through uh, through the air
(18:14):
right the sixties, what's what's what's the what's the fix there? Well,
they actually had negatives and they would drop the negatives
from space. Yeah, I'm picturing little parachutes and I just
don't even There are pictures you can see pictures and
even diagrams on well Wikipedia's where I found them of
the Corona that we're talking about, the Corona program. Uh yeah,
(18:37):
you can see just just how old fashioned it looks
and feels. How just can't imagine how who do they
send out? What poor sucker do they send out to
find these things? And where's the film adaptation to that?
I bet there's maybe there's a classified script they're still somewhere. Yeah,
But they spent a lot of money on that as well.
According to some former officials, the total estimated cost the
(19:00):
program was eight hundred and fifty million dollars, which doesn't
sound like that much compared to you know, four d
fifty for one launch, right, but you know we're talking
nineteen sixties dollars when it was mostly in use, right.
And I don't know if they factored in, you know,
like developing the film, developing negatives, got interns to do that, right, Right,
(19:25):
they just went to a photo mat um something. And
they weren't the only ones doing it, and and uh,
Corona was not the most um widespread of these sorts
of programs. Oh yeah, the Russian side had theirs. Their
own thing is Zenet I think seen it. I'm not
sure exactly how to pronounce it. But they were doing
(19:46):
photo reconnaissance in the same way, um, but they were
doing it a lot more I think. I think their
their program was a lot more extensive. Yeah, they had
over five hundred Zenet satellites flown, which makes it to
this day the most numerous type of satellite and the
history of space exploration. Yeah, oh yeah, these were launched. Okay,
(20:11):
So here's here's a weird anecdote that does apply to this.
So we all know what a tank is, right, Uh? Tank?
In war, they're called tanks and the old story goes
because when they were being shipped around in England or
around Europe to avoid prying eyes, they were created and
(20:32):
called water tanks, and so that became their nickname. Going
to our earlier point about how difficult it would be
to secretly launched something from space, Uh, these things. The
Russians and the US accepted that the other side would
notice when they sent something into space, so they labeled
(20:53):
them as different things or put them in different programs
so that they seemed like they were a pushing a
different purpose. And as as you said, oh yeah, these
these were probably above top secret level, some kind of
compartmentalized need to know basis intelligence where you know, imagine
(21:15):
that you're the president of a country and then some
suit comes up to you one of your advisors and says,
we have evidence that shows that we need to, you know,
invade this country now or send a force here. You
go ye, and they say we can't tell you, and
then you go, but I'm the president, and they say,
(21:36):
I know, Mr President. And then eventually you're persuasive enough
that somebody from uh you know, the CIA or the
n s A or some other alphabet agency just sort
of slides a blurry photograph across across the desk at you,
and that's how you find out how did you get
(21:57):
focused on this? So yeah, how wait? Wait? And I
have to said, okay, the way these satellites look, the
Zenit programmed satellites. You can again go on to Wikipedia.
You can look at a picture of one of these.
It looks like a large sphere that has some optics
kind of and glass pointing out of it, and then
a little I don't know if in this picture that's
(22:20):
being shown, if it's just sitting on a holder. Because
it is a giant sphere. I think that's probably the case.
They just put the sphere down on a on a base.
But I don't know. If you guys remember the stories
coming out a couple maybe a month ago about the
giant spheres found in Bosnia. This is a complete tangent here,
but giant spheres found. There's supposedly these huge stone spheres
(22:46):
and this one guy found one and he's claiming that
it's all these different things, and there have been numerous
explanations about what it is. It looks exactly like a
Zenit satellite, one that maybe just ended up in Bosnia,
I don't know. That's interesting because you have to wonder
what kind of a crazy game that that is, the
(23:07):
play where they're like, well, the satellites coming down, Agent Brown,
you have to be a Kazakhstan in twelve hours. Yeah,
And how the heck can you get this giant sphere
onto a like a flatbed truck or something. Oh? Wow,
very carefully, my friend, Very carefully, and sadly, I don't
I don't know if you could make it to Kazakhstan
in twelve hours from So we're just luck here, all right.
(23:31):
So we're gonna have to go out to UH to
one of our other operatives, which is weird because I
just hate Darren. He's such a He's been slipping. He's
Darren has been slipping. And if you are listening, Darren,
you're fired. Sorry Darren. Wow, we just made up Darren
(23:53):
and fired him in the space a few minutes. Okay.
So we know that these programmes existed, and these are
just a few, just to show that multiple kinds of
programs have have existed. One of the first aims of
this was to achieve supremacy in the space race, and
(24:15):
the first from from the first satellite launched by humankind
spot Nick, the U S s R and the U S.
We're trying to outdo each other and to get superior surveillance.
Corona probably wouldn't have happened as soon as it did
had a YouTube spy plane not been shot down earlier.
(24:37):
And so they said, well, we'll just go higher on
space where they can't reach us. And then immediately people
began working on how to kill how to kill a satellite.
So the question is, can we from this historical precedent,
can we say that secret space programs continue today or
(25:02):
was this just some cold war thing? I'm not sure,
but we'll figure it out right after a quick break.
Here's where it gets crazy. There are active secret space programs. Uh,
(25:26):
some of us know a little bit about them because
they're little bits and pieces of details that get leaks
or that are allowed to be discussed from a pr perspective.
But the ins and outs of these programs, the actual
processes that are occurring, or what kind of research is
being done with these, we won't know probably for fifty years,
(25:49):
maybe maybe a hundred years, maybe never until they're declassified.
And we have several examples of these. Yeah, one of
the biggest examples the something that is a personal off
the air obsession for some of us in this room,
and that is the infamous X thirty seven B, which
(26:11):
is an unmanned spacecraft that has been in orbit as
you check this show out, or as we record this,
at least, it's been in orbit for almost a year
now on this stent. And what's it doing up there?
Because I don't know, Yeah, it was. It was launched
(26:31):
on the twentie of May of last year, and that
was its fourth flight. Yeah, the fourth time it's been
up there. It's still just going around doing who knows what,
just just hanging out. Probably, I bet you know. It's
probably just a leisure cruise for the AI system. They're
trying to get it used to what it will be
like to be isolated in space, right, That's what it is.
(26:53):
It's not a big deal. I spoke with Jonathan about
this yesterday because he was doing a live Facebook feed
and he was talking about NASA a bit, and I
mentioned the X thirties seven B, and man if he
didn't just throw water so hard on on my thoughts that, hey,
maybe there's something, you know, weird being tested up there
are some kind of surveillance program that's being used with
(27:15):
this thing, or maybe uh maybe checking the ability to
somehow interfere with other satellites. And I feel like that's
a big thing to me. If people are putting money
into these programs, there needs to be some sort of
strategic advantage for doing it. And you know how better
(27:37):
to have the upper hand, whether it's you know, as
a country, as a company, let's say, than to be
able to mess with other people's satellites, to be able
to disrupt or have some sort of supremacy because like
we said earlier, I mean, we don't police outer space
in the same way that we police the skies, you know,
of the world. Yeah, I mean, you know, so sort
(28:00):
of fair game. And we we can't have any space wars.
We have treaties. Were not allowed to uh have any
kind of combat in space, at least from from a
legal perspective. No country is allowed to engage in battle
up there, right. Oh, And I want to I want
to give a brief thank you to someone. I cannot
(28:21):
remember who said this, but I had. I was talking
about either the Dead Hands system or something else in
a live show, and I misspoke because I described the
Strategic Defense Initiative a k A. Star Wars program baron
(28:41):
Reagan's administration, and I wasn't clear enough, So I want
to be clear now as far as we know, it
was not actually built. It was only proposed. So I
do want to be emphatic about that. As far as
we know, it was never built. And one last thing
we have remember the X thirty seven B is created
(29:02):
by Boeing. Yes, And this is another thing to keep
in mind when we're discussing private companies and governments and
programs like NASA and the intersection between companies like this
where Northrop Grumman or Boeing or you know, any of
these other corporations they get huge contracts from the government
to build stuff like the X thirty seven b um.
(29:24):
So you know, when you think about a government institution
versus corporation, it's not it's not always that binary, right, Yeah,
I think that's that's a very good point. It is
often a false psychotomy. So what we're talking about now
is the militarization of space. And you can see them.
(29:47):
You can see the bread crumbons begin to disappear in
the post Cold World War era. So one example of
this would be that you're absolutely correct now and you
say that there are international treaties restricting, you know, restricting China, India, Japan,
(30:09):
the US and Russia from starting nuclear war in space.
