Message posted by JoenTX on August 28, 2010 at 23:50:44 PST:
Driving 54 you can make out the tall prep building if you know where to look as well as some of the gravel roads. If you didn't know they were there you wouldn't notice them and I've never made the landing strip out visually. Covert g'ment ops? The L-100 is not totally unusual......it's a commercial lifter completely relevant to the operations out there. The MiL chopper? Notable but could also be contractor. I'm not buying in just yet. For a commercial space launch venture these things are all very acceptable and understandable. The pics are nice though as I didn't realize the amount of activity out there nor the pace of development. I don't know where all of the cars in the parking lots are coming from.....maybe NM or El Paso? You won't find that many new cars in the parking lots of all of Van Horn's restaurants, gas stations, and one grocery store combined. That's a considerable drive considering. Not a hater, just saying......
I transit the area a couple of times a year as I check-in on some property and visit family in the area. Highway 54 is a lonely place......that last time I drove it I met one vehicle and it was a county S.O. patrol car. There is one ranch headquarters clearly visible from the road that I can think of. The irrigated alfalfa circles you see in the pics are not all that close......the ones to the north are managed by one family and the ones to the south are near Van Horn and, at least partially, are obscured from view by the Beach Mountains. Not many people or eyes keeping a watch on the sky at all. Next to the drive I made out to Groom from LV, it is the most remote trip I've ever made. And, coincidentally, I love it.
Oh well, to sum up, not a new hot-bed of government secret activity. A nice little topic of discussion around the private space business, yes. Clearly there isn't the infrastructure nor an economical workforce nearby to support any substantial operations on a regular basis.
In Reply to: Salt Flat, Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, and Spec Ops posted by reeb88 on August 26, 2010 at 22:28:37 PST:
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