The Very Large Array in New Mexico, which debuted in the movie “Contact”, has been listening into space for many decades now. It is quite incredible and can pick up the most sensitive of sounds from the deep of space. If you ever get a chance to visit the VLA in NM on HWY 60 you will be amazed at the incredible abilities of the SETI Project and the many important discoveries the VLA has made using the radio telescopes.
As new technology advances the abilities of the VLA is not as impressive as it once was, but this engineering feat is proof positive of mankind’s resolve to press on. Today we are launching many spy satellites, some of these are micro satellites the size of beach balls and basket balls which can snoop and listen to Earth. If we put a VLA on the moon we could potentially listen to every world conversation here on Earth during the night. We would not need to take these huge telescopes to the Moon; we could use the newest micro-scale technologies thanks to innovators of our present period and the driving force and theories behind “Moore’s Law.”
It will be easy to weed out certain sounds of machines, power plants, TVs, radios from that of conversations of the human voice. The human voice has a specific pattern to it unlike any other. The NSA has done incredible studies and has learned through trial and error the idiosyncrasies of human speech patterns. We can now listen to a cell phone conversation, take out background voice and determine through voice inflection the state of mind of the individual at the time and even who is talking based on algorithm searching of previously recorded discussions and patterns of the individual. For instance Osama Bin Laden on his portable satellite phone is easily distinguishable from any other.
A VLA-Very Large Array on the Moon pointed towards Earth could pick up all the world’s conversations. By placing these conversations in a massive database (100s of teraflops) and using random searching and algorithms in XML datasets and similar tactics presently under consideration from the DOD and being funded by In-Q-Tel in Silicon Valley we can have all the Intel we could ever need.
This could also be done by an array of laser aligned satellites pointed down towards earth in Geo-Sync or low level satellites, however one has to worry about the wobble of the planet, solar flares and possible detection and attack in a Star Wars scenario from potential adversaries. The moon provides a very stable platform so stable in fact if you did not mind the one-second delay going each way you could put reflective mirrors on the moon and leave the equipment here on earth? We currently have technologies to do this, as well technologies to listen through glass, rock, water and buildings. cake disposable carts