Hopefully that's the plan. But as far as listening in
space or what's called a space sensing system, that is
still uh you know, that is still occurring. And one
(30:29):
example of it would be the use of well they've evolved, right,
they've evolved since Corona spy satellites now have stuff like
high resolution photography, which is called image intelligence where immant.
These are all weird acronyms. Communications eavesdropping or sig iNTS
signals intelligence and covert communications. Hum int is not what
(30:54):
are what? Gift are Noel Brown and Ben Bole and
texting each other today? Shrimp and white wine? That was
a great one. Good Yeah did you actually were you
actually eating shrimp? I was drinking white wine them? Okay,
Well it checks out. So if we think about it, though,
this kind of listening in this sort of low earth
(31:18):
orbit eavesdropping lack of a better word, is necessary from
a state perspective, like you want to know who's doing what,
especially if you've got active enemies, people who are looking
to ensure your demise. It's probably a good idea and
also provides early warning and missile launches detection of nuclear detonation.
(31:43):
That's that's probably how uh the Great Powers new when
India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests. That also gives us
to you know, that's probably why they learned about the
Vela incidents. Did we do we did an audio podcast
on Villa incident? I don't know if we did an
audio podcasts. Devella incident is an alleged nuclear test by
(32:10):
alleged I just mean we don't officially know who did it.
Do you think though, that having these giant corporations like
Amazon and SpaceX. I mean, I don't know SpaceX is
an exactly a giant corporation, but Musk definitely represents, you know,
an economic force in and of himself. Do you think
there's a conflict of interest having these private individuals who
(32:35):
are out, you know, to make a profit enter into
this sphere? You know, absolutely? Yeah. I mean, for for me,
it's always a conflict of interest when there's something good
as the goal, but then profit is the overall motive. Well,
you know, also it's it's necessary if we look at
the history of human exploration and expansion, uh after the
(33:01):
European way, Like many of the great old civilizations right
from African African Continent ancient civilizations to you know, the
Middle Kingdom or China, they were expanding typically through some
(33:22):
sort of quests for resources you know, uh so, and
and that applies you know to those European countries as well.
I my fear is that the that we will be
alive when the first manned off world colony comes into existence,
and that it will be run by something much more
like the dutchy c India Company than a altruistic saved
(33:47):
the world or saved the species kind of thing. Mars
banana plantations. Maybe here's something creepy too. Another thing that
these satellites are used for, of course, is GPS, which listeners,
let's be honest, you probably used somewhat recently. GPS is
(34:10):
the stuff man I I I think if any technology
that exists today that didn't when I was a kid,
that is by far my favorite. It's a game changer
for sure. I mean in a lot of different scenarios.
Even if you're if you're like me and can't find
your way out of a paper bag, that's changed my life.
The cost of maintaining that system. It's okay. So the system,
(34:35):
the GPS system, and you know they're they're different ones,
right Like India has the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System,
the Global Positioning System UH that was originally designed, was
designed by and is still controlled by UH, someone who
(34:56):
will let anyone use it free of charge. Do you
know who designed to get rolls it? No? I think
you do know it's the US Department of Defense. So uh,
you know the same kind of like the Google strategy
ask ask me anything free? All you know, of course
(35:16):
that's that services free. They're not going to give you
a GPS phone or Internet connection. UM. So that I
can imagine that being a thing though in the future.
And so it you know, it leads people to wonder
what what happens with this data? You know? Uh. And
then there's there's the other idea that we just talked
(35:37):
about net network centric warfare. So using these communication abilities
to essentially have clarabuoyance, you know, to to be the
three of us were in a battle on one side
or the other, then the people that had sent us
there would want us to be able to know like, oh,
(35:57):
across the field, the that Frederick Coonian is prepping a
and H electromagnetic disruptor or something, you know, and he
would he would. It's so Fredrick on Ian and right,
and we know that, um, we we know that the
(36:23):
things like the X thirty seven, the unmanned aerial vehicles
are reality. Doubtlessly there are other countries attempting to do
the same thing, if not doing it currently. And what
one more example of an active secret space program, which
is happening now as we speak. So in early two thousand's,
(36:50):
both the US and China sent some pretty tense barely veiled, uh,
barely veiled threats to each other. Uh what what? What
did they do? So in the early as both the
US and China sent some pretty tense signals, let's say,
(37:12):
to each other, when they both publicly unveiled their satellite
killing technology. I love that the idea of satellite killers,
but this was actually presented as an efficient way to
dispose of their own aging satellites on both sides, and
(37:32):
they actually made pretty clear threats against each other. Well yeah,
I mean it's a perfect veiled threat. Right, Oh our
satellite is not functioning. Oh look we killed it and
it just you know, it's that whole under the table
thing as just shows you, well, you know it could
have been your satellite. Yeah wink. And you know in
(37:53):
two thousand eight there's another one called Operation Burnt Frost
or burn Frost. I think it's Burnt Frost. This was
one our the U. S Military destroyed and nonfunctioning n
r O National Reconnaistance Office satellite. UM again, same kind
of deal, just like here, we're gonna send this missile
up and we can target a satellite in freaking space.
(38:16):
This is clearly an example of UM paying lip service
to one thing and just saying this is a test
of capabilities. But everybody knew what the rty on the
wall was. Here are my muscles, my ability to shoot
downside once? Yeah, it's like someone saying just casually stay
and look at this knife. Yeah yeah, look how far
(38:36):
I can throw it? And uh, this is These are
just some examples of things that are proven but remain
to some degree classified. Right, So where to now? Well,
now we get into the deep dark areas, the places
where life barely penetrates. We're in the fringe. You guys,
(38:59):
you're ready for this one? I'm just gonna say one name,
Gary McKinnon. Oh you know what we're talking about. We're
talking about hacking NASA back in two thousand one, I
think two thousand two was one. He was actively hacking NASA,
going through their databases, and uh, this gentleman found well,
(39:19):
he declares that he found some pretty crazy stuff. I
think early on in an interview that he gave to
Wired News just a couple of years after, and that
he had done this. I believe he was two thousand six.
He says, this is a quote. I knew that government
suppressed anti gravity UFO related technologies, free energy or what
(39:43):
they call zero point energy. This should not be hidden
from the public when pensioners can't pay their bills, you know. Okay,
So this statement alone right here. So you've got a
person who is personally motivated to go and find these
things that he believes exists inside I'd mass a server somewhere. Um,
(40:03):
he goes in and he thinks that he's found some
of this stuff. He I think, let's see. He claimed
to find a manifest that described what we're called non
terrestrial officers, and he claimed that he did see an
image particular of of a craft with technology that does
(40:28):
not exists. But he wasn't able to get that image
to then show it to other people, which you know,
it stinks because you want to believe at any point,
you want to believe a person at least this is
this is Matt speaking for himself. I want to believe
what someone says at all times. But it's very tough
(40:50):
to take something like that that's so out there, a
claim that just kind of makes you roll your eyes
a little bit, even if you want to believe it,
what do you think it does come off as a
bit of a stretch. And I agree. I mean, you know,
it's the nature of me. You know, it's like a
it's like a sticky kind of a slippery slope writing
that line between skepticism and belief, and you kind of
(41:14):
have to just find a happy middle ground. And I
think you do a fine job of that yourself. Man, Well,
you know one other thing. Then you have to remember
this guy is on a fifty six K modem back
into early two thousand's as he's going through these servers
and I'm imagining downloading the image because you guys, remember
back then, as the image comes now it's going one
(41:34):
or two lines at a time, and just I imagine
being Gary McKinnon and just seeing this image develop one
line at a time. Right, what is this? Yeah? What?
He It's weird because it gets into some technical stuff there,
because he says that he got into Johnson Space Centers
(41:54):
Building eight, that he remotely accessed the terminal there and
they found a folder that had the photographs that were
two hundreds or three hundred megabyte images and the pictures
were of cigar shaped craft in orbit. But as you say,
it was on a dial up, so he's he here's
his quote. I turned the color down to four bit
(42:15):
and the screen resolution really really low, and even then
it was still juttering as it came onto the screen.
But it was whatever came on was amazing and culmination
of all my efforts. It was a picture of something
that definitely wasn't man made. But again he's looking at
it at four bits of color with super low screen
resolution just in order to see it, right, and at
(42:37):
that point the image is so degraded, then how can
you ever tell what it actually is? Well, he says
he was able to take a screenshot. Where's that? I
can't find it looking for it? Right now. Yeah, I'm
looking for the screenshot, trying a screenshot of a terrible picture.
I'll take that his computer was seized by police during
(43:00):
his first rest and no two. Uh So, people say,
is the claim to have seen evidence of the UFO
cover up credible? For bit It's tough, um. And you
know at that point, would that be a what how
would you know that was not an artist for rendition?
