CLASSIC: Are there secret space programs?

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

Speaker 1 (00:01):
We are on the precipice as a global civilization. We're
on the precipice of private industry leading the charge into space.
And uh, I think I don't know. I was always
a space ner growing up. What about you, guys? Were
you interested in this stuff? Do you ever want to
be an astronaut or an engineer? I did briefly, I

(00:23):
mean as is a little later in life, but I
worked at a science center called Fork Discovery. We had
one of those cool gyroscope things, just probably one of
the cooler things you actually get to mess within space camp.
Turns out there's no zero gravity room, unfortunately, but they
surely look cool on all those Nickelodeon game show, you know,
prize commercials. Oh yeah, and I spent quite a bit

(00:44):
of time in Huntsville, Alabama, hanging out doing doing our thing.
We've talked about the Young Astronauts program on here before.
I think we even shared an image of me as
a young boy with a bowl cut in my Young
Astronauts te shirt. I think we all did. Did we
all have bull cut periods? Uh buple of a certain age?
I think it's entirely possible. I had a flat top

(01:05):
for a time all I know is that the good
people in Huntsville never told me about any secret space programs,
and I'm kinda ticked off about it. Yeah, no kidding,
that's uh, that's something that a lot of people would
understandably be ticked off about. In this classic episode, were
are asking ourselves about the existence of space programs that

(01:29):
operate in secrecy. Spoiler alert, they're very much real. Still
listen to the episode, though, because the way we get
there is is fascinating worth the time, and this is
from so they're even more secret or now, Oh the
interesting times. I did not go to space Camp, but
whether or not Matt and Ben got to high enough
levels of space Camp clearance to be briefed on these

(01:52):
we do now know about quite a few of them,
and we're gonna talk about them in this episode from
UFOs two Psychic Powers. Since 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, welcome

(02:17):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Noel. And although I insisted on keeping our show
from getting into 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 uh. Today we are looking
at something that touches on a lot of basis for

(02:40):
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, Respawns stared by Space Camp, and um,

(03:02):
you know that was the big grand prize. If you
went on double there 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 who else went

(03:23):
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's
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 have the concept

(03:45):
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. There he understands. Yeah, I also know you
know this. I also went to space camp in a
mass everybody went to space camp except me. So I

(04:09):
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, our
but the steamed co host by close friends outside of work,

(04:29):
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 because you're you're
very relaxed and personable and and chill when you know,

(04:52):
when we're hanging out, we're talking from times you do
get 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 after Dark?
Maybe both hopefully it is uh for a four day

(05:13):
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 like us,
then you probably at some point when you were a kid,
thought of being an astronaut. How cool is it to

(05:34):
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 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

(05:56):
and and Tesla Motors, just declared recently 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 podcasting today, could be on that ship.
What we know is that humanity has always been fascinated

(06:18):
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 months back to check out the successor to
the Hubble telescope, that James Webb telescope, and when we

(06:39):
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 doing the bad interviews. But then our our
our friend uh and maybe future guests host right, No,

(07:01):
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 little bit different. But before we
go into that, let's let's talk about some of the

(07:21):
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 three five billion dollars with

(07:42):
a B for the James Webb for this telescope that
you're 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 build a thing,
you have to test it so vigorously for years because
once it's up there, it's up there. Yeah, what are

(08:03):
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

(08:24):
different state sponsored space agencies. 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

(08:46):
other agencies like NASA. That 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. It is
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.

(09:08):
They can actually deploy cryogenic rocket engines. Um. 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

(09:30):
that's strange that when you think of the rate of attrition,
there seventy different agencies. Thirteen can put something 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,

(09:52):
billionaires and well not just billionaires. A lot of billionaires though,
and their private corporations are getting into this, this whole
space scheme we saw. Let's see space X that's 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.

