The Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room

The Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room is one of the most geographically specific portal claims in modern secret-space lore. In its strongest form, the story says that a hidden teleportation chamber in El Segundo, inside the aerospace belt of greater Los Angeles, was used in the early 1980s to send selected individuals directly from Earth to Mars.

That location matters.

Many portal myths float in vagueness. This one does not. It anchors itself to a highly specific urban-industrial setting:

El Segundo
the Los Angeles aerospace corridor
proximity to LAX
and, in many retellings, a Hughes Aircraft building on Sepulveda Boulevard

That specificity is one of the main reasons the story survived. It gives the jump room a believable stage: not a mystical cave or hidden desert temple, but a defense-industrial landscape full of secure buildings, contractors, and the aura of hidden projects.

Quick claim summary

In the standard version of the claim:

Andrew D. Basiago says he participated in a covert Mars visitation program in the early 1980s
the transport point was allegedly a jump room in El Segundo, California
the location is often placed at or near a Hughes Aircraft building, frequently identified in fringe retellings as 999 N. Sepulveda Boulevard
the jump room is described as an elevator-like chamber that changed shape during transit
the trip supposedly lasted around 20 minutes
the destination was an underground or sheltered access point on Mars
later retellings expanded the story to include a training class in 1980, other named participants, and even a larger network of Mars jump gates

That is the core Los Angeles-to-Mars portal claim.

Why “Los Angeles-to-Mars” is the right label

This page is not just another version of the broader Project Pegasus Jump Room article.

The more general Project Pegasus material is about the overall program and its mythology. This page is about the route and the site identity.

The Los Angeles framing matters because the story is built around the idea that Mars access was hidden not in deep rural secrecy alone, but in the middle of one of America’s most important aerospace corridors. That gives the myth a distinctive tone:

it is urban
industrial
bureaucratic
and adjacent to real high-technology infrastructure

That is why “Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room” works as a distinct archive term.

Where the story comes from

The strongest source line begins with Andrew D. Basiago’s own claims.

His official Project Pegasus site explicitly refers to “trips that they took to Mars from a ‘jump room’ in El Segundo, California [1981-83].” In a 2010 PDF on the same site, Basiago gives a more detailed description of the chamber, saying it was a jump room “at the CIA facility in El Segundo, CA” and describing it as an elevator-like structure whose journey lasted roughly twenty minutes.

That is the most important documentary core of the lore.

The story is then expanded through:

Exopolitics / Michael Salla
Alfred Lambremont Webre retellings
forum and blog amplification
and mainstream skeptical coverage reacting to the Obama / Mars branch of the claim

This combination of self-published primary narrative, fringe amplification, and skeptical media response is what gave the myth its long life.

The El Segundo setting

The location is one of the most interesting parts of the story.

El Segundo is not a random suburb. It is historically part of the Los Angeles aerospace and defense corridor, close to LAX and associated with major contractors and technical facilities. Public historical material confirms that Hughes Aircraft had substantial facilities in El Segundo from the 1950s through the 1980s, and environmental records from the EPA confirm multiple Hughes Aircraft sites in El Segundo.

This matters enormously to the mythology.

The jump room story would feel much weaker if it were set in a vague anonymous office block. By placing it in El Segundo, the lore taps into a real geography of:

defense secrecy
advanced engineering
large industrial buildings
and Cold War / postwar aerospace prestige

That real setting does not validate the jump room, but it makes the myth far easier to imagine.

Hughes Aircraft and the portal atmosphere

A large part of the jump room’s plausibility inside believer culture comes from its association with Hughes Aircraft.

Public historical sources show that Hughes was a major defense and aerospace contractor with a large footprint in El Segundo. A 1993 Los Angeles Times piece also described Hughes as having once employed thousands at the site and maintaining a real radar and defense presence in the area.

This is a perfect myth environment.

A portal claim works best when the setting already feels like a place where hidden prototypes, classified rooms, and restricted technology could exist. Hughes provides exactly that atmosphere. The jump room story does not have to invent the industrial shell. It only has to fill that shell with a more extraordinary function.

The famous Sepulveda Boulevard claim

One of the strongest repeated details in the lore is the alleged address 999 N. Sepulveda Boulevard in El Segundo.

This specific location appears in secondary fringe retellings and in later public testimony summaries. The 2024 House Oversight testimony appendix compiled by Michael Shellenberger mentions Basiago’s claim about a jump room on Sepulveda Boulevard in El Segundo operated by Hughes Aircraft.

This is an important detail because it shows how the story hardened over time.

A vague “secret building in Los Angeles” becomes a much more durable myth when it gains:

a street
a building association
and an industrial tenant

Even if the claim is not verified, that degree of specificity gives it unusual staying power.

How the jump room allegedly worked

In the most famous version of Basiago’s description, the jump room was not a giant ring or theatrical stargate. It was more mundane and therefore, in some ways, more compelling.

