On Mars, it’s a matter of saving face

Originally published 13 July 1998

Host: Hi folks, I’m your host, Chet Ray­mo, and this is your favorite talk show, Let’er Rip. Our guest today is Bar­ney Bunkum, whose book, Face-Off on Mars, takes a hard look at the lat­est NASA pho­tos from the Red Planet.

Good morn­ing, Barney.

Bunkum: Good morn­ing, Chet.

Host: Most of our lis­ten­ers have heard of the famous “face on Mars,” a curi­ous­ly humanoid sur­face fea­ture that was pho­tographed by the Viking 1 space­craft in 1976. Like many oth­ers, you claim the mile-wide “face” is some sort of arti­fi­cial mon­u­ment, per­haps con­struct­ed by a Mar­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion that flour­ished in the past, or by an alien race from anoth­er star system.

Bunkum: The face is not the only mon­u­ment on this par­tic­u­lar part of the Mar­t­ian sur­face—the Cydo­nia region. Near­by are sev­er­al pyra­mids, what looks like a fortress, and oth­er arti­fi­cial structures.

Host: NASA has always described the face as “a trick of light and shad­ow,” like see­ing the image of an ele­phant in the clouds or the face of Jesus in a tor­tilla. They say the oth­er so-called mon­u­ments are also nat­ur­al geo­log­ic features.

Bunkum: That’s just what you’d expect from NASA. Our gov­ern­ment has a his­to­ry of cov­er­ing up what they don’t want us to know. Remem­ber the UFO crash at Roswell, New Mex­i­co; the gov­ern­ment is still deny­ing that it ever took place.

Host: Why would our gov­ern­ment want to cov­er up the exis­tence of ancient mon­u­ments on Mars?

Bunkum: Any civ­i­liza­tion that could build such impres­sive arti­facts would be in pos­ses­sion of supe­ri­or tech­nol­o­gy. Who­ev­er built the Mar­t­ian pyra­mids were prob­a­bly the same alien race who taught the Egyptians.

Host: Or maybe the Egypt­ian pyra­mids prompt you to see “pyra­mids” on Mars. The pow­er of sug­ges­tion, so to speak.

Bunkum: NASA wants to get to Mars and learn what it can about the tech­nol­o­gy of this supe­ri­or race — with­out let­ting poten­tial ene­mies here on Earth know what’s going on.

And that’s why they went to so much trou­ble to deface the face.

Host: Which is, of course, the cen­tral theme of your new book.

Bunkum: That’s right, Chet. In April of this year, the Orbital Cam­era of the Mars Glob­al Sur­vey­or space­craft repho­tographed the Cydo­nia region of Mars, and NASA released a new pic­ture of the face.

Host: I looked care­ful­ly at the new pho­to as it is repro­duced in your book. I must say that the new image looks noth­ing like a face.

Bunkum: Exact­ly! This proves the coverup! Look care­ful­ly at the new pho­to, Chet. You will see that part of the orig­i­nal con­struc­tion has been nuked into rubble.

Host: Nuked?

Bunkum: That’s right. You may remem­ber the Mars Observ­er mis­sion to Mars in 1993. Three days pri­or to orbital inser­tion around Mars, NASA announced that all con­tact with the space­craft had been lost. The mis­sion was nev­er heard from again.

At least that’s the offi­cial sto­ry. In fact, the space­craft was car­ry­ing a nuclear device with the sole pur­pose of oblit­er­at­ing the face, so that NASA’s denial that the face is an arti­fact would appear more credible.

Host: Do you have any evi­dence that the face was nuked?

Bunkum: Look at the new pho­to. You’ll see that the entire right side of the face is rubble.

Host: But isn’t rub­ble exact­ly what you’d expect if the “face” is a nat­ur­al ero­sion feature?

Bunkum: In my book you’ll see a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed image of the restored face. We have replaced the rub­ble with a mir­ror image of the undam­aged sec­tion of the mon­u­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for NASA, their bomb did­n’t erase all the evidence.

Host: I noticed that your book has lots of com­put­er-enhanced pho­tographs of the so-called Cydo­nia “mon­u­ments.” I’ll admit these doc­tored pho­tos look impres­sive­ly arti­fi­cial, but in the orig­i­nal NASA pho­tographs the “pyra­mids” and “fortress­es” appear to be nat­ur­al moun­tains and valleys.

Bunkum: Don’t be naive, Chet. Almost cer­tain­ly NASA used com­put­ers to degrade the orig­i­nal pho­tos before releas­ing them to the pub­lic, to make the pyra­mids and oth­er mon­u­ments appear more nat­ur­al. My com­put­er enhance­ments mere­ly restore the objects to their true clarity.

Host: So you’re telling me the proof that the 1976 Viking pho­to showed a face is that the new Glob­al Sur­vey­or pho­to does­n’t show a face?

Bunkum: Exactly!

Host: Well, maybe it’s time to take a call from a lis­ten­er. We have Bob on a car phone. Hel­lo, Bob. What’s your ques­tion for our guest?

Bob: Hi, Chet. Great pro­gram! I want to ask Bar­ney about Pho­bos I and Pho­bos II, the Sovi­et mis­sions to Mars that were lost in late 1988 and ear­ly 1989. Could these have had some­thing to do with the face?

Bunkum: I’m glad you asked that ques­tion, Bob. Does­n’t the “loss” of two Mars probes in such a short time strike you as sus­pi­cious? Those two Sovi­et craft undoubt­ed­ly land­ed suc­cess­ful­ly on Mars and have been beam­ing back recon­nais­sance data from Cydo­nia. The Unit­ed States is not the only gov­ern­ment that’s cov­er­ing up…