(43:23):
How would you know that was the bona fide article? Yeah,
or just some ideas that are being thrown around, Like
imagine some of the meetings for development for shows and
stuff like that that we have here, but that's all internal.
You know, it might be on one of our hard
drives or even on a server or something. If we're
like on our team, the video team will make a
(43:44):
sketch up, a mock up of what a show might
look like or something like that. And I can imagine
someone at NASSA or Goddard mocking up, well, hey, this
is what a possible spacecraft could look like if we
implemented these technologies. I don't know, I can see it. Well.
The part of the issue here is that he's still
fighting extradition. He is in the UK right, and he
(44:11):
is fighting off Uncle Sam. Wants the extradidem to the US,
and they're going to a lot of trouble to get him.
They're going to like a sane level, well not a
sange level. As soon as a Sande is out of
the embassy, he's just black bagged, I'm sure. But but
what you know, I think it's such an interesting case
because he went in there not for some political or
(44:36):
ideological and so much as he went in there because
he believes that free energy is real, that the US
government has discovered it or has somehow created vehicles that
can use it, and he wanted to prove it to
the world. Obviously. Uh, he had a great combination of
skill and luck when it comes to UM online espionage.
(45:00):
I think it was all because he read a book
that had come out around then about basic hacker codes,
like not not codes, but codes of conduct, that kind
of thing, like how to how to view the UM
philosophy of being a hacker, and he was inspired by it.
And you'll see so many people online or on the
(45:22):
lecture circuit who insists that they have proof of secret
space programs involving alien technology or extraterrestrials. Themselves and how cool.
Just show me the money, guys and the spacecraft show Yeah, right,
show me the saucer. The The interesting thing about this, though,
(45:45):
is that, in a way we've talked about this in
the past. In a way, many abduction stories, or many
working with alien stories have tropes that are similar to
stories from earlier ages of I think things like fairies
or change leans or elves, and you know, from a
folklore perspective, we have to ask ourselves, are these stories
(46:11):
just echoes of earlier stories that have changed their clothes
for our modern age? Or or yeah, is it real?
And as it continued happening somehow without universally acknowledged proof.
Here's a catchy thing about launching a space shuttle launching
spacecraft satellite uh an I CBM like an intercontinent continental
(46:36):
ballistic missile which goes in suborbital fight. Um people will know.
The average person will only really know if they're close
enough to see it. The people who will know are
the people who control the sensory equipment. And there are
not a whole lot of those people. So if they
(46:56):
all agree to keep something the secret, I'm not saying
it's plausible, but I am saying that something can launch
with fewer people knowing than you might expect. And what
if there is technology that doesn't require a launch like
that with burning of fuel that could be detected in
(47:17):
that way. What if the zero point energy thing is real, Ben,
and it's in a hangar somewhere out in Groom Lake,
then then we would If that's the case, then we
would go to the economic argument of artificial scarcity, right
like to maintain a status quo of social inequality and injustice. Uh,
the powers that be, whatever those powers would be described as,
(47:39):
are conspiring to prevent UH technological advancement pass a certain threshold.
Which is interesting because I remember hearing years and years
and years ago someone say that um Mayan and Aztec
civilization was amazingly advanced, yet no one had invent it
(48:00):
the wheel, which seemed to me like utter bunk, you know.
And I remember as a kid, I formed this entire
conspiracy theory in my head, and I thought, Yeah, every
time somebody built a wheel, they were sacrificed and killed
or they ended up abandoned in the jungle or something,
because it was a profane idol of some sort. It
(48:20):
was like the man was keeping him down. Uh. I
have absolutely no proof whatsoever that or even if that
story is real, because it still seems highly implausible to me.
This is something that I just remember thinking of as
a kid. Well, let's talk about how this zero point
energy idea came about, because it for me, at least
(48:42):
from my understanding, it traces it. It's traces its origins
back to and the Roswell incident when we thought there
was a there perhaps was probably not though a an
alien spacecraft of some sort or a UFO that crash
landed that used this type of technolog g that was
then you know, broken apart and re engineered by by
(49:07):
let's say, the US military. Yeah, that's the idea. Um.
I hate to be the party pooper in the bunch
and I'm usually not this person, but it seems like
a lot of this stuff we found looking into it
indicates that it was part of Project Mogul, Right, the
weather balloons meant to sense nuclear detonation on everything that
(49:31):
we looked at. You're right, that's what That's what I
would lean towards as the reason that the Roswald crash happened.
But you're talking about the actual the idea of free energy. Yes,
I'm just talking about the origins of this thought process
of connecting the stuff together. You know, because aliens I
have fascinated humans for decades centuries. Yeah, absolutely, And as
(50:00):
our technology has progressed the way it's changed, as we
get into microchips, as we get into what was it transistors.
I forget what the huge leap was in the like
around that time forty seven, because there there's some pretty
interesting technological leaps that occurred right around that time. But
you know, is that coincidence? Is that just because our
(50:20):
technology is at that point? Um, you know, who who's
to say? Not me? I don't, I don't, I don't know.
And there's so many other there's so many other secret
space programs that we could say are alleged to exist,
like the Black Night satellite, which we looked at in
the past. Uh. The idea for for extraterrestrials, the idea
(50:45):
usually takes one of one of three tax like aliens
exist and are in communication with some elite human lead organization,
or aliens crashed recently and some elite human organization took
their stuff, or aliens crashed in the distant past, and
(51:08):
the ruins were found and somehow humanity was able to
put those back together. I think those all make for
fascinating stories. And I would lose my mind if there
was proof of it. It would it would be astonished.
I would be running in the streets around Ponts. I
would the street that is Ponts. You better look both ways,
(51:30):
I like, I wouldn't care though, I'd be like Heliah
and then you won't be around to see you when
they come down, And you know, yeah, I don't care.
I'd hit the greens on the corner make their presentation.
Oh yeah, their power point power point. What if of
all the technology that humanity has managed, the mcgever together
on our time here, power point is the most impressive
(51:52):
to aliens. Not crazy, bring up some Excel spreadsheets, not
anything else about computers, just power point and clip art,
clip art. They love clip art. So what do we
take away from all this? Gents? Well, what do you think? No?
I think, and again this is my opinion. I think
(52:13):
it is foolish to assume that there are not programs,
secret space programs taking place. And I mean, you know,
I keep harping on this privatization of space travel and
what that could mean but wouldn't it be possible that
these companies have a forward facing kind of public wing
and then maybe they've got some kind of skunk work,
(52:35):
see stuff going on behind the scenes. You think about
the money that goes into some of these corporations that
are working directly with the government. Yeah, and all the
while everyone's like rockets, look at that. That is so cool,
you know, and it's just it's is a big wow factor.
But you know, there could be other things going on.
(52:55):
I don't know. We didn't even mention black budgets that. Yeah,
a lot of the governments so much secret money for
all the people who are saying, I don't know where
all where's all that tax money going? Uh? A lot
of it is a lot of it is secreted away
because there have to there have to be layers of
(53:16):
plausible deniability so that your local representative or your senator
doesn't know about it, and and many times they genuinely
do not. And all that stuff would likely be militaristic
in nature, much much of it would be yet dirty stuff.
And then sometimes you know, in the past, at least
(53:37):
in the US where we're recording this podcast, in the past,
government agencies have gone rogue against like against the law
and against the wishes of the rest of the governments,
and waged illegal wars or assisted in drug trafficking to
raise money for specific operations. And I'm not saying an
(53:59):
entire agents e went rogue. I'm just saying factions. So
I think, yeah, I think, uh, it could likely be
military nature. What disturbs me the most is the idea
that's somewhere above us there might be uh satellite with
(54:19):
nuclear deployment capability. It's possible. You're saying a nuclear weapon
that could be just in violation of all the treaties, yeah,
or in violation of the more as I should say,
of international law. Um, I think it's I think it
is possible. I don't know if it's plausible. I have
absolutely no proof for it. Space death ray episode, maybe
(54:41):
a space death ray episode. Note a bad idea? Why yeah,
why would you not have a giant active laser up there,
just ready to go. I feel as long as it's
your giant active laser, we're cool. Right, that's the takeaway
from today. So before we head out today, we have
time for one more thing. Yes, that's right, shout out corner,
(55:12):
and we have a guest theme today. I'm feeling a
little bit put to shame by this. Wesley Slover did
a musical tribute to the Shout Out Corner and it
is quite unsettling and kind of love. Yeah, it's well done.
You can follow him at Sono Sancus on Twitter. And
(55:33):
if any of you want to put a little spin
on the shout Out Corner and make your own shout
Out Corner little jingle there, please send it to us.
