They will not be getting space rights anytime soon - and here's why in just one complex word: surveillance.

Our low earth orbit is bristling with a number of satellites used for electronic surveillance. These satellites in low orbit must move very fast to sustain the orbit. In fact, they travel about 14,000 MPH like the shuttle does to stay in orbit. And this is just about the same height that civilian spacecraft would be aiming for, too. Something like a "sweet spot" in space. A space vehicle that is only briefly in space to travel from one continent to another will not need to fly that high. But if one is to orbit the planet even just one time for whatever reason this is required. Various spacecraft are assigned to various orbits to prevent collisions. However, some of the huge antennas can easily be observed from other orbits. Some are as large as a football field.

BEACONS IN YOUR POCKET

So what is uncle listening for? That key chain transmitter you use to unlock your car that only works about 50ft. away? An orbiting bird can see that like a blinding beacon of light, and it tells them exactly where you are on earth. Your cell phone? You might not get enough bars for it to work if you're too far from a cell tower - but an NSA spy satellite can easily pick that up, too. Bugs/trackers in homes, tracking devices in/on cars and on people all act as bright beacons from obit. Including that innocent looking Northstar in your vehicle - the government has already admitted they can silently activate the microphone whenever they want. And any cell phone since the late 90's has tracking already built in. The big myth is that the phone needs to turned on for it to work. You might recall new, tighter RF emissions regulations were instituted by the FCC to shield computers, cables, printers, monitors etc...,even though no one was complaining about computer interference? Guess who benefited the most from that so surveillance could work better? One look inside one of the newer computers compared to an older model even from the 90's, will reveal new metal fingered gaskets, shields and grounding that older models never had.

So how is surveillance accomplished from 200 miles up? Most basic principles with radio energy also apply to light. The energy from a key chain transmitter, cordless phone or cell phone falls off with the square of the distance just as a flashlight does. So how can tiny, microwatt RF signals be detected from orbit? These satellites employ giant antennas as mentioned previously. Radio astronomers can pick up tiny, faint objects millions of light years away with dish antennas hundreds of feet across. Huge satellite antennas focus as much energy as possible to raise the signal from your cell phone, cordless phone or key chain transmitter (or any other RF device) to a level high enough for detection. Any antenna is basically an almost noise-free amplifier that simply requires size to work instead of electrical power. The bigger the antenna, the better. These antennas can be an acre or more in size and unfold after the satellite is in space. When NASA has launches one of these orbiting listening posts, the launch is classified and absolutely no video on their contract channel is ever aired.

SMILE FOR UNCLE

But that's not all that's up there. Optical surveillance is also present from on high. Remember that 800mm telephoto lens on a 35mm camera? Now just imagine that same lens standing about three stories tall - with a small box attached to it which is the electronic portion of the satellite. Orwell never imagined this was possible or most likely it would have been in his book. This is the kind of magnification required to clearly see someone's face from 200 miles away. Even Hubble isn't designed to do that. These giant orbiting eyes are being replaced with far smaller satellites, but they can accomplish the same task.

HOW OLD IS THIS TECHNOLOGY WE ARE JUST NOW HEARING ABOUT?

The technology is far older than most people think, and it PRE-DATES video cameras by decades by using film. This won't settle well with those who claim that a deadly belt of radiation surrounds the earth which no astronauts could ever penetrate. The earth's magnetic field concentrates this lethal radiation at the north and south poles, but not all around the earth. Neither the shuttle or the space station will ever pass over the earth's poles for this reason.

A late friend of mine who worked at Kodak back in the 1950's explained to me what technology they had at the time, and what it could see. In those days, video cameras were massive and studio-sized and consumed several hundred watts and impractical to orbit. Film was actually used instead of video. After enough pictures were taken, the film from the roll was chopped off by a mechanism, loaded into a cassette and ejected. It slowly fell to earth and a parachute was deployed. A B52 or similar plane with large fork on the front would grab the cassette in mid-air, preventing anyone on the ground from intercepting it. The film was examined after developing.

Here is what this man witnessed during some early tests of the first satellite. He also worked on the Manhattan project (of which he would say nothing about.) "On the first orbital pass a man was mowing his lawn in the backyard. On the second pass over this same land, the mower was sitting in his backyard and he had apparently was inside the house. He left a pack of Lucky Strikes cigarettes on top of a trash can."

THE JOKE ABOUT SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE

Private surveillance companies today boast of 1 meter resolution, which means they can detect an object at least 38 inches across. It's a fact that In the 1950s, the first military satellites could detect an object about 2" across. Just imagine what images available today more than 50 years later. We were shown satellite images during the first Gulf War that looked like they were taken by a pocket camera from a jetliner window at 30,000ft. This was a big joke. The movie "Patriot Games" wowed the public by barely being able to make out someone's face in the desert. The real technology is clearly magnitudes far better than portrayed in the movie. If you go outside when a satellite is overhead looking down at you and "flip them the bird" - not only will they see that middle finger, but they will also see the individual hairs on your head, thanks to adaptive optics technology. (See [1] for more about that.) What's ridiculous about this entire lie of showing the public blurry, distant pictures is this: EVERY country in the world knows about this technology. All of them. So why bother to lie to the public? Perhaps because John Q. Public will quickly realize that this technology can be used on HIM, too.

For the reader the overall picture is now very clear - uncle doesn't want ANYONE to see his orbiting toys. Shuttle and space station video IS ALWAYS CENSORED contrary to what the public may believe. This is another reason NASA doesn't want "un-cleared" civilians to ride the shuttle - they will see the huge antenna arrays orbiting as they fly by at slightly different speeds. I have received considerable hate mail from people like Oberg that will swear up and down that NASA isn't part of the DoD. Perhaps not "officially" in the public eye - however they function that way internally. Complete with various levels of security clearances, too. They were highly instrumental in helping to develop top-secret NSA surveillance satellites in the first place, and send them into orbit.

Is it any wonder that NASA doesn't want civilians in orbit? No one is supposed to know about the special toys uncle has in his sandbox - and no one else can play with them, either.

NASA has another office few have heard about, which has visited my website several times since my Mars book came out last fall at www.data4science.net/book. The office is known as "The Office of the Chief Information Officer." Clearly my book on Mars has struck a nerve - but they cannot stuff that genie back into the bottle. It's long past time the public knew we aren't alone here. We are supposed to believe there is no other race "out there" to help us in the event the government gets out of control (which it has already.) People that have been abducted imagine it, and need psychiatric help. What other reasons could exist to keep lies going, other than to keep certain religious dogma in place?

The censorship I've noticed in rover images from Mars in recent months makes it clear they won't allow other images of artifacts to escape again. We are supposed to continue to *think* we are all alone in the solar system, and always have been. Even though my book provides concrete proof life has been on Mars.

www.data4science.net/book