According to Basiago’s 2010 correction PDF:

he signed in on the fifth floor
re-entered the elevator
the elevator rose to the eighth floor
an intercom announced that teleportation to Mars would begin
lights at the top and bottom of the chamber started flashing
during the approximately 20-minute journey, the elevator changed from a box-like to a cylindrical form
then it returned to its original shape
and when the doors opened, he was in an underground bunker on Mars

This description is one of the most important pieces of the whole jump-room myth because it makes the portal feel like infrastructure, not pure fantasy.

Why the elevator imagery matters

The jump room does not look like a fantasy gateway. It looks like a building utility.

That is one of the story’s strongest features.

An elevator-like portal suggests:

routine use
bureaucratic secrecy
and a hidden transportation system already normalized by insiders

In portal folklore, that is very powerful. It turns interplanetary passage from a singular miracle into something almost procedural.

You sign in. You enter the room. You ride to Mars.

That bureaucratic tone is a big part of the myth’s appeal.

The 20-minute trip and portal normalization

The alleged 20-minute travel time matters because it does two things at once.

First, it makes the journey feel extraordinary but not instantaneous in a magical way. A 20-minute ride sounds like an engineered process rather than a supernatural blink.

Second, it helps normalize the device. A portal that takes some time to complete feels more like:

pressurization
system transition
stabilization
or threshold passage

In other words, it behaves like transport logistics rather than occult teleportation.

That “technical middle duration” is part of what makes the jump room story so memorable.

Mars as a destination, not just a symbol

Another major part of the story is that the destination is not symbolic Mars or visionary Mars. It is claimed to be literal Mars.

Basiago and later retellings say the chamber led to:

an underground bunker
a covered facility
or a surface-adjacent shelter

Some versions add that the travelers emerged through or beside strange monumental forms and then walked onto the Martian surface. Later Exopolitics material expands the mythology further by claiming that Basiago visited Mars many times and that a broader American presence already existed there.

This matters because the Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room is not just a city-to-city teleport myth. It is an interplanetary threshold myth embedded inside an urban aerospace landscape.

The training-class narrative

A significant expansion of the lore says that the jump-room program was not improvised, but preceded by a 1980 training class at the College of the Siskiyous in Weed, California.

This branch appears in Basiago’s site, in Exopolitics summaries, and in secondary media discussion. The idea is that a group of selected teenagers or young adults were trained and then later used the El Segundo jump room between 1981 and 1983 or 1984.

This matters because it makes the Los Angeles jump room feel like the operational end of a larger pipeline:

recruitment
training
staging
transport
Mars arrival

That bureaucratic structure is one of the strongest elements of the entire mythology.

Obama, Dugan, and elite-participant lore

The jump-room myth became much more famous when it absorbed claims about recognizable public figures.

Basiago and allied retellings said that Barack Obama, under the name “Barry Soetoro,” and Regina Dugan were in the Mars training class and later linked to the El Segundo jump-room program. Mainstream coverage in Wired and Universe Today did not validate the story, but they documented how the claim had spread and how bizarrely specific it had become.

This is a turning point in the mythology.

The Los Angeles jump room stops being only a hidden machine. It becomes part of a theory of hidden elite formation, where future national-security and political figures are allegedly routed through covert off-world programs.

That escalation is one reason the myth endured in public memory.

Why Los Angeles is the perfect myth location

Los Angeles is not just a backdrop here. It is part of the device’s mythology.

Why?

Because Los Angeles already symbolizes:

entertainment illusion
aerospace secrecy
defense contracting
experimental technology
and hidden infrastructure behind ordinary urban surfaces

A jump room in Los Angeles feels plausible to believers in a way that a jump room in a random town might not. The city already carries a cultural reputation for spectacle and concealment. Adding an El Segundo aerospace gateway to Mars is almost a natural extension of that symbolic environment.

Why critics reject the claim

A serious archive entry has to be explicit on the skeptical side.

The case against the Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room as historical fact is strong:

there is no accepted public evidence that a working human teleportation chamber to Mars existed in El Segundo
the story depends mainly on Basiago’s testimony, allied retellings, and secret-space media
real Hughes facilities in El Segundo and real EPA site records do not validate a jump room
the Obama / Dugan branch became famous precisely because mainstream outlets regarded it as an extraordinary conspiracy claim, not a supported fact
and even later official-hearing appendices that mention the story do so as a reported claim, not as a verified event

From a skeptical perspective, the Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room is one of the most detailed and geographically concrete portal myths of the modern secret-space tradition, but still a myth.

Why the claim still survives

The myth survives because it offers something many portal stories lack: logistical realism.

It has:

a city
a building
a contractor
a floor number
a travel duration
a destination
and a participant pipeline

That level of detail makes the story unusually memorable.

It also survives because it solves a major secret-space problem. Rockets are public, slow, and expensive. A jump room bypasses all of that. It makes Mars not just reachable, but administratively reachable.

That is a very powerful fantasy.