You know we would love to play it and kind
of show it off. And next shout out to Kian Kean.
You describe yourself as an irishman living in Minnesota. Ladies
(55:53):
and gentlemen, Keen has recently discovered our show due to
running injuries. We want to say thank you for the
kind words. Uh and we aard. You want us to
look into Virgin Mary appearances and other supposed miracles. You
also suggested we dive deeper into alternative medicines, both the
myths and the truths. I like both of those. Yeah,
(56:15):
we haven't done much on miracles, No, not at all.
I don't think we have. We we discussed, we've discussed
some prophecies. We discussed some prophecies involving the Catholic Church.
And the last shout out goes to someone that we've
shouted at before. Uh, so you're welcome and sorry Vaults
(56:37):
of X Tough. This fellow is he makes metal music.
He's a rapper, he's also a dad. He took some
pictures for new music projects that he's got coming up,
and he was wearing one of our Knowledge is Contagious
shirts that we created and you can find on our website.
I didn't know anyone bought any of those, so thanks Alts.
(57:01):
And it's really cool to see you because he's dude.
You should see this picture. He's got an awesome looks
like a leather jacket on. He's got such metal hair
and facial hair and they just got our shirt. Man.
Thanks for yeah, hey, thanks, thanks so much for giving
and try we we appreciate it. Uh. And that concludes
today's shout out corner. And he did the reverse too.
(57:28):
Yeah wow. Uh all right, so we are going to
head out for today. We hope that you enjoyed this episode.
If you will have something that you would like to
tell our fellow listeners out there, then you can go
ahead and write to us on Twitter or on Facebook,
where conspiracy stuff at both. But wait, as Billy Mays
(57:50):
was want to say, there's more. If you don't want
to do all the social media stuff and trust us,
we understand guys. You can send us a message direct,
you can send us an email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff Works dot com, m
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:20):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. And although I insisted on keeping our
show from getting to air at the time it should
because I had to play some dumb YouTube songs, I'm
still Ben, hopefully you're still you. And today we are
looking at something that touches on a lot of basis
(00:43):
for things that we have covered in the past. So
I figured maybe one of the best ways to start
is I wanted to ask you guys. I don't know
if we've ever talked about this on air, did you
ever want to be an asked or not? When you
grew up. I watched a lot of Nickelodeon when I
was a kid, and as you may or may not remember,
a lot of those shows were sponsored by space Camp,
(01:05):
and um, you know that was the big grand prize
if you went on Doubledare you got to go to
space Camp. And I think we all remember seeing the
commercial where these kids were just floating, you know, weightlifts,
and we're like, I want to go to there. That
seems totally awesome. Spoiler alert. My roommate went to space camp.
No such room, no such anti gravity room. You know
(01:25):
who else went to space camp? Here's that? This guy? Yeah? Yeah,
I was a young astronaut. I was fascinated by I
went to a couple of camps and I think Huntsville,
Alabama is where they have a lot of that stuff,
and it was it was great. I mean that was
my dream, man, I was I was either going to
be a marine biologist or an astronaut. What did you
think being an astronaut really meant? Did you Did you
(01:47):
have the concept of space scientists or were you thinking
you were going to be like, you know, battling extra No,
I was hoping scientists. That's that was the track I
wanted to be on. I didn't need to talk down
to your younger self. Their right, Yeah, I also know
you know this. I also went to space camp. In
(02:08):
the mass everybody went to space camp except me. So
I think we should take you to space camp right
af there we go to David Busters. Look, I'm not
joking about either of those. And I see your smirks
from across the table, Ladies, and gentlemen of the Internet,
(02:28):
our but the steamed co host by close friends outside
of work. I think I'm joking about David Busters and
the Space program. I'm not joking about either of those.
Visiting space related stuff is so cool. And No, you
are a meticulous person when it comes to your work
ethic and a lot of people might not know this
(02:49):
because you're You're very relaxed and personable and and chill.
When you know, when we're hanging out, we're talking from
time you do, we do know what buttons you have?
You guys, there's an adult space camp in Huntsville, Alabama,
and it is available and we can go Adult is
in for grown ups or adult is in like Showtime
(03:10):
after Dark? Maybe both. Hopefully it is uh for a
four day space camp. It's six dollars. That seems like
a lot of money. Did they cover the food? I
hope so all that freeze dried ice cream. Man cannot
live on freeze dried ice cream alone. But if you're
(03:30):
like us, then you probably at some point when you
were a kid, thought of being an astronaut. How cool
is it to go where no one has gone before?
And even even in adulthood, many of us retain this
fascination without space, right Uh. And we've seen the resurgence
of this with the whole mission to Mars Idea, all
(03:52):
the all of the volunteers who are coming out from
everywhere just saying yeah, I'll do it. And Ellen Musk,
the founder of PayPal and and Tesla Motors, just declared
recently or reiterated again more definitively that he aims to
take some people to Mars. And who knows, maybe one
of us, maybe one one of us, whether listening or
(04:14):
podcasting today, could be on that ship. What we know
is that humanity has always been fascinated by space, and
it's um, it's up there with the ocean as the
least explored environment that we have encountered. We went House
of Works went to NASA's Goddard Space Center, uh several
(04:34):
months back to check out the successor to the Hubble telescope,
that James Webb telescope. And when we were there, we
have videos that will go ahead and plug that you
can find on the how Stuff Works YouTube channel, which
is you know, kind of the full disclosure. I'm in
a couple of them, the bad interviews. I'm the one
(04:56):
doing the bad interviews. But then our our our friend,
uh and maybe future guest host, right, no, Holly Fry,
Yeah is on there from stuff you missed in history class,
so you can learn more about the science of exploring space,
at least the publicly acknowledged stuff. Today's question is a
(05:19):
little bit different. But before we go into that, let's
let's talk about some of the things we know about
publicly acknowledged space exploration today. Like, first off, it's expensive, Yeah,
it's crazy expensive in the cost of development and five
years of operation was estimated to be eight point eight
(05:42):
three five billion dollars with a B for the James
Webb for this telescope to you the one, yeah, the
one that you got to go look at and when
you were in there, it's this massive facility with people
just working around the clock. Just I mean, because not
only did the old the thing, you have to test
it so vigorously for years because once it's up there,
(06:05):
it's up there. Yeah, what are you gonna do? Right?
And then there's you know, there's a huge history of
of of space exploration, right, the space race. May have
heard that term before, right, Cold War USSR versus the
United States began in nineteen fifty five, but it continues
today and there are more people in the game. Yes. So,
as of they're an estimated seventy different state sponsored space agencies,
(06:30):
thirteen of those have a known ability to launch vessels
out into space. Okay, that makes sense. So what we're
saying there is that of those seventy, the majority of
the agencies don't themselves have the ability to launch their
own thing. They partner with other agencies like NASA, that
(06:51):
is the idea. So of those thirteen, though, only six
have what's known as full launch capability. That means they
can actually get back some of the things they shoot
out to space, like recovering satellites for example. I mean,
it's not a one and done scenario where you put
it out there and we're never going to see that
guy again. Um. They can actually deploy cryogenic rocket engines um.
(07:16):
And they can also operate probes remotely. Yeah. So once
it's once it's out there in space, you've got to
handle on how to make it work. Or you can
drop a vehicle remotely right to voyage around Mars. Uh. Yes,
that that's strange that when you think of the rate
of attrition there seventy different agencies, thirteen can put something
(07:40):
up and six can do something effective with it. Yeah,
so six out of all the countries on Earth. And
we know, of course that state sponsored agencies are not
the only ones in the game that you alluded to
this earlier, right. Oh yes, billionaires and well not just billionaires,
a lot of billionaires though, and their private corporations are
(08:01):
getting into this, this whole space game we saw. Let's
see space X. That's the again founded by Elon Musk,
like you you mentioned. They just launched another satellite, the
second in just a couple of weeks here. I think
it was a Thaie communication satellite. Previously there was a
Japanese satellite that went up. Um. And the crazy thing
(08:22):
about space x is that they can, like you're saying,
reusing the materials, they bring their entire rocket back down
and landed. Someone looks made up. It's like this vertical
rocket coming down onto a little like a drone boat,
drone platform out in the middle of the ocean. It's bizarre.
It looks like someone played the clip in reverse and
it launching. It's very strange. And I mean, all of
(08:42):
this is so fascinating because we're entering a time now
where I mean this in the past has been in
the realm exclusively of big government agencies that have all
of this budget for this stuff. And as we know,
you know, focus on space exploration has kind of waxed
and waned over the years a bit, and now it's
kind of sitting squarely in the realm of these billionaires
(09:07):
who are able to raise their own money, use their
own capital to do their own research, and it seems
like some of them are doing a pretty good job. Well, yeah,
the day we're recording this, Jeff Bezos is Blue Origin.
