posted 03-30-2016 08:17 PM               

The network has greenlighted "Cooper's Treasure," a documentary series following the quest of treasure hunter Darrell Miklos as he attempts to decode a treasure map of his boyhood idol and longtime friend, NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper.

...in 1963, while on board Faith 7, the last Mercury mission, Gordon broke the record for longest space flight by completing a [34]-hour mission. It was during this flight that he noted an anomaly around the South Caribbean. During his journey, he allegedly captured over 100 more of these anomalies. Working for decades in secret, Gordon created a map that he believed could uncover billions of dollars worth of treasure.

Before his death in 2004 from heart failure, Cooper shared his files of meticulous research with his longtime friend Miklos in the hope that his exploration would continue and the treasure would ultimately be found.

Along with a group of experienced explorers and researchers, Miklos is now setting out to uncover this treasure and fulfill his friend's dream.

posted 03-23-2017 10:15 AM               

Discovery's 'Cooper's Treasure' Sets Out To Uncover Shipwrecks From Space

New Series Premieres Tuesday, April 18th at 10PM ET/PT

In the 1960s, the "Original 7" astronauts were both rock stars and daredevils. With movie star looks and a penchant for sports cars, Gordon Cooper was the youngest and the flashiest of the bunch. As a space pioneer, he first took orbit in Mercury-Atlas 9, setting a record that still holds today for the longest solo space flight in US history. During one of his key missions, while Cooper claimed to be scouring the globe for nuclear sites, he actually discovered something else: shipwrecks. Working for decades in secret, using the information he collected while orbiting the Earth, Cooper created a document that he thought could lead to unimaginable wealth – a treasure map from space. Uncover the truth – and the treasure – when "Cooper's Treasure" premieres on Discovery Tuesday, April 18th at 10pm ET/PT.

Before passing away, Cooper shared his secret with long-time friend Darrell Miklos with the hope that his exploration would continue and the treasure would ultimately be found. Miklos is now setting out on a personal quest to fulfill the legacy of his lost mentor, once and for all realizing Cooper's long-held dream and proving to the world that the mysterious documents hold the key for a new generation of explorers.

"Cooper's Treasure" is produced for Discovery Channel by AMPLE and Amblin Television. For AMPLE, Executive Producers are Ari Mark and Phil Lott. For Amblin Television, Executive Producers are Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey. For Discovery Channel, Executive Producers are Joseph Boyle and Coordinating Producer Brian Peterson.

posted 04-18-2017 12:00 AM               

'Cooper's Treasure': New TV series follows astronaut's treasure map from space

Is it possible that one of NASA's original astronauts mapped the site of a sunken treasure from orbit — and it remained a secret for nearly 55 years?

That is the premise behind "Cooper's Treasure," an eight-part documentary series, premiering on Discovery Channel on Tuesday (April 18). The show follows shipwreck hunter Darrell Miklos as he attempts to piece together coordinates and other notations that were entrusted to him by the late Gordon Cooper, one of the seven Mercury astronauts.

posted 04-20-2017 10:35 PM               

The claim that with the periscope being removed to make room for some top secret recording equipment makes no really sense.

If it was an optical (photographic) system one has to remember in those days the room that would be required for a film magazine would be quite large, as would the optics. How would he know where and when to trigger the equipment to image key strategic areas? How would Gordo know his frame count on the shot film? Plus the power that would be required to control the drive mechanism.

Case in point the current high resolution photo system in the U-2, which was the premiere spy plane platform. So where was the power supply in the already starved for space Mercury capsule? And there would be the added weight, too.

We didn't have anywhere the digital recording methods as we do today.

We did not have the advanced synthetic digital aperture radar systems, so rule that out. Or the high speed digital telemetry downlinks to transmit data to an earth station let alone the extensive ground based sites like today.

Since the flight was much longer duration I believe the scopes removal had to be a weight reduction for extra fuel? Power was at a premium so adding equipment would be a big concern.

posted 04-23-2017 10:59 AM               

1. Periscope was removed for weight savings (70-80 pound reduction). Had something been added should have been apparent when gross vehicle weight measured prior to capsule mating with launch vehicle and also would have had to been factored in for payload, burn/deorbit calcs.

