Post by Admin on Dec 16, 2019 21:24:55 GMT
Why Area 51 Visitors Must Wear Foggy Goggles
Nothing to see here—they've made sure.
The Drive says visitors to Area 51 are fitted with Foggles, special vision-limiting goggles worn by trainee pilots.
Area 51 is famously secretive and strange, and employees as well as visitors must go through rigorous security.
The facility’s image dates back to its inception, partly because its unusual aircraft were spotted by civilians.
The Drive reports that the few civilians who successfully visit the Area 51 facility are made to wear view-limiting devices called Foggles. These join other blackout equipment like opaque-window buses and windowless rooms as part of Area 51’s enigmatic and secretive protocol. The goggles are designed for use by people going through aviation training.
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The U.S. Air Force is certainly not alone in limiting visibility at sensitive sites. At the demilitarized zone in South Korea, you can look far away using static, mounted binoculars, but not directly down into the zone. The Pentagon has a dedicated single entrance for visitors, who must register in advance—14 days early if they want a tour, where literally no electronics are allowed and they even suggest you leave yours all the way at home.
But to put actual physical vision barriers on visitors is novel. It’s likely a precaution that’s easy to do since the facility already has Foggles, which pilots use for different kinds of training: to simulate low visibility as a flight test challenge, block visibility as a way to make trainee pilots focus on their instruments, and more. Think of it like the cardboard barrier you may have had when you learned to touch type.
Area 51 is famously secretive and strange, and employees as well as visitors must go through rigorous security.
The facility’s image dates back to its inception, partly because its unusual aircraft were spotted by civilians.
The Drive reports that the few civilians who successfully visit the Area 51 facility are made to wear view-limiting devices called Foggles. These join other blackout equipment like opaque-window buses and windowless rooms as part of Area 51’s enigmatic and secretive protocol. The goggles are designed for use by people going through aviation training.
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The U.S. Air Force is certainly not alone in limiting visibility at sensitive sites. At the demilitarized zone in South Korea, you can look far away using static, mounted binoculars, but not directly down into the zone. The Pentagon has a dedicated single entrance for visitors, who must register in advance—14 days early if they want a tour, where literally no electronics are allowed and they even suggest you leave yours all the way at home.
But to put actual physical vision barriers on visitors is novel. It’s likely a precaution that’s easy to do since the facility already has Foggles, which pilots use for different kinds of training: to simulate low visibility as a flight test challenge, block visibility as a way to make trainee pilots focus on their instruments, and more. Think of it like the cardboard barrier you may have had when you learned to touch type.
Area 51 is likely not very different in overall secrecy levels to plenty of other government facilities, and likely plenty more that are never seen by the public at all. That’s what makes the Foggles news so especially strange: Anything truly secret would be hidden, not pretend hidden or limited by low visibility. Maybe the crew at Area 51 is leaning into the facility’s long and sordid history as an extraterrestrial secrets clearinghouse.
That history goes back to the beginning, the 1950s, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower commissioned the facility as a place to develop and test high-altitude aircraft. The record for highest altitude by a fixed-wing aircraft, separate from categories for any kind of rocket launch or spacecraft and requiring a typical runway takeoff, has been set incrementally over the history of powered flight.
These aircraft compete for records the same way supersonic craft do, for pride of place and breaking new ground—but they also carry payloads, do reconnaissance, and more. They also tend to look very different from commercial airliners or fighter jets. It’s easy to imagine the confusion of local people seeing these wild silhouettes doing test flights, especially at night. Whatever is going on at Area 51, there may just not be a place remote enough to do it without being noticed.
The secrecy at the facility has always drawn attention as well. It’s often mentioned in the same breath as ARPA and DARPA, secretive and eccentric programs whose experiments have come to light as their classification expires. Adding Foggles to Area 51 visitors fits perfectly into the eccentric and secretive image, but has a funny kind of nonchalance about it, too—like test pilots are answering the front door of Area 51, not sure if they should admit visitors, and deciding it’s fine as long as they wear Foggles.
These aircraft compete for records the same way supersonic craft do, for pride of place and breaking new ground—but they also carry payloads, do reconnaissance, and more. They also tend to look very different from commercial airliners or fighter jets. It’s easy to imagine the confusion of local people seeing these wild silhouettes doing test flights, especially at night. Whatever is going on at Area 51, there may just not be a place remote enough to do it without being noticed.
The secrecy at the facility has always drawn attention as well. It’s often mentioned in the same breath as ARPA and DARPA, secretive and eccentric programs whose experiments have come to light as their classification expires. Adding Foggles to Area 51 visitors fits perfectly into the eccentric and secretive image, but has a funny kind of nonchalance about it, too—like test pilots are answering the front door of Area 51, not sure if they should admit visitors, and deciding it’s fine as long as they wear Foggles.