(10:14):
Previously there was a Japanese satellite that went up um
And the crazy thing about SpaceX 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 run platform out in the middle of
the ocean. It's bizarre. It looks like someone played the

(10:35):
clip in reverse I launch. It's a very strange. And
I mean, all of 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,

(10:58):
and now it's kind of getting squarely in the realm
of these billionaires 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

(11:19):
unmanned aircraft are excusing spacecraft. It's a prototype rocket that's
apparently supposed to be reusable, just like the other ones,
and they again landed it back on Earth. So another
company with another billionaire, and Bezos is the Emperor of Amazon.
And those aren't the only private space flight uh, space ears,

(11:41):
space space tycoons. I can't call them space tycoons yet.
How about space cotiers, space gatiers perfect like Rocketeer. Sure
you don't seem as happy with that. I like it
all right? Who else is in this game? Oh, you've
got Virgin Galactic, another billionaire, there, Biglow Aerospace, X Core Aerospace,

(12:03):
orbital Sciences. I mean, the list goes on. There's area,
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, 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

(12:26):
they travel widely there on a world tour. So given
the lessons learned from the private entities and from the
history of 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

(12:48):
also like you to check out how stuff works other
podcast particularly well, I don't know, I think almost everybody
has something about space travel. Absolutely. Our friends over it's
touf 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

(13:11):
podcast we have as something about space has done a
couple of things, right, yeah, yeah, as well, so we
did lunar rovers So what we found is that despite
the evolution of space travel, there's still a few things
that are true and and here they are just across

(13:32):
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 the that's not that's just 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

(13:56):
on the lost cosmonaut theories, and I think on it
than Strictland from tech stuff has covered it. But definitely
people died in training, and as we mentioned earlier, 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 alluding to earlier, that

(14:19):
makes this so difficult to do is that these voyages,
this equipment, everything that goes into doing this stuff incredibly
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

(14:41):
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
adjusted for inflation for for right now? But still, how
is that a number? Yeah, that's that's amazing. But then
there's there's a third thing here about every kind of

(15:03):
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, 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

(15:25):
a secret? And when it's orbiting 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, given how incredibly difficult it is. It's like
I'm gonna try to make a video game reference. Tell

(15:47):
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
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, if you really want to get into the
space program, much like if you really want to get

(16:09):
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 by starting the space race. I'm sorry
that I gave you this albatross of a metaphor. I'm

(16:31):
trying to work with it. Let's just let it go.
I apologize. I guess one thing 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 that secret space programs did exist, and

(16:53):
historically the origins of really space programs are shrouded in secret.
The gan is research into rocketry and rockets. The idea
of a rocket is ancient, dates all the way back
to the first principles essential to rocket flight came from
the writings of a Roman named ALUs Gellius, who told

(17:17):
a story about a Greek guy named Arcatas 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 flying it using the principles of rocketry, the action
reaction principle, which wasn't a scientific law until the seventeenth century.

(17:41):
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 taking them to space. But we know that

(18:02):
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 ultimately became a space program, what ultimately led

(18:22):
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, these are people who were working

(18:44):
on specialized projects for let's say, for bad people doing
bad things like them or Brown. Yeah, but they had
an amazing amount of research and intelligence and stra tegically,
I guess it just made a lot of sense to
keep them around and just to jump on the the

(19:06):
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. It's because
we wanted to figure out how to more effectively bomb

(19:29):
people from far away, which is kind of strange to
think about. And the U. S. Government as a history
of this as well. I mean, the CIA actually ran
a secret satellite surveillance network another fun thing to say
three times fast from fifty nine to nineteen two, where
and they spied on the USSR and the people's reblic

(19:50):
with China from you guessed it out of space UM.
And this is a story I love so much because
it just goes to show the scrappy nature of you know,
and things done by the U. S. Government. So the
UM satellite didn't actually have the ability to transmit photographs
remotely you know, through uh, through the air, right the sixties,

(20:12):
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 wikipedias where I found them of the Corona that
we're talking about, the Corona program. Uh, yeah, you can