Another one they just launched an unmanned aircraft are excusing spacecraft.
Uh it's a prototype rocket that's apparently supposed to be reusable,
(09:29):
just like the other ones, and they again landed it
back on Earth. So another company with another billionaire in
Bezos is the Emperor of Amazon. And those aren't the
only private space flight or uh, space ears, space space tycoons.
I can't call them space tycoons yet. How about space
katiers space gatiers perfect like Rocketeer. Sure you don't seem
(09:55):
as happy with that. I like it all right? Who
else is in this game? Oh, you've got Virgin Galactic,
another billionaire there, Bigelow Aerospace, X Core Aerospace, Orbital Sciences.
I mean, the list goes on. There's ARCA, they're they're
all kinds of other ones that are from different countries.
Sometimes a lot of these are based in the US, um,
(10:15):
but they're they're all over the planet, right, and just
being based in the US, of course, does not restrict
their operations there. There are optimal places around the globe
from which to launch something into space, so they travel
widely there on a world tour. So given the lessons
learned from the private entities and from the history of
(10:40):
state sponsored space agencies, we found, uh, we found some
some pretty interesting things about space travel. If you are
interested in the idea of space travel, we'd also like
you to check out how Stuff works other podcast particularly well,
I don't know, I think almost everybody has something of
(11:00):
space travel. Absolutely. Our friends over at Stuff Mom never
told you have done some great work on female astronauts,
women in the airspace industry in general. Yeah, and so
so it goes across the board. Every every podcast we
have as something about space has done a couple of things. Yeah,
yeah as well. So we did lunar rovers. So what
(11:25):
we found is that despite the evolution of space travel,
there's still a few things that are true. And here
they are just across the board. I'll go first. It's
terrifyingly easy for something to go wrong, frighteningly easy. For example,
the Challenger disaster, and that's not that's not that's just
(11:47):
one that's in the public sphere. There are multiple classified
accidents that occurred during the Soviet space programs. You've learned
about a few of those cosmonauts, and we have done
work before on a lost cos not theories, and I
think Jonathan Strickland from tech Stuff has covered it. But
definitely people died in training, and as we mentioned earlier
(12:09):
podcasts were literally erased from history. There's some fascinating stories
in within that topic, so I would encourage you to
go check that out if you're listening to this. So
a big part, like what I was leading to earlier,
that makes this so difficult to do, is that these voyages,
this equipment, everything that goes into doing this stuff incredibly
(12:30):
prohibitively expensive. So the average cost of a man space
launch was estimated to be four hundred and fifty million
dollars in twenty eleven. That's for a single launch, and
that's by NASA. That's by NASA. And then the overall
cost for a shuttle's thirty year lifespan. So if you're
in it for the long haul, you're looking at a
one hundred and nineties six billion dollar tab, which is
(12:54):
adjusted for inflation for for right now. But still, how
is that a number? That's that's amazing. But then there's
there's a third thing here about every kind of space endeavor,
which we were startled to find in some of our
earlier work. Yeah, how in the heck do you keep
it a secret that you are using fuel, very loud,
(13:18):
very bright, uh fuel to launch things up into and
beyond the atmosphere? How do you keep that a secret?
And then how do you keep a satellite a secret?
And when it's orbit in the sky, which at this
point is still uncensored. Today's question, ladies and gentlemen, do
world governments and corporations have secret space programs? Given the cost,
(13:44):
given how incredibly difficult it is. It's like, I'm gonna
try to make a video game reference. Tell me if
I get it. It's like if there were Dark Souls fourteen,
does that work? I? Think so. I mean, so it's
a little different, but I'm gonna go Souls is the
tough one, right, Yeah, that's the tough one. I'm so
out of it. Well, yeah, because in a way, every time,
(14:08):
if you really want to get into the space program,
much like if you really want to get into Dark Souls,
you basically have to take up the controller and attempt
as many times as you possibly can, and you'll get
things right as you go along, little by little by
little by little. But ultimately you can't just jump in
and get the whole thing right. You can't just win
(14:29):
by starting the space race. I'm sorry that I gave
you this albatross of the metaphor. I'm trying to work
with it. Let's just let it go. I apologize. I
guess what I'm saying is ultimately you end up throwing
the controller against the wall in both cases. I guess, Yeah,
that's familiar, the controller or the or the lander. Right,
what we know for sure that we know for sure
(14:52):
that secret space programs did exist, and historically the origins
and really space programs or shrouded in secret. Began his
research into rocketry and rockets. The idea of a rocket
is ancient dates all the way back to the first
(15:13):
principles essential to rocket flight came from the writings of
a Roman named ALUs Gellius, who told a story about
a Greek guy named Arcitas who lived in a city
called Tarantum is now part of southern Italy, somewhere around
four b C. According to this story, he uh he
made a pigeon out of wood and amused people by
(15:36):
flying it using the principles of rocketry, the action reaction principle,
which wasn't a scientific law until the seventeenth century. The
point is, maybe this metaphor is not or this excuse me,
comparison is not that far off, because you were You
are absolutely right about baby steps. So we know that
people began working on rockets way before they thought about
(16:01):
taking them to space. But we know that given the
research of rocketry and the enormous jump it had during
World War Two, the foundations of the US rocketry programs,
the U s s R, which was the big the
big other agency at the Cold War UH and what
(16:23):
ultimately became a space program, what ultimately lead to atomic bombs,
involved some shady stuff, in particular something known as Operation
paper Clip. Yes, that's when Nazi scientists and scientists from
other non allied countries were brought to both to the
to the United States, to the United Kingdoms and other
parts of the world where they were secreted away. You know,
(16:45):
these are people who were working on specialized projects for
let's say, for bad people doing bad things like then
or Brown. Yeah, but they had an amazing amount of
research and intelligence, and strategically, I guess it just made
a lot of sense to keep them around and just
(17:08):
to jump on the the rocketry programs that the world had.
It was all about launching a missile or launching, you know,
a bomb. How do I get this bomb all the
way over here where I wanted to explode and you know,
not have to take a ship over there or a
plane or something. That's that is why we have space flight.
(17:28):
It's because we wanted to figure out how to more
effectively bomb people from far away, which is kind of
strange to think about. And the US government as a
history of this as well. I mean, the CIA actually
ran a secret satellite surveillance network A have a fun
thing to say three times fast from fifty nine to
nineteen two, where and they spied on the USSR and
(17:52):
the People's reblic of China from you guessed it out
of space UM. And this is a story I love
so much because it just goes to know the scrappy
nature of you know, getting things done by the U. S. Government.
So the UM satellites didn't actually have the ability to
transmit photographs remotely, you know, through uh, through the air
(18:14):
right the sixties, what's what's what's the what's the fix there? Well,
they actually had negatives and they would drop the negatives
from space. Yeah, I'm picturing little parachutes and I just
don't even There are pictures you can see pictures and
even diagrams on well Wikipedia's where I found them of
the Corona that we're talking about, the Corona program. Uh yeah,
(18:37):
you can see just just how old fashioned it looks
and feels. How just can't imagine how who do they
send out? What poor sucker do they send out to
find these things? And where's the film adaptation to that?
I bet there's maybe there's a classified script they're still somewhere. Yeah,
But they spent a lot of money on that as well.
According to some former officials, the total estimated cost the
(19:00):
program was eight hundred and fifty million dollars, which doesn't
sound like that much compared to you know, four d
fifty for one launch, right, but you know we're talking
nineteen sixties dollars when it was mostly in use, right.
And I don't know if they factored in, you know,
like developing the film, developing negatives, got interns to do that, right, Right,
(19:25):
they just went to a photo mat um something. And
they weren't the only ones doing it, and and uh,
Corona was not the most um widespread of these sorts
of programs. Oh yeah, the Russian side had theirs. Their
own thing is Zenet I think seen it. I'm not
sure exactly how to pronounce it. But they were doing
(19:46):
photo reconnaissance in the same way, um, but they were
doing it a lot more I think. I think their
their program was a lot more extensive. Yeah, they had
over five hundred Zenet satellites flown, which makes it to
this day the most numerous type of satellite and the
history of space exploration. Yeah, oh yeah, these were launched. Okay,
(20:11):
So here's here's a weird anecdote that does apply to this.
So we all know what a tank is, right, Uh? Tank?
