How would you handle a specific game idea?

[Tom Kalbfus]

Unless you change rules in chargen in your game

Basic Training: For your first career only, you get all the skills listed in the Service Skills table at Level 0 as your basic training. For any subsequent careers, you may pick any one skill listed in the Service Skills table at Level 0 as your basic training. - pg 8

So if the space program is your last career, you are more like a mission specialist, who barely knows one end of a suit from another?

Yup, probably - although you might have to alter the chargen to reflect it being 90% training with no active tours. At the other end of the spectrum, you'll have professional Air Force astronauts, with the necessary skills and experience.

A 1960s starship is well nigh impossible, it would cost trillions of dollars!, now way to hide that!

Oh, it'll come out of the CIA budget, they won't find it until the '90's, if then. :twisted:
Mind you, nobody's found the Groom Lake budget, or Jimmy Hoffa's body, so chances are good!

Trillions of dollars? 10% of the US GDP? How can that money be spend and not cause inflation? Also all the contractors and Employee salaries that need to be employed, you would have to double the government workforce! Oh if it tool off from Groom lake it would light up the sky for miles around as thousands of atomic bombs went off.

See the pusher plate to the right? Atomic bombs explode behind it, those pistons between the plate and the ship concert the explosions to forward momentum of the spaceship, now imagine one atomic bomb exploding per second to lift this thing off the ground and to get it into orbit. How would you keep it secret?

 

[Epicenter]

How would you go about setting up a game telling your players its set in between the 1950's to 60's and is otherwise as normal for that time period except...

I could go into more detail but I wanted to discover what you thought about this?

Does it pose too much of a railroad, would your players dislike such a reveal?

How would you handle this?

I guess the biggest question would be of presentation.

How much does it matter to your game, this big secret that they're on a colony world? It seems like the kind of fascinating twist/reveal in a book or a video game ... but players in an RPG may or may not care, depending on your players.

How does being a colony world as opposed to the original world matter for your game?

I understand the gut feeling would be to say "it changes everything" but ... what does it really change?

* The players find high-tech artifacts from the initial colony to help them fight the outsiders. That could easily happen on a non-colony world. Nuclear wars or other disasters may have wiped out civilization and similar situations are a reasonably common story - that it is a colony world wouldn't matter much.

* The original colony-founding empire/nation/whatever comes back. While this is a little more interesting, again, how much does it really matter to players? It'd be a big reveal in-character, but as far as actual effects in your game, what would that change?

* The enemies of the original colony-founding group come looking for the colony. While this definitely falls into the 'sins of the father' type archetype, again, to most RPG players, it won't matter. It's just the enemies from space who came and attacked them for little or no reason.

While I'm sure there's a few storylines where the twist would actually matter, the only one I can think of quickly is that the planet (the colony) wasn't originally human property. Perhaps the ancestors had driven the aliens or whomever had lived on the planet off. Perhaps back in the 'glorious civilization' of the past, the world was seen as prime real colonization space. While this ancient civilization was not so cruel as to wipe the original people out, they perhaps killed large numbers of them and then removed the survivors to a much less pleasant world to make way for human settlers. It's been thousands of years (or whatever) and the original inhabitants have kept alive their sense of injustice and have come to reclaim their "rightful homeland." So a story like that might start out as 'we're being attacked by outsiders' but eventually the reveal would be that the outsiders have a justification for what they're doing. However again, how would such a reveal influence the story in a way that'd matter to players?

edit: I suppose it might matter if there's some sort of interstellar civilization and the original inhabitants have taken their case to that future's equivalent of an "Interstellar Court of Justice." The original colony-founding nation either loses the case or doesn't exist anymore. This "court" declares that the human colony on the world is unjust and essentially a criminal enterprise ("attempted genocide has no statue of limitations") but the courts are not entirely heartless - they don't declare that every human on the world has to be executed or sterilized. Instead, they declare the humans must leave the world for a new one. The enforcement of the decision is left up to the descendants of the original inhabitants, but the decision is communicated to the other species and nations in the galactic civilization.