2. Show is essentially making the claim that a magnetometer was installed with sufficient sensitivity to discriminate submerged targets from orbit. Performance of a magnetometer is contingent on inverse square law, sensor aperture size/orientation with respect to the target, amount of ferro-magnetic materials present in target, local magnetic environment, target depth below the ocean surface. Deep dive each of the preceding components and one will find that given constraints imposed by the spacecraft's operational parameters and physics, state of play with respect to early 1960 technology the show's premise disintegrates.

3. Even from a just few thousand feet up, old ship wrecks present formidable challenge for magnetometer detection. Most early ships had wooden hulls and used stone ballast. Submerged cannon and anchors (below depths of 10's of feet) are difficult to discriminate even from low altitude airborne magnetic survey's. Fast forward to today and compare to state of the art tech applied to Sub hunting - even with large aperture tail boom mounted MAD sensors on our P3/P8 aircraft equipped wit the best skilled operators and advanced analytic systems, remains challenging to find/track huge submarines.

posted 04-25-2017 09:07 PM               

To the uninitiated casual viewer, the basic premise of the series would seem on the surface to be both intriguing and plausible. Mix an astronaut hero with a treasure hunt and you're sure to have a TV ratings winner.

Unfortunately, the reality TV format and its insatiable need for drama and emotion mean that educated viewers are left to do the critical work of sorting through fact distortion, exaggeration, and conflation to discern what, if anything, may be true.

With this type of subject matter, any fabrication or editorial manipulation cast a shadow that creates doubt about the accuracy and integrity of the series.

Some interesting and unanswered questions have arisen based on what has been shown. For example, was Cooper's treasure hunting in 1969 yet another reason why Slayton overlooked him in favour of Shepard? What happened during Gemini V in August 1965 when Cooper flew with Pete Conrad? How much was Cooper influenced by the high profile treasure finds off the coast of Cape Canaveral by Kip Wagner, Mel Fisher, and the Real Eight Company between 1961 and 1965?

posted 04-26-2017 05:49 PM               

Only 88 members of "The Club" involving select personnel from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Air Force Missile Test Center (AFMTC), Air Force Ballistic Missile Division (AFBMD), U.S. Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory (SRDL), and Convair were privy to the true nature of the flight. Through a combination of subterfuge, deception, false orders, lies, and after-hours operations under cover of darkness, they managed to conceal both the installation of special equipment and the alteration of existing equipment on the missile from non-club colleagues. Even the blockhouse was rigged. This was particularly difficult for B.G. MacNabb, the Convair operations boss at the Cape, given the calibre, scientific intellect, and inate curiosity of his engineers. Even Atlas Test Conductor Curtis Johnston, in charge of the launch firing sequence, was not aware this was to be an orbital mission. Thus, it came to be that President Eisenhower's voice was broadcast from an Atlas ICBM satellite.

posted 04-26-2017 09:12 PM               

Yet he still allows himself to be featured in the show. Is this more contrived drama by the producers or is it possible that Kranz was duped? Will we see him come back in a future episode after "some consideration"?

It would be sad if he were somehow misled by this production and taken advantage of.

posted 05-01-2017 08:29 AM               

Three years later, on 15 May 1963, Gordon Cooper was aboard M/A-9 (Faith 7), an orbiting earth satellite, which would overfly a highly sensitive region that 7 months beforehand had brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. It would be logical that Cooper would be asked by DOD/NRO to employ the Mk1 eyeball and report any unusual observations or future targets of interest. It would also be a wasted opportunity if more advanced IMINT or other technology was not at least experimented with, on the longest duration mission of Project Mercury.

At the time of Cooper's passing in October 2004, much of the US National Reconnaissance Program activity related to the 1960s still remained classified. It has only recently been declassified.

What is known is that as far back as 1962, the NRO had offered the use of its camera systems to NASA for the purpose of certifying landing sites for Apollo, as part of Project Elba/Upward/Lunar Mapping and Survey System (LMSS). See this article for more details.

The DOD/NRO support of NASA Reconnaissance Programs and the NASA Lunar Program was under the 28 August 1963 DOD/CIA-NASA Agreement (BYE-6789-63). This was alluded to in Episode 1 of "Cooper's Treasure" and further information is available here and here. There was a clear understanding at the time of both the importance and sensitivity of inter-agency co-operation in matters of national defense and reconnaissance.

posted 05-01-2017 08:24 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by YankeeClipper:
It would also be a wasted opportunity if more advanced IMINT or other technology was not at least experimented with, on the longest duration mission of Project Mercury.