In war, they're called tanks and the old story goes
because when they were being shipped around in England or
around Europe to avoid prying eyes, they were created and
(20:32):
called water tanks, and so that became their nickname. Going
to our earlier point about how difficult it would be
to secretly launched something from space, Uh, these things. The
Russians and the US accepted that the other side would
notice when they sent something into space, so they labeled
(20:53):
them as different things or put them in different programs
so that they seemed like they were a pushing a
different purpose. And as as you said, oh yeah, these
these were probably above top secret level, some kind of
compartmentalized need to know basis intelligence where you know, imagine
(21:15):
that you're the president of a country and then some
suit comes up to you one of your advisors and says,
we have evidence that shows that we need to, you know,
invade this country now or send a force here. You
go ye, and they say we can't tell you, and
then you go, but I'm the president, and they say,
(21:36):
I know, Mr President. And then eventually you're persuasive enough
that somebody from uh you know, the CIA or the
n s A or some other alphabet agency just sort
of slides a blurry photograph across across the desk at you,
and that's how you find out how did you get
(21:57):
focused on this? So yeah, how wait? Wait? And I
have to said, okay, the way these satellites look, the
Zenit programmed satellites. You can again go on to Wikipedia.
You can look at a picture of one of these.
It looks like a large sphere that has some optics
kind of and glass pointing out of it, and then
a little I don't know if in this picture that's
(22:20):
being shown, if it's just sitting on a holder. Because
it is a giant sphere. I think that's probably the case.
They just put the sphere down on a on a base.
But I don't know. If you guys remember the stories
coming out a couple maybe a month ago about the
giant spheres found in Bosnia. This is a complete tangent here,
but giant spheres found. There's supposedly these huge stone spheres
(22:46):
and this one guy found one and he's claiming that
it's all these different things, and there have been numerous
explanations about what it is. It looks exactly like a
Zenit satellite, one that maybe just ended up in Bosnia,
I don't know. That's interesting because you have to wonder
what kind of a crazy game that that is, the
(23:07):
play where they're like, well, the satellites coming down, Agent Brown,
you have to be a Kazakhstan in twelve hours. Yeah,
And how the heck can you get this giant sphere
onto a like a flatbed truck or something. Oh? Wow,
very carefully, my friend, Very carefully, and sadly, I don't
I don't know if you could make it to Kazakhstan
in twelve hours from So we're just luck here, all right.
(23:31):
So we're gonna have to go out to UH to
one of our other operatives, which is weird because I
just hate Darren. He's such a He's been slipping. He's
Darren has been slipping. And if you are listening, Darren,
you're fired. Sorry Darren. Wow, we just made up Darren
(23:53):
and fired him in the space a few minutes. Okay.
So we know that these programmes existed, and these are
just a few, just to show that multiple kinds of
programs have have existed. One of the first aims of
this was to achieve supremacy in the space race, and
(24:15):
the first from from the first satellite launched by humankind
spot Nick, the U S s R and the U S.
We're trying to outdo each other and to get superior surveillance.
Corona probably wouldn't have happened as soon as it did
had a YouTube spy plane not been shot down earlier.
(24:37):
And so they said, well, we'll just go higher on
space where they can't reach us. And then immediately people
began working on how to kill how to kill a satellite.
So the question is, can we from this historical precedent,
can we say that secret space programs continue today or
(25:02):
was this just some cold war thing? I'm not sure,
but we'll figure it out right after a quick break.
Here's where it gets crazy. There are active secret space programs. Uh,
(25:26):
some of us know a little bit about them because
they're little bits and pieces of details that get leaks
or that are allowed to be discussed from a pr perspective.
But the ins and outs of these programs, the actual
processes that are occurring, or what kind of research is
being done with these, we won't know probably for fifty years,
(25:49):
maybe maybe a hundred years, maybe never until they're declassified.
And we have several examples of these. Yeah, one of
the biggest examples the something that is a personal off
the air obsession for some of us in this room,
and that is the infamous X thirty seven B, which
(26:11):
is an unmanned spacecraft that has been in orbit as
you check this show out, or as we record this,
at least, it's been in orbit for almost a year
now on this stent. And what's it doing up there?
Because I don't know, Yeah, it was. It was launched
(26:31):
on the twentie of May of last year, and that
was its fourth flight. Yeah, the fourth time it's been
up there. It's still just going around doing who knows what,
just just hanging out. Probably, I bet you know. It's
probably just a leisure cruise for the AI system. They're
trying to get it used to what it will be
like to be isolated in space, right, That's what it is.
(26:53):
It's not a big deal. I spoke with Jonathan about
this yesterday because he was doing a live Facebook feed
and he was talking about NASA a bit, and I
mentioned the X thirties seven B, and man if he
didn't just throw water so hard on on my thoughts that, hey,
maybe there's something, you know, weird being tested up there
are some kind of surveillance program that's being used with
(27:15):
this thing, or maybe uh maybe checking the ability to
somehow interfere with other satellites. And I feel like that's
a big thing to me. If people are putting money
into these programs, there needs to be some sort of
strategic advantage for doing it. And you know how better
(27:37):
to have the upper hand, whether it's you know, as
a country, as a company, let's say, than to be
able to mess with other people's satellites, to be able
to disrupt or have some sort of supremacy because like
we said earlier, I mean, we don't police outer space
in the same way that we police the skies, you know,
of the world. Yeah, I mean, you know, so sort
(28:00):
of fair game. And we we can't have any space wars.
We have treaties. Were not allowed to uh have any
kind of combat in space, at least from from a
legal perspective. No country is allowed to engage in battle
up there, right. Oh, And I want to I want
to give a brief thank you to someone. I cannot
(28:21):
remember who said this, but I had. I was talking
about either the Dead Hands system or something else in
a live show, and I misspoke because I described the
Strategic Defense Initiative a k A. Star Wars program baron
(28:41):
Reagan's administration, and I wasn't clear enough, So I want
to be clear now as far as we know, it
was not actually built. It was only proposed. So I
do want to be emphatic about that. As far as
we know, it was never built. And one last thing
we have remember the X thirty seven B is created
(29:02):
by Boeing. Yes, And this is another thing to keep
in mind when we're discussing private companies and governments and
programs like NASA and the intersection between companies like this
where Northrop Grumman or Boeing or you know, any of
these other corporations they get huge contracts from the government
to build stuff like the X thirty seven b um.
(29:24):
So you know, when you think about a government institution
versus corporation, it's not it's not always that binary, right, Yeah,
I think that's that's a very good point. It is
often a false psychotomy. So what we're talking about now
is the militarization of space. And you can see them.
(29:47):
You can see the bread crumbons begin to disappear in
the post Cold World War era. So one example of
this would be that you're absolutely correct now and you
say that there are international treaties restricting, you know, restricting China, India, Japan,
(30:09):
the US and Russia from starting nuclear war in space.
Hopefully that's the plan. But as far as listening in
space or what's called a space sensing system, that is
still uh you know, that is still occurring. And one
(30:29):
example of it would be the use of well they've evolved, right,
they've evolved since Corona spy satellites now have stuff like
high resolution photography, which is called image intelligence where immant.
These are all weird acronyms. Communications eavesdropping or sig iNTS
signals intelligence and covert communications. Hum int is not what
(30:54):
are what? Gift are Noel Brown and Ben Bole and
texting each other today? Shrimp and white wine? That was
a great one. Good Yeah did you actually were you
actually eating shrimp? I was drinking white wine them? Okay,
Well it checks out. So if we think about it, though,
this kind of listening in this sort of low earth
(31:18):
orbit eavesdropping lack of a better word, is necessary from
a state perspective, like you want to know who's doing what,
especially if you've got active enemies, people who are looking
to ensure your demise. It's probably a good idea and
also provides early warning and missile launches detection of nuclear detonation.
(31:43):
That's that's probably how uh the Great Powers new when
India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests. That also gives us
to you know, that's probably why they learned about the
Vela incidents. Did we do we did an audio podcast
on Villa incident? I don't know if we did an
audio podcasts. Devella incident is an alleged nuclear test by
(32:10):
alleged I just mean we don't officially know who did it.
Do you think though, that having these giant corporations like
Amazon and SpaceX. I mean, I don't know SpaceX is
an exactly a giant corporation, but Musk definitely represents, you know,
an economic force in and of himself. Do you think
there's a conflict of interest having these private individuals who
(32:35):
are out, you know, to make a profit enter into
this sphere? You know, absolutely? Yeah. I mean, for for me,
it's always a conflict of interest when there's something good
as the goal, but then profit is the overall motive. Well,
you know, also it's it's necessary if we look at
the history of human exploration and expansion, uh after the
(33:01):
European way, Like many of the great old civilizations right
from African African Continent ancient civilizations to you know, the
Middle Kingdom or China, they were expanding typically through some
(33:22):
sort of quests for resources you know, uh so, and
and that applies you know to those European countries as well.