Of course many of the humans on the world consider this world "theirs" and refuse to give up, so it's going to be war... but not many others are going to help them because this 'court' has declared them to be in the wrong. Or they might try something like this, except that the humans are backwards so large-scale contact is forbidden by interstellar law, so nobody even comes to tell them of the decision until the original inhabitants come and try and remove the humans themselves (you know, "living history" - their history has lovingly kept alive the human betrayals and brutality for centuries so that the descendants feel that it was done just yesterday, so they're not inclined to peaceful negotiation).

So I suppose your story might start with a war of defense (which the humans initially win - the original inhabitants are poor so they have some gosh-wow technology, but it's the equivalent of assault rifles and a few missile launchers, as opposed to genetic-tracking sensors and smart battlefield saturation lasers), but eventually the players learn the truth. They also learn (in a twist, perhaps one of the original natives either as a prisoner or as someone who sort of feels pity for the humans) that since the original natives are having a difficult time enforcing the decision, well-meaning (or cynical or both) allies have come to the cause and they're preparing a Compliance Fleet. Once this Compliance Fleet arrives, the humans with their 1950s-1960s technology don't have a chance (because they will have the aforementioned superweapons and the wealth and power to have enough of them to do the job right). However, it'll take about 8-12 human years for the wheels of interstellar bureaucracy to turn and the fleet to secure funding, organize itself, and straighten out all the legal hurdles to actually assemble and attack.

During this time, the players might decide to build an interstellar colony / starship to leave the system ... the hurdles will be great. Many humans will not want to divert resources from their "glorious war" against the "alien invaders" so they'll be a race against time and other humans who don't want to divert energy and manpower from the "war effort" and they'll have to do it with 1950-60s technology. It'll be difficult, but if you're desperate enough, it should be possible.

 

[Hopeless]

I was picturing that the original colony ship design was stolen and mass produced to facilitate the move of enough people to make the attempt have the best possible chance of success.

The Founder of the Colony actually one of the surviving descendants of the colonist hierarchy who fled Earth to escape being imprisoned on various charges of murder, fraud and whatever they had to do to preserve their way of life.

So the rebuilding of their perfect world culminated with making it more like the 50's so they could keep control but their assumption that their former home world couldn't survive without them would be proved wrong.

I never considered Roswell though, but still think my idea would work better with it dealing with a former colony that believes itself Earth from the 50's rather than a colonisation effort that manages to escape the notice of the rest of the world even though they'd need the rest of the world to have any chance of pulling off such an attempt back then.

Well I'm curious to see what else you come up with as its been very interesting so far!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I was picturing that the original colony ship design was stolen and mass produced to facilitate the move of enough people to make the attempt have the best possible chance of success.

The Founder of the Colony actually one of the surviving descendants of the colonist hierarchy who fled Earth to escape being imprisoned on various charges of murder, fraud and whatever they had to do to preserve their way of life.

So the rebuilding of their perfect world culminated with making it more like the 50's so they could keep control but their assumption that their former home world couldn't survive without them would be proved wrong.

I never considered Roswell though, but still think my idea would work better with it dealing with a former colony that believes itself Earth from the 50's rather than a colonisation effort that manages to escape the notice of the rest of the world even though they'd need the rest of the world to have any chance of pulling off such an attempt back then.

Well I'm curious to see what else you come up with as its been very interesting so far!

You ever read the book Conquistador by S.M. Stirling? This plot I think is more believable than the secret colony ship idea, this is about a private colony established in secret on a parallel Earth.

Conquistador is a 2003 alternate history novel by S. M. Stirling. Its point of divergence occurs when the empire of Alexander the Great endures long after Alexander's death, creating a markedly different history that prevents the European conquest of the Americas. Most of the story is set in the parallel universe affected by this history.