Why this matters in portal folklore

The Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room is important because it shows how modern portal myths adapt to metropolitan and industrial settings.

Older threshold myths rely on:

caves
sacred mountains
hidden valleys
and entrances in remote landscapes

This myth relocates the threshold into:

an office-like building
a defense corridor
an elevator chamber
and the logistics culture of aerospace Los Angeles

That is a major transformation.

The doorway is no longer found only in mythic geography. It is hidden in the business architecture of modern high technology.

Was there really a Los Angeles-to-Mars jump room?

That depends on the standard being used.

If the question is whether there is accepted public evidence that a real jump room operated in El Segundo and transported people to Mars, the answer is no.

If the question is whether modern secret-space folklore has built one of its strongest and most concrete portal myths around the Los Angeles aerospace corridor, the answer is clearly yes.

That is why this archive title works. It names a stable and distinctive branch of the mythology.

Best internal linking targets

This page should later link strongly to:

/places/alleged-portals/project-pegasus-jump-room
/places/alleged-portals/project-pegasus-time-travel-gateway
/places/alleged-portals/stargate-terminal-ring-device
/places/alleged-portals/project-looking-glass-temporal-window
/theories/los-angeles-aerospace-corridor-portal-theory
/theories/secret-space-program-theory
/places/facilities/el-segundo-hughes-aircraft-site
/people/researchers/andrew-basiago
/people/researchers/william-b-stillings
/collections/deep-dives/urban-industrial-portals-in-modern-conspiracy-lore

Frequently asked questions

What is the Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room?

It is the claim that a covert teleportation chamber in El Segundo, inside the Los Angeles aerospace corridor, sent selected participants directly to Mars in the early 1980s.

Where was it supposed to be?

Most versions place it in or near a Hughes Aircraft-linked building in El Segundo, often associated in the lore with Sepulveda Boulevard near LAX.

Was it described as a stargate?

Usually no. The most famous descriptions portray it as an elevator-like room or chamber rather than a giant ring portal.

How long was the trip supposed to take?

Andrew Basiago’s own PDF description says the trip took about twenty minutes.

Why is Los Angeles important to the story?

Because the myth relies heavily on the real aerospace-defense landscape of El Segundo and the wider Los Angeles corridor, which gives the portal claim a concrete industrial setting.

Is there evidence the jump room was real?

There is no accepted public evidence that a real Los Angeles-area jump room transported people to Mars. The story survives through witness testimony, alternative media, and conspiracy culture rather than verified documentation.

Editorial note

This encyclopedia documents the Los Angeles-to-Mars Jump Room as a major alleged portal claim in modern secret-space and esoteric-technology folklore. The claim is not important because it proves that a working Mars gateway existed in El Segundo. It is important because it gives one of the modern era’s most detailed urban portal myths a precise geography: a story in which the road to another planet begins not in a sacred ruin or desert anomaly, but in the aerospace offices and secure buildings of greater Los Angeles.

References

[1] Project Pegasus. Project Pegasus – Home.
https://www.projectpegasus.info/

[2] Andrew D. Basiago. Andy writes Atlantis Rising correcting Pegasus expose (2010 PDF).
https://www.projectpegasus.info/docs/research_papers/Project-Pegasus-Andy-writes-Atlantis-Rising-correcting-Pegasus-Expose-6-25-10.pdf

[3] Exopolitics / Michael Salla. Jump Room to Mars – Training, Participants & Purpose (2022).
https://exopolitics.org/jump-room-to-mars-training-participants-purpose/

[4] Exopolitics / Michael Salla. 20 Jumpgate Missions to Mars & Corroborating NASA Images of Martian Life (2022).
https://exopolitics.org/20-jumpgate-missions-to-mars-corroborating-nasa-images-of-martian-life/

[5] Alfred Lambremont Webre / Golden Age of Gaia. Mars Visitors Basiago and Stillings Confirm Barack Obama Traveled to Mars (2011).
https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/11/10/alfred-webre-mars-visitors-basiago-and-stillings-confirm-barack-obama-traveled-to-mars/

[6] Spencer Ackerman. White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars. Wired (2012).
https://www.wired.com/story/obama-on-planet-mars/

[7] Jason Major. Conspiracy Theory Claims President Teleported to Mars. Universe Today (2012).
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/beam-me-up-obama-conspiracy-theory-claims-president-teleported-to-mars

[8] U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Michael Shellenberger, written testimony appendix mentioning the El Segundo jump-room claim (2024).
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO12/20241113/117721/HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20241113.pdf

[9] Hughes Historic District. Hughes Aircraft Company.
https://www.hugheshistoric.com/hughes-aircraft-company/

[10] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO EL SEGUNDO SOUTH — CERCLA Site Information.
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/CurSites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0903300

[11] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. HUGHES AIRCRAFT CO S&CG — CERCLA Site Information.
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/CurSites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0903305

[12] Los Angeles Times. Ghost of a Goose Hovers at Old Plant (1993).
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-10-17-we-46767-story.html