I my fear is that the that we will be
alive when the first manned off world colony comes into existence,
and that it will be run by something much more
like the dutchy c India Company than a altruistic saved
(33:47):
the world or saved the species kind of thing. Mars
banana plantations. Maybe here's something creepy too. Another thing that
these satellites are used for, of course, is GPS, which listeners,
let's be honest, you probably used somewhat recently. GPS is
(34:10):
the stuff man I I I think if any technology
that exists today that didn't when I was a kid,
that is by far my favorite. It's a game changer
for sure. I mean in a lot of different scenarios.
Even if you're if you're like me and can't find
your way out of a paper bag, that's changed my life.
The cost of maintaining that system. It's okay. So the system,
(34:35):
the GPS system, and you know they're they're different ones,
right Like India has the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System,
the Global Positioning System UH that was originally designed, was
designed by and is still controlled by UH, someone who
(34:56):
will let anyone use it free of charge. Do you
know who designed to get rolls it? No? I think
you do know it's the US Department of Defense. So uh,
you know the same kind of like the Google strategy
ask ask me anything free? All you know, of course
(35:16):
that's that services free. They're not going to give you
a GPS phone or Internet connection. UM. So that I
can imagine that being a thing though in the future.
And so it you know, it leads people to wonder
what what happens with this data? You know? Uh. And
then there's there's the other idea that we just talked
(35:37):
about net network centric warfare. So using these communication abilities
to essentially have clarabuoyance, you know, to to be the
three of us were in a battle on one side
or the other, then the people that had sent us
there would want us to be able to know like, oh,
(35:57):
across the field, the that Frederick Coonian is prepping a
and H electromagnetic disruptor or something, you know, and he
would he would. It's so Fredrick on Ian and right,
and we know that, um, we we know that the
(36:23):
things like the X thirty seven, the unmanned aerial vehicles
are reality. Doubtlessly there are other countries attempting to do
the same thing, if not doing it currently. And what
one more example of an active secret space program, which
is happening now as we speak. So in early two thousand's,
(36:50):
both the US and China sent some pretty tense barely veiled, uh,
barely veiled threats to each other. Uh what what? What
did they do? So in the early as both the
US and China sent some pretty tense signals, let's say,
(37:12):
to each other, when they both publicly unveiled their satellite
killing technology. I love that the idea of satellite killers,
but this was actually presented as an efficient way to
dispose of their own aging satellites on both sides, and
(37:32):
they actually made pretty clear threats against each other. Well yeah,
I mean it's a perfect veiled threat. Right, Oh our
satellite is not functioning. Oh look we killed it and
it just you know, it's that whole under the table
thing as just shows you, well, you know it could
have been your satellite. Yeah wink. And you know in
(37:53):
two thousand eight there's another one called Operation Burnt Frost
or burn Frost. I think it's Burnt Frost. This was
one our the U. S Military destroyed and nonfunctioning n
r O National Reconnaistance Office satellite. UM again, same kind
of deal, just like here, we're gonna send this missile
up and we can target a satellite in freaking space.
(38:16):
This is clearly an example of UM paying lip service
to one thing and just saying this is a test
of capabilities. But everybody knew what the rty on the
wall was. Here are my muscles, my ability to shoot
downside once? Yeah, it's like someone saying just casually stay
and look at this knife. Yeah yeah, look how far
(38:36):
I can throw it? And uh, this is These are
just some examples of things that are proven but remain
to some degree classified. Right, So where to now? Well,
now we get into the deep dark areas, the places
where life barely penetrates. We're in the fringe. You guys,
(38:59):
you're ready for this one? I'm just gonna say one name,
Gary McKinnon. Oh you know what we're talking about. We're
talking about hacking NASA back in two thousand one, I
think two thousand two was one. He was actively hacking NASA,
going through their databases, and uh, this gentleman found well,
(39:19):
he declares that he found some pretty crazy stuff. I
think early on in an interview that he gave to
Wired News just a couple of years after, and that
he had done this. I believe he was two thousand six.
He says, this is a quote. I knew that government
suppressed anti gravity UFO related technologies, free energy or what
(39:43):
they call zero point energy. This should not be hidden
from the public when pensioners can't pay their bills, you know. Okay,
So this statement alone right here. So you've got a
person who is personally motivated to go and find these
things that he believes exists inside I'd mass a server somewhere. Um,
(40:03):
he goes in and he thinks that he's found some
of this stuff. He I think, let's see. He claimed
to find a manifest that described what we're called non
terrestrial officers, and he claimed that he did see an
image particular of of a craft with technology that does
(40:28):
not exists. But he wasn't able to get that image
to then show it to other people, which you know,
it stinks because you want to believe at any point,
you want to believe a person at least this is
this is Matt speaking for himself. I want to believe
what someone says at all times. But it's very tough
(40:50):
to take something like that that's so out there, a
claim that just kind of makes you roll your eyes
a little bit, even if you want to believe it,
what do you think it does come off as a
bit of a stretch. And I agree. I mean, you know,
it's the nature of me. You know, it's like a
it's like a sticky kind of a slippery slope writing
that line between skepticism and belief, and you kind of
(41:14):
have to just find a happy middle ground. And I
think you do a fine job of that yourself. Man, Well,
you know one other thing. Then you have to remember
this guy is on a fifty six K modem back
into early two thousand's as he's going through these servers
and I'm imagining downloading the image because you guys, remember
back then, as the image comes now it's going one
(41:34):
or two lines at a time, and just I imagine
being Gary McKinnon and just seeing this image develop one
line at a time. Right, what is this? Yeah? What?
He It's weird because it gets into some technical stuff there,
because he says that he got into Johnson Space Centers
(41:54):
Building eight, that he remotely accessed the terminal there and
they found a folder that had the photographs that were
two hundreds or three hundred megabyte images and the pictures
were of cigar shaped craft in orbit. But as you say,
it was on a dial up, so he's he here's
his quote. I turned the color down to four bit
(42:15):
and the screen resolution really really low, and even then
it was still juttering as it came onto the screen.
But it was whatever came on was amazing and culmination
of all my efforts. It was a picture of something
that definitely wasn't man made. But again he's looking at
it at four bits of color with super low screen
resolution just in order to see it, right, and at
(42:37):
that point the image is so degraded, then how can
you ever tell what it actually is? Well, he says
he was able to take a screenshot. Where's that? I
can't find it looking for it? Right now. Yeah, I'm
looking for the screenshot, trying a screenshot of a terrible picture.
I'll take that his computer was seized by police during
(43:00):
his first rest and no two. Uh So, people say,
is the claim to have seen evidence of the UFO
cover up credible? For bit It's tough, um. And you
know at that point, would that be a what how
would you know that was not an artist for rendition?
(43:23):
How would you know that was the bona fide article? Yeah,
or just some ideas that are being thrown around, Like
imagine some of the meetings for development for shows and
stuff like that that we have here, but that's all internal.
You know, it might be on one of our hard
drives or even on a server or something. If we're
like on our team, the video team will make a
(43:44):
sketch up, a mock up of what a show might
look like or something like that. And I can imagine
someone at NASSA or Goddard mocking up, well, hey, this
is what a possible spacecraft could look like if we
implemented these technologies. I don't know, I can see it. Well.
The part of the issue here is that he's still
fighting extradition. He is in the UK right, and he
(44:11):
is fighting off Uncle Sam. Wants the extradidem to the US,
and they're going to a lot of trouble to get him.
They're going to like a sane level, well not a
sange level. As soon as a Sande is out of
the embassy, he's just black bagged, I'm sure. But but
what you know, I think it's such an interesting case
because he went in there not for some political or
(44:36):
ideological and so much as he went in there because
he believes that free energy is real, that the US
government has discovered it or has somehow created vehicles that
can use it, and he wanted to prove it to
the world. Obviously. Uh, he had a great combination of
skill and luck when it comes to UM online espionage.
(45:00):
I think it was all because he read a book
that had come out around then about basic hacker codes,
like not not codes, but codes of conduct, that kind
of thing, like how to how to view the UM
philosophy of being a hacker, and he was inspired by it.
And you'll see so many people online or on the
(45:22):
lecture circuit who insists that they have proof of secret
space programs involving alien technology or extraterrestrials. Themselves and how cool.
Just show me the money, guys and the spacecraft show Yeah, right,
show me the saucer. The The interesting thing about this, though,
(45:45):
is that, in a way we've talked about this in
the past. In a way, many abduction stories, or many
working with alien stories have tropes that are similar to
stories from earlier ages of I think things like fairies
or change leans or elves, and you know, from a
folklore perspective, we have to ask ourselves, are these stories
(46:11):
just echoes of earlier stories that have changed their clothes
for our modern age? Or or yeah, is it real?