Plot summary[edit]
John Rolfe VI is an infantry captain who comes back from World War II with a war wound and few prospects, but in 1946 a radio he is rewiring malfunctions and creates a gateway to a parallel universe. This universe is one in which Alexander the Great lived a full lifespan, creating an empire that stretched from Spain to India. In this world, the Macedonian Empire proved so strong and durable that it redirected the barbarian migrations of the Goths, Vandals, and others eastward towards China and the rest of the Far East. As a result, what remains of China is a hodgepodge of Indo-European dominated states, the Americas remain undiscovered by the Old World, and technology has barely progressed to a medieval level. Deciding to take advantage of the untapped resources that await in this different California, Rolfe gathers members of his infantry company to help him explore and develop this new world. Over the next 60 years, he builds a new nation, which he calls the Commonwealth of New Virginia.

In 2009, two California fish and game officers (Tom Christiansen and Roy Tully) are trying to solve the mystery of how large numbers of pelts from endangered species are showing up. They finally deduce the secret of the gate to the parallel world, but before they can make the secret known to their superiors, they are kidnapped and permanently transported to New Virginia by Rolfe's granddaughter, Gate Security Agent Adrienne Rolfe (with whom Christiansen had been falling in love).

Once the two rangers get over their resentment of being forcibly and permanently removed from their lives and world, and being brought to this new world, Adrienne enlists them to help sabotage a coming coup in New Virginia. Giovanni Colletta, head of the second most powerful family, and son of a sleazy and amoral war buddy of Rolfe's, has resented the elder Rolfe's control, and he and some allies are planning to take over by force and violence, with the intention of imposing an authoritarian regime. The rangers decide that Rolfe and his allies are the lesser of two evils, and decide to help Adrienne in her effort to prevent the coup. The group discovers that Colletta is arming post-Aztec and post-Mayan Indians to build a couple of battalions of soldiers (something very illegal under Commonwealth law) in an attempt to capture the Gate, holding the Commonwealth hostage.

Colletta duly strikes, giving the other families the grounds to oppose him militarily. The revolt is put down, but at a price: the radio device and the Gateway are destroyed, and with it, the connection to our world. What little talent the Commonwealth has in physics works feverishly to re-establish the Gate. They are successful, but when they look through the new gate, they do not see FirstSide (New Virginia slang for Rolfe's home Earth) Oakland, but instead a snarling saber-toothed cat and a dead giant sloth.

Commonwealth of New Virginia[edit]
History[edit]
While trying to fix his radio in his basement, Rolfe accidentally created a gate to an alternate California in which Europeans had yet to discover the Americas. After looking at the new world on the other side of the Gate by himself, Rolfe brought a dozen trusted members of his wartime platoon to see for themselves. Later, while camping in an alternate California after hunting and panning for gold, the group agreed to keep the "Gate" a secret. They believed (correctly) that they could exploit the wealth it offered them, and they recognized Rolfe as the leader of this endeavour.

Using one of his men's ties to the Mafia to cover up where they were getting the gold, Rolfe and his allies gained the starting capital necessary to start their own country. To protect the secret of the Gate, they bought up the residential area in Oakland around the Gate, converting it into an industrial complex. Immigration to "New Virginia", as they called it, began with close family members and friends of the men involved, but it later included settlers drawn from various ethnic groups looking for places to hide: fugitive Nazis, pieds-noirs, Afrikaaners, Rhodesians, and former Russian communists.

By present day in the novel, the Commonwealth of New Virginia had expanded across the new California, with outposts as far as Alaska and Colorado and colonies in Hawaii and Australia. The original founders of the country structured the government so that their families would remain in power long after those originals were dead, and they also adapted laws to causes and hobbies to which they were partial. One example was Rolfe's love of hunting, which encouraged him to partner with the San Diego Zoo to import large African animals, which he then moved through the Gate and released into the wilds of his new North America.