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I do not think anybody here is contesting the hypothesis that NRO may have approached NASA to exploit Mercury capsules for experimentation as an IMINT platform. What I find as absolutely lacking credibility is the show's premise that any image or magnetic sensor clandestinely installed onboard the spacecraft (given design constraints, physics and the ability of the spacecraft to maintain fine attitude control against a target) would have been capable within the context of early 60s technology to resolve subsurface shipwrecks.

posted 05-02-2017 09:42 PM               

Miklos indicated that Cooper had said that he was looking for nuclear sites, to photograph and locate nuclear threats, and that the military had "something" on board the MA-9 flight.

There's no doubt that an ostensibly civilian spaceflight would provide perfect cover for NRO action or experimentation hidden in plain sight. Given the development work on Project Vela satellites, equipped with x-ray, neutron or gamma-ray detectors to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the Soviet Union, it is possible that "something" on MA-9 was a small experimental MASINT system that might augment visual sightings. Two external Geiger Counters were certainly used during experiments on the flight.

The orbital speed and altitude, and the spacecraft physical constraints, impose undeniable challenges to detection, however. Even at low altitude and close proximity, problems such as the "ship effect," which is particularly striking due to the low neutron background over water, make accurate nuclear detection difficult. Any treasure hunter seeking to exploit this phenomenon of cosmic-rays producing neutrons from heavy metals e.g. iron, bronze, silver, gold is likely to find that even shallow water will act as an effective shield.

posted 05-30-2017 08:16 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by YankeeClipper:
He would have had considerable IMINT available to him in 1966 to 1969, when he worked with Doubloon, Inc. and when he was treasure hunting in the summer of 1969.

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quote:

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Given the development work on Project Vela satellites, equipped with x-ray, neutron or gamma-ray detectors to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the Soviet Union, it is possible that "something" on MA-9 was a small experimental MASINT system that might augment visual sightings. Two external Geiger Counters were certainly used during experiments on the flight.

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quote:

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It would also be a wasted opportunity if more advanced IMINT or other technology was not at least experimented with, on the longest duration mission of Project Mercury.

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posted 05-30-2017 01:45 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Jim Behling:
Not true. There is no guarantee he had the clearances for the imagery. The intelligence organizations are/were not so open to anybody.

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The Mercury capsule had no real method of recording its location on orbit. There were no star trackers or stellar cameras.

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posted 05-30-2017 02:21 PM               

And there is no way of an astronaut determining his location in orbit much less recording it. Geolocation from orbit requires accurate attitude and orbital knowledge, which was not available onboard.

quote:

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Originally posted by YankeeClipper:
Cooper was not just "anybody," as a NASA astronaut and USAF officer on active flight status.

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posted 05-30-2017 02:38 PM               

That said, presented only with the facts as they are known, there is no way to definitively debunk the entire show either. (Though certainly there are elements to the production which are provably false.)

I had gone into the show having lined up experts — a Smithsonian curator, a McDonnell retiree and an astronaut who has taken part in sunken treasure hunts — with the intention of writing a critical look at the program. I came to the above conclusion however, that without being able to definitively put the central theme of the series to rest, the article wasn't going to serve much purpose.

posted 05-30-2017 05:22 PM               

In 1963 (and 1965), he had unique opportunities to visually survey a region of keen interest in a manner that no treasure hunter ever had up to that point. He would have had an overview of features, gradients, currents, islands, coral reefs etc that could augment his later use of surface maps.

Some would argue that he basically saw nothing whatsoever useful to his later endeavours, that he didn't know where he was in orbit despite having an observation window, and that he did not bother to exploit any photographic image or resource available to him during his time in service. Why NASA/USAF would bother wasting their time with such an unreliable, mendacious fool is beyond me. And to fly him in command positions not once, but twice?!

posted 05-30-2017 06:09 PM               

Further, according to another astronaut who, like Cooper, took an interest and involvement in treasure hunts, it would be impossible to see any type of shipwreck from orbit that wasn't already in shallow water. So even if Gordo did see something, it would almost certainly have been explored by now, if for no other reason that there is a whole community of people today who search Google Earth for anything unusual and has been successful in locating a number of shipwrecks.

posted 05-30-2017 07:29 PM               

Cooper's master map is most likely the product of decades of research, starting with his observations on Faith 7. Basic anomalies of light, colour, shape etc may have provided leads for future research and exploration and narrowed the vast search parameters. The show has shown many false leads already indicating the difficult reality of hunting. Success is a combination of personnel, historical accounts, archive research, maritime knowledge, mapping, technology, logistics, finance, weather, time, skill, observation, patience, persistence, intuition and luck. The 1715 treasure fleet gold coins found in 2015 by Eric Schmitt and Brent Brisben, some just 15 feet off the beach in shallow water, show that despite extensive salvage efforts over centuries treasure is still to be found.