And as it continued happening somehow without universally acknowledged proof.
Here's a catchy thing about launching a space shuttle launching
spacecraft satellite uh an I CBM like an intercontinent continental
(46:36):
ballistic missile which goes in suborbital fight. Um people will know.
The average person will only really know if they're close
enough to see it. The people who will know are
the people who control the sensory equipment. And there are
not a whole lot of those people. So if they
(46:56):
all agree to keep something the secret, I'm not saying
it's plausible, but I am saying that something can launch
with fewer people knowing than you might expect. And what
if there is technology that doesn't require a launch like
that with burning of fuel that could be detected in
(47:17):
that way. What if the zero point energy thing is real, Ben,
and it's in a hangar somewhere out in Groom Lake,
then then we would If that's the case, then we
would go to the economic argument of artificial scarcity, right
like to maintain a status quo of social inequality and injustice. Uh,
the powers that be, whatever those powers would be described as,
(47:39):
are conspiring to prevent UH technological advancement pass a certain threshold.
Which is interesting because I remember hearing years and years
and years ago someone say that um Mayan and Aztec
civilization was amazingly advanced, yet no one had invent it
(48:00):
the wheel, which seemed to me like utter bunk, you know.
And I remember as a kid, I formed this entire
conspiracy theory in my head, and I thought, Yeah, every
time somebody built a wheel, they were sacrificed and killed
or they ended up abandoned in the jungle or something,
because it was a profane idol of some sort. It
(48:20):
was like the man was keeping him down. Uh. I
have absolutely no proof whatsoever that or even if that
story is real, because it still seems highly implausible to me.
This is something that I just remember thinking of as
a kid. Well, let's talk about how this zero point
energy idea came about, because it for me, at least
(48:42):
from my understanding, it traces it. It's traces its origins
back to and the Roswell incident when we thought there
was a there perhaps was probably not though a an
alien spacecraft of some sort or a UFO that crash
landed that used this type of technolog g that was
then you know, broken apart and re engineered by by
(49:07):
let's say, the US military. Yeah, that's the idea. Um.
I hate to be the party pooper in the bunch
and I'm usually not this person, but it seems like
a lot of this stuff we found looking into it
indicates that it was part of Project Mogul, Right, the
weather balloons meant to sense nuclear detonation on everything that
(49:31):
we looked at. You're right, that's what That's what I
would lean towards as the reason that the Roswald crash happened.
But you're talking about the actual the idea of free energy. Yes,
I'm just talking about the origins of this thought process
of connecting the stuff together. You know, because aliens I
have fascinated humans for decades centuries. Yeah, absolutely, And as
(50:00):
our technology has progressed the way it's changed, as we
get into microchips, as we get into what was it transistors.
I forget what the huge leap was in the like
around that time forty seven, because there there's some pretty
interesting technological leaps that occurred right around that time. But
you know, is that coincidence? Is that just because our
(50:20):
technology is at that point? Um, you know, who who's
to say? Not me? I don't, I don't, I don't know.
And there's so many other there's so many other secret
space programs that we could say are alleged to exist,
like the Black Night satellite, which we looked at in
the past. Uh. The idea for for extraterrestrials, the idea
(50:45):
usually takes one of one of three tax like aliens
exist and are in communication with some elite human lead organization,
or aliens crashed recently and some elite human organization took
their stuff, or aliens crashed in the distant past, and
(51:08):
the ruins were found and somehow humanity was able to
put those back together. I think those all make for
fascinating stories. And I would lose my mind if there
was proof of it. It would it would be astonished.
I would be running in the streets around Ponts. I
would the street that is Ponts. You better look both ways,
(51:30):
I like, I wouldn't care though, I'd be like Heliah
and then you won't be around to see you when
they come down, And you know, yeah, I don't care.
I'd hit the greens on the corner make their presentation.
Oh yeah, their power point power point. What if of
all the technology that humanity has managed, the mcgever together
on our time here, power point is the most impressive
(51:52):
to aliens. Not crazy, bring up some Excel spreadsheets, not
anything else about computers, just power point and clip art,
clip art. They love clip art. So what do we
take away from all this? Gents? Well, what do you think? No?
I think, and again this is my opinion. I think
(52:13):
it is foolish to assume that there are not programs,
secret space programs taking place. And I mean, you know,
I keep harping on this privatization of space travel and
what that could mean but wouldn't it be possible that
these companies have a forward facing kind of public wing
and then maybe they've got some kind of skunk work,
(52:35):
see stuff going on behind the scenes. You think about
the money that goes into some of these corporations that
are working directly with the government. Yeah, and all the
while everyone's like rockets, look at that. That is so cool,
you know, and it's just it's is a big wow factor.
But you know, there could be other things going on.
(52:55):
I don't know. We didn't even mention black budgets that. Yeah,
a lot of the governments so much secret money for
all the people who are saying, I don't know where
all where's all that tax money going? Uh? A lot
of it is a lot of it is secreted away
because there have to there have to be layers of
(53:16):
plausible deniability so that your local representative or your senator
doesn't know about it, and and many times they genuinely
do not. And all that stuff would likely be militaristic
in nature, much much of it would be yet dirty stuff.
And then sometimes you know, in the past, at least
(53:37):
in the US where we're recording this podcast, in the past,
government agencies have gone rogue against like against the law
and against the wishes of the rest of the governments,
and waged illegal wars or assisted in drug trafficking to
raise money for specific operations. And I'm not saying an
(53:59):
entire agents e went rogue. I'm just saying factions. So
I think, yeah, I think, uh, it could likely be
military nature. What disturbs me the most is the idea
that's somewhere above us there might be uh satellite with
(54:19):
nuclear deployment capability. It's possible. You're saying a nuclear weapon
that could be just in violation of all the treaties, yeah,
or in violation of the more as I should say,
of international law. Um, I think it's I think it
is possible. I don't know if it's plausible. I have
absolutely no proof for it. Space death ray episode, maybe
(54:41):
a space death ray episode. Note a bad idea? Why yeah,
why would you not have a giant active laser up there,
just ready to go. I feel as long as it's
your giant active laser, we're cool. Right, that's the takeaway
from today. So before we head out today, we have
time for one more thing. Yes, that's right, shout out corner,
(55:12):
and we have a guest theme today. I'm feeling a
little bit put to shame by this. Wesley Slover did
a musical tribute to the Shout Out Corner and it
is quite unsettling and kind of love. Yeah, it's well done.
You can follow him at Sono Sancus on Twitter. And
(55:33):
if any of you want to put a little spin
on the shout Out Corner and make your own shout
Out Corner little jingle there, please send it to us.
You know we would love to play it and kind
of show it off. And next shout out to Kian Kean.
You describe yourself as an irishman living in Minnesota. Ladies
(55:53):
and gentlemen, Keen has recently discovered our show due to
running injuries. We want to say thank you for the
kind words. Uh and we aard. You want us to
look into Virgin Mary appearances and other supposed miracles. You
also suggested we dive deeper into alternative medicines, both the
myths and the truths. I like both of those. Yeah,
(56:15):
we haven't done much on miracles, No, not at all.
I don't think we have. We we discussed, we've discussed
some prophecies. We discussed some prophecies involving the Catholic Church.
And the last shout out goes to someone that we've
shouted at before. Uh, so you're welcome and sorry Vaults
(56:37):
of X Tough. This fellow is he makes metal music.
He's a rapper, he's also a dad. He took some
pictures for new music projects that he's got coming up,
and he was wearing one of our Knowledge is Contagious
shirts that we created and you can find on our website.
I didn't know anyone bought any of those, so thanks Alts.
(57:01):
And it's really cool to see you because he's dude.
You should see this picture. He's got an awesome looks
like a leather jacket on. He's got such metal hair
and facial hair and they just got our shirt. Man.
Thanks for yeah, hey, thanks, thanks so much for giving
and try we we appreciate it. Uh. And that concludes
today's shout out corner. And he did the reverse too.
(57:28):
Yeah wow. Uh all right, so we are going to
head out for today. We hope that you enjoyed this episode.
If you will have something that you would like to
tell our fellow listeners out there, then you can go
ahead and write to us on Twitter or on Facebook,
where conspiracy stuff at both. But wait, as Billy Mays
(57:50):
was want to say, there's more. If you don't want
to do all the social media stuff and trust us,
we understand guys. You can send us a message direct,
you can send us an email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff Works dot com, m
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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