Extraterrestrial Redevelopment
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Bob Lazar’s Project
Terraform site, in an old silo near Roswell, is reportedly
funded by Hollywood personalities including William Shatner.
Walt Cotten photo |
Perhaps the most unusual collection of ICBM silo
conversions can be found, not surprisingly, around Roswell,
New Mexico. Starting in 1961, twelve Atlas silos were built
in a ring around Walker Air Force Base, a SAC base on the outskirts
of town. Each of the sites was manned by five people, who entered
the subterranean Launch Control Center via a staircase bulkhead,
one of the few structures visible on the surface at these sites.
The Atlas program shut down just a few years after
it was started, due primarily to changes in technology (a movement
away from liquid-fueled rockets). The silos around Roswell were
stripped and vacated, but were not destroyed. Though some became
flooded by groundwater, many remain accessible to this day,
and are in the hands of private citizens.
Among the interesting re-uses is a silo west of
town which has been converted into a sort of extraterrestrial
communication facility. Called the Starlite (www.thestarlite.com),
the silo contains a powerful laser which points up into space,
and flashes a binary code that contains data or other messages.
The facility opened commercially on New Years Eve 1999, and
is now open for business. The fenced and gated site is north
of Highway 70. The open silo doors and black office trailers
are all that is visible at the surface.
Another silo conversion in the area is called
Project Terraform (www.terraform.org), which involves the creation
of a Martian environment in the underground silo and control
structures. The project seems to be intended as a commercial
research facility, to study the viability of colonizing Mars.
It was begun in 1997 by a Hollywood visual effects supervisor
named Jon Farhat (who holds credits for films that include The
Mask and Nutty Professor), along with Bob Lazar, fabled ex-Area
51 employee and explosives enthusiast. While fundraising and
design of the project continues, the site is being listed as
available for use as a film storage vault.
Given the booming UFO economy in Roswell, and
the increasing interest in these structures, no doubt there
are more unusual re-uses of missile silos in the region yet
to be completed or discovered. Consider also that Roswell’s
Walker Air Force Base was just one of eleven bases across the
country selected to be ringed with silos for this phase of the
Atlas ICBM program, and that Atlas was just one of a few ICBM
programs that were phased in and out in the United States. So
there are hundreds of other silos out there in private hands,
with more surprises in store.
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CLUI researcher peering
into partially exposed missile silo stairwell at an undeveloped
Atlas site near Roswell, New Mexico.
Walt Cotten photo. |
