A new idea for a cover for Prime Base

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by tsofian

Both mines and ranches have serious problems.

Agreed!

Originally Posted by tsofian

A mine has a small entrance which doesn't allow a whole lot of traffic. It is very dangerous in and of itself. MSHA will be hard to fool. Unless its something like a strip mine you don't have a lot of volume going out at any given time and you never have volume going in. Empty haul trucks aren't covered, which means they will be hard to have filled with anything.

The mine entrance is no bigger problem than it is for any other venture; it isn't like grain elevators are famous for giant doors or anything. And the haul trucks or other traffic are less of an issue when you are out in the middle of nowhere instead of right in the middle of farmlands.

MSHA is a valid issue and may be the single best reason why a mine might not work, but grain elevators also get inspected, if less vigorously. Any Project site is likely to require some method of avoiding honest inspection, whether that is bribing the inspectors or having the inspections performed by Project personnel or some other method.

Originally Posted by tsofian

It's difficult to develop a cover story for a ranch that needs all the crap hauled to it that Prime Base does. It has to be thousands of truckloads of material, not to mention all the people. Food for however many people for 10 years or more is 2 kg/day/person so 2X3650X500 is over 3.5 million kilograms alone. That is 3500 truckloads all by itself.

The three or four "towers" each probably weigh ten thousand tons or so, meaning another 30 to 40 THOUSAND truckloads (if using a 1 tonne truck)

Even bigger trucks will still yield tens of thousands of truckloads of material. Let's be conservative and say that over the period of base construction 100,000 tons of materials must be brought into the site. So we can say that is 25,000 truckloads (if using a 4 ton truck). Check my math but that is around 7 trucks a day.

That is hard to explain going INTO a relatively small mine and basically impossible for a ranch.

Now the big ass railcars can each hold 50 or more tons, so only 2,000 railway cars.

Let's go with 100,000 tons, and consider 3 delivery options and three time periods:

1 ton truck load*: 100,000 loads, or 80/day for 5 years, 40/day**or 10 years, or 20/day for 20 years

15 ton semi truck load: 6700 loads, or 5/day for 5 years, 3/day for 10 years, or 1 per day for 20 years.

50 ton railcar load: 2000 loads, or 1.6/day for 5 years, 0.8/day for 10 years, or 0.4/day for 20 years. Assuming a 50 car train, that would be 1 train per month for years, 1 per 2 months for 10 years, or 1 per 4 months for 20 years.

I think what this demonstrates more than anything else that a large base is going to be hard to conceal with a small business. It really sells me on the idea that a minimally-regulated business that expects high total traffic with little or no "civilian" traffic or exposure would be ideal... and that sounds like a shipping or distribution hub, not a mine or ranch or grain elevator.

It also drives home the challenges in concealing a large base, and gives more incentive for distributing those assets as much as possible.


*: Terrible choice, too many things are too large or heavy for this option.
**: Assuming 250 days per year (i.e., weekens off)