Clivegh, you have a good idea but there a lot of other considerations involved with using an old Titan II missile silo. Or Atlas, or decommissioned Minuteman II, or any other silo previously owned by the federal government.
New activity and construction at a decommissioned Titan or other missile site, even one way the out in the middle of a desert, will attract unwanted attention. Possibly very unwelcome media scrutiny. At the very least, aerospace fans will check out the goings-on and report on them to other fan organizations, and you can bet your Atlas that Aviation Week and Space Technology will feature an article. Considering that (as far as I know) there were no privately-owned space launch facilities in the United States in the 1980s, there may be a lot of media interest. In my line of work (locomotive engineer for a Class A railroad), the foamers' (rail fanatics) websites frequently report stuff before my employer issues a press release. All the guys who camp out as close to "Area 51" as they can with binoculars and expensive digital camera equipment would still be there, looking for elusive secret military aircraft...but they have a lot of curious friends.
And while MorrowSpace could report that they are rehabilitating the decommissioned Titan as a satellite launch facility (such activity would require a cover story prepared well in advance to mask and safeguard the Project as well as long-lead contracts with the government/communications corporations who would own the satellite/materials suppliers who build the sats and missiles, etc.), the government would need to have some involvement as they owned the site...and the airspace above it. Nosy neighbors (I use the term "neighbors" to encompass everyone affected by the thunderous, rolling-on-for-miles, sound waves from a missile launch as well as farmers and ranchers whose crops or stocks would be/could be adversely affected by either a rocket launch...or a rocket malfunction)(and don't EVEN get me started on the monkey wrenches that the environmental activists could throw into the works), whether they approve of the rehabilitation or not, could complain to the government, petition the government to slow or cancel the project at various local/state/federal levels, or otherwise bring a lot of unwanted attention to the modification of a launch site.
A possible angle on this situation would be MorrowSpace purchasing the site, bringing teams in for "environmental clean-up pending the rehabilitation of the silo for launching comsats" which would in reality be constructing caches or paving the way for an expansion into underground facilities, and while the satellite launch portion of our show may be delayed indefinitely due to court injunctions brought on by neighbors or local government (or a well-orchestrated campaign by Morrow Industries itself to distract the media from building a cache or expanding it, while simultaneously explaining away the prescence of large amounts of men and materials as prep work in anticipation of winning the ensuing court cases...), the site could still be of great use to the Project even if the launch facility is never actually operational.
Kato hit on a good idea...wealthy billionaire decides to seclude himself from society and builds a gigantic island mansion, with all the bells and whistles. Any unusual items therein can be explained away as eccentricities. Perhaps he could even open a small and modest private military museum, thereby explaining the prescence of certain military aircraft, vehicles, weaponry and equipment (which would, of course, be operational or could be brought operational in short order...).
And what Soviet strategic planning targeter in his right mind would waste a nuclear warhead on some rich American's little island, well away from anyplace they'd be interested in? Targeting a rehabilitated Titan silo being used by a private company, yes; I don't believe Soviet military thinking (either in the Cold War 80s or even modern-day...) figures a difference between a privately-owned sat launch complex and a military-industrial complex government-owned by the United States. The private complex could be used as a strategic asset by the government, whether by fiat in military-national security necessity in the event of the destruction of federally-owned and operated launch centers, or used by prior arrangement with the aerospace corporation which owns the launch site. Targeting some rich nut in the middle of a lake, no.
In addition, though the Titans were decommissioned several years before the 1989 wardate used in the game, I would be inclined to believe that the Sovs would have continued to target the silos until such time as Soviet verification teams could inspect the sites themselves to determine their non-operation. We wouldn't simply take the Soviets for their word that they decommissioned a missile base just because they said so. And I doubt the Project would invest so substantially in a space launch capability if they thought Soviet high-yield nuclear warheads would likely be dropped on it, regardless how hardened or well-stocked the underground complex is...remember, not only would you need to be able to use the launch complex post-attack for Project needs, but you'd need to be able to access the site from the outside to bring in supplies, food and water, more missiles and satellites, personnel, etc, and you wouldn't want to have to do that across an expanse filled with gigantic groundburst craters, hissing with radioactivity.
And if the Sovs even thought for a microsecond that the silo was being used for ABM tests, not only would they give it the thermonuclear smack but probably target additional warheads against it...just to be sure.
Kato, I was thinking more along the lines of a decommissioned Lafayette/Benjamin Franklin-class SSBN, retired from strategic deterrence duty, being outfitted under a joint federal government/MorrowSpace/MorrowMarine venture to "test the concept" of mobile satellite launch facilities around the equator...
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