OK, so I downloaded Google Earth and have been trying to enhance my geography skills by manually looking for things. Doing well so far. But in my quest for Area 51, I came across another question, too. If you don’t have Google Earth, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to come up at all in Google Maps… just a big grey screen. But here’s the coordinates I’ve come up with:
37 14 03 N 115 47 59 W
OK, so that’s what I believe is the, er, alleged Area 51 - it has a runway, but makes no mention of any airport there, it’s right next to Groom Lake, and in Emigrant Valley. So first question is, is this Area 51?
Secondly, directly to the north (and in various other locations that I’ve looked, but that I only noticed in Nevada so far) is a series of green circular objects. They appear to be actual structures rather than some sort of masking mechanism, because one of them is only 3/4 of a circle, and they don’t look “regular” enough to be just green circles blocking out the view. Anyone know what these green things would be?
Wikipedia has a fairly extensive description of runways etc. at Area 51, with reference to Google Earth. Of course, how much you believe and trust is up to you
They look like farms. I believe they set their crops up like that for irrigation purposes. I’d imagine an irrigator is mounted at the center and has wheels at the end of a radial arm (and along the length I’m sure) that rotates around and waters the crops. You see them pretty clearly from an airplane as well. At least I can when flying from Milwaukee to Nevada.
Joey P’s right. They’re farms, probably alfalfa fields. That circular pattern is common in the Mojave. Don’t know why, but all the farms back in my hometown have done it that way for years.
Maybe I can piggy back a couple of questions on here then…
Strictly Google Earth related - there are very clearly defined rectangles of varying color in all the views. Are these just shots taken at different times of year from each other? Like the Area 51 is very greyish looking, but bordering rectangles are either green or rusty colored.
Area 51 related - Where’s the fence? I can’t seem to make one out. Is it just too fine a detail to be picked up from the altitude that the shot is at? (Biggest, best resolution is about 2 miles from the surface.)
There is no single standard for military runways but 10,000 foot or longer is not uncommon which is about 1.9 miles. Some locations have even much longer runways but that’s about all that most military instrallations have room for.
Years ago when I worked in northern Montana in the late eighties my boss and I drove to a out of the way town called Turner. On the dirt road there was an odd two mile stretch that was paved and completely straight. Our assumption was that some county comissioner got a kickbak but we wondered if there was a Soviet analyst sitting in a room trying to figure out what bombers were stationed there that could make use of such a narrow runway.