Given the medium involved i.e. TV, the commercially and historically sensitive subject matter, and the ruthless competitive nature of the salvage / treasure hunting industry, it's not realistic to expect full source disclosure or the absence of obscuration/disinformation and dramatic artistic license.

posted 05-31-2017 08:05 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by YankeeClipper:
...that he did not bother to exploit any photographic image or resource available to him during his time in service.

Believe what you want.

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posted 05-31-2017 04:38 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Jim Behling:
The tracking network was basically set up for 3 and 6 orbit missions. There were long periods where it was not tracked.

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quote:

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There is nothing to believe here. What images or resources?

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posted 06-01-2017 08:35 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by YankeeClipper:
Over the critical passage routes of the Spanish treasure fleets, Cooper was flying down the Atlantic Missile Range...

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posted 06-01-2017 12:44 PM               

For example, instead of using the space to ground transcripts out of context to cloud the issue, examine what they do say about Cooper's Earth observations. Instead of vaguely referring to a flight path, plot it out and show exactly when and where Cooper was when he flew over potential targets and, importantly, whether it was day or night and what the visibility was at the moment he could have looked out the window.

Even the treasure hunt scenes could have benefited from a much more scientific approach, using the dives to explore the state of the art undersea technology and why (or why not) satellite imagery is used (or not used) by the leading salvagers, for example.

posted 06-01-2017 04:37 PM               

Please pass to Major Cooper, in flight, from Air Force Secretary Zuckert and Chief of Staff General LeMay. It is with great pride and enthusiasm that the entire United States Air Force is following the progress of your historic flight. A dramatic contribution to aerospace exploration. Good luck, and God speed.

From This New Ocean, Chapter 14-6, "Faith 7 for 22 Orbits":

[503] Probably no other result of the MA-9 mission excited more interest than Cooper's claim to have seen from orbit objects on the ground as small as trucks and houses. Skepticism on this point abated after the astronaut explained in detail to representative scientists at the Cape on May 21 just where, when, and how he could see dust and smoke below, from 100 miles directly above - if the contrast was right.

I could see individual houses and streets. I saw some trains and some trucks in some of the clear areas. I noted several cases of looking at the wind direction on the ground due to smoke coming out of smokestacks and out of the fireplaces of houses. I could particularly see a lot of houses and yards, fields and roads and streams and lakes in the Himalaya areas, in the high mountain areas. I could see a lot of snow on the ground in the upper portions of the mountains and a lot of the lakes frozen over even down in the lower sections — a lot of the windblown, sandy, high plateau areas of the Himalayas.

I saw the ground light experiment very clearly. I saw the little horseshoe-shaped town that the ground light was out from.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jim Behling:
Cooper was gone before Skylab and Landsat.

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posted 06-02-2017 12:30 PM               

"Megalodon" was a mockumentary presented as a documentary; a fictional story offered up as reality. Discovery defended it as entertainment, but it was ultimately misleading.

Science Channel's "NASA's Unexplained Files" presents urban legends and so-called mysteries but then has experts on to explain the truth behind the tales. (For the sake of disclosure, if not already known, I appeared in several episodes.)

posted 06-02-2017 02:17 PM               

The segments on researcher, historian, and colleague of Mel Fisher, Dr. Eugene Lyon, and inside the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Sevilla were quite interesting. But they could have devoted some time to the recovered bronze cannon of the Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de Atocha that Fisher presented back to Spain and which is now on proud display at the AGI in Sevilla.

Lost treasure comes in many forms, not just gold, silver, and jewels. The Atocha was the heavily armed Almirante, or rear guard, of the Tierra Firme flota (fleet). The displayed cannon is an amazing part of history and impressive when seen in person. It would have provided a perfect opportunity to explain the difference to viewers between a Capitana (a large, heavily armed galleon which was the flagship of the fleet commander) and an Almirante (a large, heavily armed galleon which was the ship of the fleet second-in-command).

posted 06-03-2017 04:20 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by YankeeClipper:
I'll still watch the next season when it is aired, though.

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