Earth station satellite facility home for sale

After noticing a lack of space for Rob's vintage synthesizer collection, Happy Mutants has decided not to purchase the ICBM silo and air park for sale in New York's Adirondacks. Instead, we have our sights on the Jamesburg Earth Station now for sale in Carmel Valley, California. As we speak, Weisberger is pawning a handful of his rare pens to cover the down payment. The facility has historical significance as it was the first place to receive live images from the 1969 moon landing. (If you believe that sort of thing.) From NBC Bay Area:

For the price, you'll get the 20,000 square foot facility, 160 acres of land, a helicopter landing pad, three bedroom house, basketball court, barn, and even two of private wells.

If that's not enough, the complex also takes home security to a whole new level. Built in the 1960's at the height of a nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the building is equipped to handle a 5 megaton nuclear blast.

"Bomb-Proof Earth Station for Sale" (NBC Bay Area)

Jamesburg Earth Station (Keller Williams Realty)

• [Dean Putney]

  We need a place that can take a 5 megaton blast so I can conduct my… experiments.

• [Stitch]

  Two of Private Wells? Firstly, is this Wells character agreeable; and secondly, just how many clones were made?

• [bigattichouse]

  Would I be buying the compound from Mr. Venture, or is this merely a rent scam.  Also, how often do guild members attack on the building?

• [dculberson]

  I was seriously interested but then I saw the “Price on request” text.  If they want my business, they’ll put the price there.  I’m not wasting my time calling someone over something as trivial as a simple property purchase.  No deal.

• [awjt]

  Wait, am I freakin’ deja vuing or wasn’t this already posted here about a month ago?

  • [Ipo]

    If it is a deja vu you are having, it is communicable. 
    Scary. 

    (how does one even type “déjà”?)

    • [awjt]

      Oh My God!  You actually freakin typed dêjå the right way!!!

      • [Ipo]

        Now I have the strange feeling that somehow, this has never happened before. 

      • [AnthonyC]

        and you did not

• [Jose]

  “The facility has historical significance as it was the first place to receive live images from the 1969 moon landing.”
  Cool, so this is where they filmed all of that fake footage!

  • [Matthew Arnold Pacey]

    Nah, you see, Kubrick and his crew filmed the footage elsewhere, then after it was filmed and edited, it was transmitted from another station, bounced it off an orbiting satellite back to earth, then received by this station. They had to make sure the signal was actually coming from the right location in space in case it was intercepted by a 3rd party.

• [JIMWICh]

  I think bOING bOING should buy it and use it to receive broadcast episodes of The Adventures of Moonbase Newt!

  http://twitpic.com/8c7qha

• [irksome]

  Time to sell that vintage Blackwing pencil cache.

• [David Aked]

  Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station was the first station to receive the live footage of the moon landing and from there retransmitted it to the world.

• [Andrew Singleton]

  How much of the old equipment are they gonna include with the property?

  Also. Only five megatons? Pass. I need to safeguard against a 12.54 megaton blast because [REMOVED IN COMPLIANCE OF US PATRIOT ACT].

• [roboton]

  That would make an awesome Data Center

• [Donald Petersen]

  For a minute or two I wondered if that mightn’t have been the weekend home of Mayor Clint Eastwood, but not only was that not quite the right Carmel, but Clint ain’t the type to hunker down in a burrow.

  Still.  Carmel Valley is home to former CIA spook and current SecDef Leon Panetta, and well as onetime Monkee Mike Nesmith.  Make of that what you will, potential neighbors.

• [Culturedropout]

  Shades of Johnny Mnemonic.  You could hole up there against the gubmint and use the big dish to broadcast uplifting messages to the proles… 

• [cjporkchop]

  “As the owner of the property, you could also start your own international television station. The property comes with an 11-story tall antenna and satellite that can directly broadcast to Asia, South America, the South Pacific, and the United States.

  The Station was closed down by the government in 2002, and sold to a millionaire who lives in the Silicon Valley. The owner hopes to sell the property with the satellite intact, although buyers have offered to demolish it and sell it for scrap metal.”

  Wait, are they talking about a satellite dish or a satellite orbiting the planet? Or am I so out of touch that ‘satellite’ now means a broadcasting thing on the ground and I’m unaware of it?

  • [MikhelB]

    Nah, it surely was a typo, but nowadays you don’t need an antenna that big to uplink to satellites, be it on C or Ku band, in this day and age TV stations usually uplink live events (mostly sports) to Galaxy 17 @ 91°W Ku using a 4 ft. offset dish mounted on a van (for C band bigger dishes are needed, at least 8 to 12 footers deep prime focus dishes to diminish interference).

• [manicbassman]

  Five megaton blast? Can we quantify this aspect a little better please? A five megaton blast how far away? I cannot ever see that building surviving a five megaton blast overhead or even within say 2 miles… Most houses could survive a 5 megaton blast provided it was far enough away… so this claim is a bit specious…

• [Andrew Singleton]

  Kickstarter fund so boingboing can use this asa physical location for their stuffs!

  Rewards
  $25: You get a letter from one of the editors thanking you from your contributions along with a photo of staff in front of the big dish.
  $50: You get a free copy of the documentary on how they converted the place into a data/archive center and shrine to the space race.

  *snip* Mostly because i can’t think of anything between there and here.

  $10 000: You get to live with us for six months. No we will not do your laundry.

• [Robin Johnson]

  Here in Australia, the Parkes Radio Telescope is credited with being the Earth end of the Apollo 11 Moon landing telecast.  The movie “The Dish” was made about it.
  See this extract from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory
  Apollo 11 broadcastWhen Buzz Aldrin switched on the TV camera on the Lunar Module, three tracking antennas received the signals simultaneously. They were the 64 metre Goldstone antenna in California, the 26 metre antenna at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra in Australia, and the 64 metre dish at Parkes.In the first few minutes of the broadcast, NASA alternated between the signals being received from its two stations at Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek, searching for the best quality picture.A little under nine minutes into the broadcast, the TV was switched to the Parkes signal. The quality of the TV pictures from Parkes was so superior that NASA stayed with Parkes as the source of the TV for the remainder of the 2.5 hour broadcast. For a comprehensive explanation of the TV reception of the Apollo 11 broadcast, see ”The Television Broadcasts” from the report ”On Eagles Wings”.