The Astro Engineer's Blog

I'm posting this because some of you may find this just a good read as I did, and some may see more in it. This is a true story uploaded by a scientist with JPL about some anomalies he found while working on one of the spirit rover teams. Below is the preface as the story is 12 chapters long. I assure you it's a good read and entertaining, maybe the preface will halp decide.

Preface

I am publishing this story somewhat hastily in response to the hue and cry on the Above Top Secret forums. Apologies in advance for those areas that I would have improved or omitted entirely had I spent more time thinking about what others wanted to hear and less time thinking about what I wanted to say. I attempted, where it occurred to me, to explain the terms and workings of the things I mention, but I may have forgotten to explain some items which could cause confusion and/or Google searches. I will attempt to update this document in the coming weeks as I have time, to improve the clarity and eliminate elements which may unnecessary or uninteresting to others.

This began and remains a personal journey, an attempt to reconcile and understand my own history and work. If you find it interesting, great. If you don’t, oh well.

The experience I’m about to relate marked the beginning of the end of my NASA work, the end of the beginning of my awakening. The transparent and noble institution I believed I knew was hiding something.

For those who want a synopsis, I’ll try to post one in a few days. Most of you already know parts of it, and I felt it most important that I first get down as many of the specific details as I could to ensure that people wouldn’t accuse me of the greater crime of making extraordinary claims without providing context and specifics.

It is fitting that I publish this today, the 9th anniversary of the launch of Mars Odyssey, the orbiter that made possible so much of the Mars rovers’ good science (in spite of all who have sought to limit it).

“John”

link to full story
astroengineer.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/a-curiosity-of-spirit-full-document/

Yep, regardless of how much stock you put into the validity of the anonymous JPL employee, the story is a really good read and I enjoyed it. On thing I thought really funny, since this guy was working on the rover team I don't think it occurred to him that rather than having a super luminal capable com, the rover might just be a whole lot closer lol. I checked alot of the facts and the story doesn't have any errors as far as departments, names of items, computer terms and the acronyms used. If

What I find interesting is something you have mentioned more that once, wondering if the rovers had the capability to obscure the images intentionally? , well if this story is legit then you were right on that account but also means that the rover in question either was not on Mars or nasa or the contractors have faster than light communication ability, and how do you test something like that except on an unmanned probe or rover. This story covers a few questions about some of the weird things associated with the rovers, regardless of which communication scenario you believe. I don't know what to think except that it's a good story regardless if parts answer some questions about the rover images

With no way to verify any of this story in regards to the people, the fact that the company, buildings, lingo and rover programs check out mean nothing. There is no way to validate nor debunk this. Mabey in the future we will get an official statement saying that nasa has been intentionally degrading the imagery for 'some'reason, but until then we have our own eyes and I will continue to see what NASA tries to hide.

Cheers
Wayne Rainey
SoCal.

This was an interesting read, but I am calling shenanigans on the article’s author. The reason is that it has one glaring technical flaw in it. This flaw is the author says that it took him “an hour” to troubleshoot his son’s computer only to figure out that all that was the matter with his son’s computer was that it needed a new sound card…and that he had waited weeks to do this.

Considering that it is obvious to anyone who is even vaguely familiar with computers that when the sound goes out on a computer it is one of three things, either faulty speakers, a faulty sound card, or a corrupted driver program, I find it ridiculous that the author expects us to believe that it took him an hour to figure this out for himself, even if that included the time it took the author to actually install the sound card himself…OR that he had waited weeks to do this for his son’s gaming computer, computer games making lots of sound all the time.

I find it hard to believe, given the author’s considerable programming knowledge and the son being a video gamer, that the author’s son would not know this himself. I think it is highly likely that his son would have said something like, “Dad, I need a new sound card,” rather than waiting several weeks for his father to spend “an hour” trying to figure this out for himself.

This while the author talks about doing stack and memory dumps, (assisting) writing & using deep encryption software, and reading programs from a rover on a different planet. Not to mention having taken advanced college level courses in quantum mechanics.

Unless his son was very young, I think the son would have replaced the sound card himself. At the very least, his son would have said, “Dad, the sound has gone out on my computer,” and his father would have instantly known exactly what the problem was, likely even knowing the model number of every board inside his son’s computer or at least have them written down somewhere.

A more likely scenario to me is that when the son told the author that the sound had gone out on his computer, the son would himself have unplugged his speakers and plugged them into another computer, or that the author would have instructed his son to do this, and then told his father that the problem with that computer was NOT the speakers.

Considering that the author is involved in remote programming of several computers as part of this story, I think that if the son was not able to re-install his sound card driver program then the father would have done this remotely, perhaps while sitting in the automotive mechanic’s showroom. Then, when the father was out running errands, he would have picked up a new sound card and he would have mentioned this in the story.

This part of the story just does NOT make sense to me given the technical depth and accuracy of the rest of the story. So, in my mind, this story is a piece of misinformation intentionally put out to lead people astray. If some piece of collaborating evidence turns up from a second source, I will reconsider and re-evaluate my opinion.

Yep, yep. Not trying to convince anyone that any of this is real as there is no way to prove anything either way. It is an entertaining story and we'll written. Has some.interesting parts that coincide with assumptions we have made about the images and such. And to Mr sound card guy. You assume way too much. An hour is a good round number being that the story wasn't about computer repair lol. If the guy would have said that the case was secured with those star shaped security screws would that make it more true?. No, it's not of any consequence to the story. I know a lot of really smart people that use computers that couldn't troubleshoot one or even swap out a card if their lives depended on it. Your argument hinges on how smart you make this guy out to be based on what you read in this story. By that reasoning it would be safe to say that this guy wouldn't lie because he's smart enough to know that a lie would be found out.

Ps if you're ever called for jury duty please tell them this story and I'm sure they will let you off.

"That is just my opinion. I could be wrong."
---Dennis Miller

"You see what you see and I see what I see."
---Will Farrar