Are our rovers truly on Mars?

originally posted by: CB328
There's a guy in Australia who says the mars rovers are in the Australian outback. That would explain anomalies like the caveman picture and the trees that people have seen.

yes that would explain the anomalies alright and much less expensive to 'film for public consumption/education' , it wouldnt even be that much of a 'faked' video if Mars is in fact extremely similar to the red rock areas of Australia, just saving Billions of dollars might have been incentive enough for them faking another off planet mission, keep the money here no one will ever know the difference etc

The biggest problem with this whole theory (and I've seen a few versions of this) is that there is practically nothing to gain by faking it. You could point out several ways that perhaps its possible, but the cost involved and the secrecy to maintain its truth would be...well dumb.

Now if this was 1962, then sure, I could see the gain of faking the prestige to be worth it up to a point. The thing is (and this is true with magic tricks and most scams), the more you show the more chance people have of getting a clue about what's really going on. And getting busted for something as agregious as wasting tax payer money (at least in the west) would likely cause a few people to loose their jobs and credibility forever. You would have a problem with people just wanting to take part (and again there would be exposure).

Curiosities mission has been extended by a few years now...so its seems even less likely you would want to keep the sham going past its planned operational lifetime.

Now if those rovers found something genuinely from another civilization I could also see them purposefully faking the rovers had a mechanical malfunction, tamping with equipment on the ground, tell all the JPL people that's a rap and sign on their own team for study in secret...but even then the broadcast would still be able to be picked up (unless they found a way to change that, I don't follow the deep space network much anymore but I think the signal gets sent proxy via a few mars satellites).

...but I guess that getting off topic, so no. I don't see any reason why they would want to fake multiple rover mission on mars. Fun thought experiment though I guess.

originally posted by: Krakatoa
So, tell me, where are these massive savings in $$ coming from then? Honestly, I would like to hear your thoughts on this, in detail. I'm not being facetious, I am interested.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: VoidHawk

Radio signals can be easily faked, even direction!

How would one go about faking a radio signal from the direction of Mars?

Indeed. How would one fake signals from Mars...

Probes/Satellites.
Spaceships.
Friendly Martians helping out.

originally posted by: Psykotik
a reply to: Krakatoa

i imagine a satellite system would be cheaper then a Mars rover. Just because of the amount of satellites in space, vs. the amount of rovers.


So, can anyone show some evidence that NASA has rovers on Mars?

So were the thousands of people who built and tested the rovers in on that hoax?

The reason I ask is because it cost a lot of money for the research and development of the rover, and all of the manpower that went into doing so. That's not even the money it costs to build the equipment. And there were rovers built, because hundreds of people were involved (and were paid salaries) to do so, and they saw physical rovers.

So all of that R&D and construction was done (A very large cunk of the mission budget). There is no doubt about that, so the hundreds of people involved would need to be a willful part of the hoax.

Money was also spent launching a rocket -- one that could be tracked by amateurs as it headed out on a trajectory away from Earth. They are still spending millions of dollars a year to run the rover mission (people in mission control, etc.).

So I'm not sure how it would be a money-saver to fake it. Maybe by the time it's all said-and-done, faking it MIGHT save a little money (although I have my doubts), but it really wouldn't be worth it.