AlphaNumeric,
Apart from this specific issue, with respect for what you said concerning the shuttle's age, is it possible that there is a "secret" space program that is extremely ahead of curve that we as a society view coming from NASA?
Of course, since short of searching the entire planet (if not solar system) I cannot say with 100% conviction that there isn't. However, do I think there is? No. I'm sure there's plenty of technology which isn't known outside military or high tech research groups but then that's a given. I don't think such technology is
that far ahead of what you can buy in shops or used in well 'visible' areas (for instance you can't buy a microchip etching machine in Walmart but the technology itself is within the public's knowledge). After all, the technology used to put Man on the Moon was, by todays standards, shockingly crude. There's more CPU power in most cars than was in the Apollo 11 rocket. We can store dozens of gigabytes of information on things the size and mass of a postage stamp.
Short of a Russia/China/US mass conspiracy (which is a truely crackpot idea you hear from 'We didn't land on the Moon!' nuts), one government couldn't keep such things from all the other powerful countries. Russia, China and the US probably know to within a few feets (if not inches!) where the other's major research facilities for rocket/plane testing are, thanks to spy satellites. Heck, the way the US shows Russia its reducing some of it's military equipment (due to say an arms limitation treaty) is to put all the vehicles into the desert, chop them up and wait a week. Why? Because by then a Russian spy satellite has flown over and seen them.
Large launch facilities are easy to spot even using Google map. You can see where things like Heathrow airport are without needing to zoom into London itself very much. Miles of concrete and tarmac tend to stand out. Particularly if you're building your 'secret facility' somewhere miles from people (otherwise it wouldn't be secret!). Since pretty anywhere 'miles from people' is devoid of large areas of human constructions, such sites would stick out like a sour thumb to any observation satellite.
Could the triangles observed throughout the world that are obviously represent of some form of technology
Given the lack of consensus in this thread it's hardly 'obvious'. Many highly likely explanations have been provided to you already.
be exemplary of scientific engineering and capability that NASA truthfully knows either (a) nothing about, or (b) knows about but is instructed to maintain secrecy concerning?
There's plenty of technology which is brand new, cutting edge stuff but which NASA know nothing about. Much research is out sourced to private companies, who then develop the technology required to solve whatever problem NASA might have. Similar things happen at CERN. Physicists say "We need a magnetic field of [such and such size] with [such and such] properties. We have $10 million to pay [some company] to research and develop this technology. When the LHC was at the design stage much of the technology it now uses didn't exist.
And did you read my previous post about why that galaxy clock or spiral or whatever was nonsense? It appears to be deliberately written to mislead people who don't know about relativity and quantum mechanics.