(20:34):
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 there still somewhere. Yeah, But
they spent a lot of money on that as well.
According to some former officials, the total estimated cost of

(20:56):
the program was eight hundred and fifty million dollars, which
doesn't sound like that much compared to you know, four
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 factor did you know,

(21:16):
like developing the film developing got interns to do that right, right,
they just went to a photo mat um or 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

(21:38):
own thing is Zenet I think it. I'm not sure
exactly how to pronounce it, but they were doing 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 in the history

(22:01):
of space exploration. Yeah, oh yeah, these were launched. Okay,
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

(22:24):
around Europe to avoid prying eyes, they were created and
called water tanks, and so that became the nickname. Going
to our earlier point about how difficult it would be
to secretly launched something from space, Uh, these things the
Russians in the US accepted that the other side would

(22:46):
notice when they sent something into space, so they labeled
them as different things or put them in different programs
so that they seemed like they were accomplishing a different purpose.
And as as you said, oh yeah, these these were
probably above top secret level, some kind of compartmentalized need

(23:07):
to know basis intelligence where you know, imagine 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

(23:29):
go why, and they say, we can't tell you, and
then you go, but I'm the president, and then say
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.

(23:52):
And that's how you find out how did you get
focused on this? So yeah, wait, wait, and the way
these saddle lights look the zenit programmed satellites. You can
again go on 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

(24:15):
in this picture that's 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 complete tangent here, but giant spheres found in

(24:40):
there's supposedly these huge stone spheres, 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 leg 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

(25:02):
game that that is. The 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 spear 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 kazakh Stan in twelve hours

(25:23):
from So we're just luck here, all right. 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. Oh sorry, Darren. Wow,

(25:49):
we just made up Darren and fired him in the
space of a few minutes. Okay, So we know that
these programs exist, 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

(26:09):
supremacy in the space race, and 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

(26:30):
YouTube spy plane up and shot down earlier. And so
they said, well, we'll just go high 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

(26:52):
we say that secret space programs continue today or was
this just some old war thing. I'm not sure, but
we'll figure it out right after a quick break. Here's

(27:15):
where it gets crazy. There are active secret space programs. Uh.
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

(27:37):
processes that are occurring, or what kind of research is
being done with these, we won't know probably for fifty years,
maybe maybe a hundred years, maybe never until they're declassified.
And we have several examples of these. Yeah. One of
the biggest examples would be something that is a personal

(27:57):
off the air obsession for so was in this room,
and that is the infamous X thirties seven B, which
is an unmanned spacecraft that has been in orbit as
you checked this show out, or as we record this,
at least, it's been in orbit for almost a year

(28:19):
now on this stent. And what's it doing up there
because I don't know. Yeah, it was. It was launched
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

(28:39):
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.
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 May and if

(29:00):
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 this thing, or maybe uh maybe checking
the ability to somehow interfere with other satellites. And I

(29:21):
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 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

(29:42):
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 it's sort of fair game. And we we can't
have any space wars. We have free these we're not
allowed to uh have any kind of combat in space,

(30:03):
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 remember who said this, but
I had. I was talking about either the Dead Hands

(30:25):
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 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,

(30:46):
So I do want to be emphatic about that. As
far as we know, it was never built. That's correct.
Oh and one last thing we have to remember. The
X thirty seven b is created 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

(31:06):
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. 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

(31:30):
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. 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

(31:54):
correct now when you say that there are international treaties restricting,
you know, restricting China, India, Japan, 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

(32:17):
a space sensing system, that is still uh, you know,
that is still occurring, and one 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

(32:39):
weird acronyms. Communications eavesdropping or sig iNTS signals intelligence and
covert communications hum int. What is a one for? What are? What? Gift?
Are Noel Brown and bembol and texting each other today?
Shrimp and white wine? That was a great one. Good

(32:59):
Yeah did you actually were you actually eating shrimp? I
was drinking? Okay, Well it checks out. So if we
think about it though, this kind of listening in this
sort of low earth orbit eavesdropping for lack of a
better word, is necessary from a state perspective, like you

