Uhhh, why don't they build these underground or camouflage them at all? I find it hard to believe sensitive compounds aren't camouflaged for satellite imagery.
I'd imagine cost. Putting things underground takes a lot of time and costs many times more than putting it above ground. If you need something in a hurry and don't have infinite resources, you really don't want to be digging.
If this is indeed a secret Chinese facility I'd say it's done its job. We know it's there but we haven't the faintest clue what it does. In the modern age of spy satellites, hiding something completely is likely more expensive than ever before, obfuscating it seems like a valid strategy now.
As someone who visited Wolfschanze Hitler's secret hideout in Poland, (where assasination attempt take place), I can assure you, you don't need to hide a compound under ground, it can be perfectly concealed on the ground in forest, if you really want it to stay invisible.
Google Maps is just free public satellite imagery. You can barely make out people (interestingly enough, I just realized most people are filtered out of the images). The CIA's had birds for years that are good enough to read license plates on moving cars. I'm sure that, if anything interesting is in that desert, they knew what it was before it was even built.
Nice! Also, some obscenely rich guy in the east built a full-scale Whitehouse as a personal residence. In the southwest, there is giant 'Optimus Prime' Transformers statue advertising a car-yard.
China and America are pretty similar, all things told.
The tracks look designed for either testing cars or teaching advanced driving to police. There are T shaped concrete pads that are stained like people have done millions of three point turns on them or something. The whole complex is a bit odd.
This is a typical driving school. The curved tracks are not long enough to train police or test cars. You can only drive through it very slowly. And you can see there're parallel parking stains as well.
The buildings/structures out there are in interesting ratios. One of the U buildings is ~64m on 3 sides. Another one is 125% bigger on the smaller size, and then in a ratio of 1:2:1 per side.
A couple more buildings are about 108m, then there's more at about 86. Again, the bigger one is 125% larger. The big building is about 144m on the left and 154m on the right. To the right of that, there's another complex that's about 133m to the right of that (125% of 108m) Maybe it's on the inside of the build black building?
but there's plenty of them. And there's a huge complex in the zone that looks like missile silos. But why would leave those silos uncensored an censor "something else"? (I don't know what)
I don't know. Maybe Google or GeoEye, by request of the Chinese government. Google has accepted before to censor some places by request of governments around the world.
From wikipedia: "Censorship of maps is also applied by Google maps, where certain areas are greyed out or areas are purposely left outdated with old imagery." [1]
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 72.1 ms ] threadIf this is indeed a secret Chinese facility I'd say it's done its job. We know it's there but we haven't the faintest clue what it does. In the modern age of spy satellites, hiding something completely is likely more expensive than ever before, obfuscating it seems like a valid strategy now.
Just to name a few (historical) examples The SR71 and the U2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
and of curse, many types of satellites
http://www.gearthblog.com/images/images706/scalemodel.jpg
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/07/huge_scale_m...
They also have a deserted replica of a typical english town: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Town
And they recently unveiled an exact replica of a real austrian town: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18327751
The rapid growth over there sure is producing some interesting things.
China and America are pretty similar, all things told.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=39.548+N,+75.996+E
The tracks look designed for either testing cars or teaching advanced driving to police. There are T shaped concrete pads that are stained like people have done millions of three point turns on them or something. The whole complex is a bit odd.
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=-25.758426,28.0076...
A couple more buildings are about 108m, then there's more at about 86. Again, the bigger one is 125% larger. The big building is about 144m on the left and 154m on the right. To the right of that, there's another complex that's about 133m to the right of that (125% of 108m) Maybe it's on the inside of the build black building?
And one large tower connecting it to a grid extending south here: 39.579052, 76.060278
I'd vote for the abandoned brick factory, they were carving the hills https://maps.google.com/maps?q=39.580234,+76.058357&hl=e... yet there are no bulldozers.
http://ogleearth.com/2013/01/kashgars-mystery-complex-is-not...
In this day and age, could probably find some folks from Kashgar on Weibo and ask them. Not Twitter or Facebook, though.
Some of the spots are located at:
38.922210, 83.813098 http://goo.gl/maps/3RSmB
38.973006, 83.905259 http://goo.gl/maps/Wlyfo
38.987518, 83.84858 http://goo.gl/maps/jicRC
38.950323, 83.797617 http://goo.gl/maps/DyykD
but there's plenty of them. And there's a huge complex in the zone that looks like missile silos. But why would leave those silos uncensored an censor "something else"? (I don't know what)
From wikipedia: "Censorship of maps is also applied by Google maps, where certain areas are greyed out or areas are purposely left outdated with old imagery." [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartographic_censorship