(33:21):
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. That's that's probably
how uh the Great Powers new when India and Podkistan

(33:45):
conducted nuclear tests. That also gives us to you know,
that's probably why they learned about the Vella incidents quickly,
did we do we did an audio podcast on Villa incident.
I don't know if we did an audio podcast. The
incident is an alleged nuclear test by alleged I just

(34:06):
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 are out,

(34:31):
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 after the European way,

(34:58):
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 sort of

(35:18):
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

(35:43):
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

(36:05):
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,

(36:31):
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

(36:51):
will let anyone use it free of charge? Do you
know who designed and controls it? No? I think you
do know it's the US Department of Defense, so U
you know the same kind of like the Google strategy
ask ask me anything free all you know? Of course

(37:11):
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

(37:32):
about net network centric warfare. So using these communication abilities
to essentially have clarabulance, 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,

(37:53):
across the field the that Frederick Conian is prepping a
and H electromagnetic disruptor or something, you know, and he
would would. It's so fredrick Onian and right, and we

(38:13):
know that. Um. We we know that the 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

(38:34):
of an active secret space program, which is happening now
as we speak. So in early two thousand's, both the
US and China sent some pretty tense, barely veiled, uh,
barely veiled threats to each other. Uh what what? What

(38:57):
did they do? So in the early both the US
and China sent some pretty tense signals, let's say, to
each other, when they both publicly unveiled their satellite killing technology. Yeah.
I love that, the idea of satellite killers, but this

(39:19):
was actually presented as an efficient way to dispose of
their own aging satellites on both sides, and 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

(39:40):
just you know, it's that whole under the table things
just shows you well, you know, it could have been
your satellite, yeah wink. And you know in two thousand eight,
there's another one called Operation Burnt Frost or burn Frost,
I think it's Burnt Frost. This was one where the U.
S military destroyed and nonfunctioning U n r O National

(40:01):
Reconstance 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. 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 rioting on the wall was. Here

(40:22):
are my muscles, my ability to shoot downside? Yeah, it's
like someone saying just casually saying, look at this knife. Yeah, yeah,
look how far I can throw it? And uh, this
is These are just some examples of things that are
proven but remain to some degree classified. So where to now, Well,

(40:53):
now we get into the deep dark areas, the places
where light barely penetrates. We're in the fringe. You guys,
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

(41:14):
think two thousand two was one. He was actively hacking NASA,
going through their databases and uh, this gentleman found well,
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

(41:35):
he had done this. I believe it was two thousand six.
He says, this is a quote. I knew that government
suppressed anti gravity UFO related technologies, free energy or what
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

(41:56):
person who was personally motivated to go and find these
things that he believes exists inside NASA servers somewhere. Um,
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

(42:19):
terrestrial officers. Yes, and he claimed that he did see
an image particular of of a craft with technology that
does not exists, but he wasn't able to get that
image to then show it to other people, which you know,

(42:40):
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
to take something like that that's so out there, a
claim that just kind of makes you roll your eyes

(43:01):
a little bit, even if you want to believe it.
What do you think, No, it does come off as
a bit of a stretch. 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
have to just find a happy middle ground. And I
think you do a fine job of that yourself, madam. Well,

(43:22):
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 down, it's going one
or two lines at a time, and just I imagine
being Gary McKinnon and just seeing this image develop one

(43:46):
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 Building eight, that he remotely access us the terminal
there and they found a folder that had these photographs
that were two hundreds or three hundred megabyte images and

(44:09):
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 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

(44:30):
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 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?

(44:51):
You 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 a look at His computer
was seized by police during 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?

(45:15):
It's tough, um, And you know, at that point would
that be a what how would you know that was
not an artist rendition? 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

(45:36):
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 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

(45:59):
spacecraft could look like if we implemented these technologies. 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 is fighting off Uncle Sam who wants
to extradidem to the US, and they're going to a

(46:20):
lot of trouble to get him. They're going to like
a Sande 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 ideological and so much

(46:41):
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. I think it was

(47:03):
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 lecture circuit who insists

(47:28):
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,

(47:48):
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, involving things like fairies or change
lands or elves. And you know, from a folklore perspective,

(48:10):
we have to ask ourselves, are these stories 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

(48:30):
catchy thing about launching as a space shuttle launching spacecraft
satellite uh an I CBM like an intercontinent continental ballistic
missile which goes in suborbital flight. 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

(48:51):
the people who control the sensory equipment. And there are
not a whole lot of those people. So if they
all agree to keep something a 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

(49:14):
if there is technology that doesn't require a launch like
that with burning of fuel that could be detected in
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.

(49:39):
The powers that be, whatever those powers would be described as,
are conspiring to prevent UH technological advancement past a certain threshold.
Which is interesting because I remember hearing years and years
and years ago someone say that um Mayen and Aztec

(49:59):
civiliz ation was amazingly advanced, yet no one had invented
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

(50:20):
because it was a profane idol of some sort. It
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

(50:40):
energy idea came about, because it for me, at least
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 UFO that crash landed

(51:02):
that used this type of technology that was then you know,
broken apart and re engineered by by 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

(51:25):
the 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 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,

(51:47):
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
our technology has progressed, the way it's changed, as we

(52:07):
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
technology is at that point? Um, you know, who who's

(52:29):
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
usually takes one of one of three tax like aliens

(52:53):
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
the ruins were found and somehow humanity was able to

(53:16):
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,
I like, I wouldn't care though I'd be like Haliah

(53:36):
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
to aliens, not prezy wow, bring up some excelf spreadsheets,

(54:01):
not anything else about computers, not 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 it is foolish to assume that
there are not programs, secret space programs taking place. And

(54:23):
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, 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, and

(54:46):
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. I don't know, but we did
even mentioned black budgets. Yeah, the government has so much

(55:07):
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 plausible deniability so that your local representative or
your senator doesn't know about it, and and many times

(55:29):
they genuinely do not. And all that stuff would likely
be militaristic nature, much much of it would be yet
dirty stuff. And then sometimes you know, in the past,
at least 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

(55:52):
of the governments and waged illegal wars or assisted in
drug trafficking to raise money for specific operations. And I'm
not saying an entire agency 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

(56:16):
idea that's somewhere above us, there might be UH satellite
with 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

(56:39):
is possible. I don't know if it's plausible. I have
absolutely no proof for it. Space death ray episode maybe
a space death ray episode. None, A bad idea? Why yeah,
why would you not have a giant active laser up
there just ready to go. Feel As long as it's
your giant active laser, we're cool. Right, that's the takeaway
from today us. Before we head out today, we have

(57:02):
time for one more thing. Yes, that's right, shout Out
Corner and we have a guest theme today. I'm feeling
a little bit put to shame by this. Wesley Slover

(57:23):
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 Sanctus on Twitter,
and 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,

(57:44):
you know we would love to play it and kind
of show it off. And next shout out to kian Ken.
You describe yourself as an irishman living in Minnesota. Ladies
and gentlemen. Keen has recently discovered our show due to
uning injuries. We want to say thank you for the
kind words. Uh and we heard you want us to

(58:06):
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,
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 discussed. We discussed some prophecies involving the Catholic Church.

(58:34):
And the last shoutout goes to someone that we've shouted
at before. Uh, so you're welcome and sorry. Vaults 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

(58:56):
that we created and you can find on our website.
I didn't know anyone bought any of those, So thanks Faults.
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,

(59:17):
thanks for wearing that. Yeah, hey, thanks, thanks so much
for giving you try. We we appreciate it. Uh. And
that concludes today's shout out corner. And he did the
reverse too. Yeah wow. Uh all right, so we are
going to head out for today. We hope that you

(59:38):
enjoyed this episode. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.

(01:00:00):
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