Farming and mining were the principal pillars of the Commonwealth economy, the latter being particularly profitable since the Commonwealth already knew the exact locations of gold and other mines because of the history of FirstSide.

Politics[edit]
The Commonwealth of New Virginia is described as a "feudal oligarchy" by one of the characters. It is a highly conservative state whose politics often clash with those of the main characters of the story. Power is held by the Thirty Families (which actually number 32) who make all of the decisions regarding the Commonwealth though there is some limited democracy in the form of the House of Burgesses. The Rolfe Family is considered the leader of the families and thus has some influence over the others. All of the Families are led by the "Primes," or the head of family who is succeeded by the eldest adult male. All members of the Thirty Families who are not the Prime or heir are known as "Collaterals." Those not members of the Families are known as "Settlers." Most settlers declare loyalty to a certain family, but some are independent.

While there are some cities in the Commonwealth, they have been deliberately been kept small by Rolfe and the other Primes. This has been done to protect the environment from pollution and other ills. The largest city Rolfeston, which is located where Berkeley would have been, has a population of only 28,000. The writings of the Southern Agrarian movement, as typified by the 1930 essay "I'll Take My Stand", are a guide for the development of the Commonwealth.

The demographics of the Commonwealth are primarily white with religions ranging from Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish. The antebellum-minded Rolfe has barred blacks from being allowed into the Commonwealth, but some have come involuntarily after discovering the Gate secret.

Only members of the Thirty Families, and not all of them, may travel between the worlds. Everyone else must stay in New Virginia for life. The Gate traffic is monitored and controlled by the Gate Security Force (GSF). The secret is so important that the GSF has the authority to execute even members of the Thirty Families on FirstSide without trial if they are doing something that could give away the secret.

As in our history, most Native Americans have suffered huge losses thanks to disease accidentally brought through the Gate. The Commonwealth does bring in workers from the Nahuatl speaking people to the south, but they are only allowed to stay temporarily. If they ever wish to reside permanently in the Commonwealth, they may do so, but are sterilized so they won't have a next generation. Without a second generation, the Nahuatl never learn how the Commonwealth operates, or understand how the New Virginians think, and so won't ever become a factor politically.

References[edit]
Stirling, S. M. (2003). Conquistador. New York: Roc. p. 448. ISBN 0-451-45908-3.

 

[Reynard]

Didn't they teach you summarization back in school?

 

[Rick]

It all depends on your interpretation of the word 'believable'.

Maybe a touch harsh to leave it like that - what I meant was that if you are comparing the believability of a man bridging a gap between 2 parallel worlds with a radio in 1945 then setting up an empire in his 'New World' and a generation ship powered by nuclear detonation on its way to Proxima Centauri after being launched in the 1960's, then it can only be decided by a subjective choice. I do not think you could ever have an absolute scale of 'believability'!

Btw - kudos to you for wading through his book - I find his writing bloody awful. I much prefer the parallel worlds series started by David Weber and Linda Evans (the Multiverse series).

 

[Beastttt]

more like reentry and you did not want to wait for the burnup on reentry

If it's a 50-60s era then all spacecraft HAVE to carry 45 pistols and grenades! Monsters and bad aliens will be out there.

The Soyuz used to carry a gun, for possible use upon landing.

 

[AndrewW]

more like reentry and you did not want to wait for the burnup on reentry

Depending on where it came down possible predators.

 

[Reynard]

Why would they need a gun for reentry? Expecting to land in enemy territory?

I was referring to so many Sci fi of the time that had the ship going to the moon, Mars or Venus with guns and explosives. Of course they always found an evil alien or monster to justify it.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

It all depends on your interpretation of the word 'believable'.

Maybe a touch harsh to leave it like that - what I meant was that if you are comparing the believability of a man bridging a gap between 2 parallel worlds with a radio in 1945 then setting up an empire in his 'New World' and a generation ship powered by nuclear detonation on its way to Proxima Centauri after being launched in the 1960's, then it can only be decided by a subjective choice. I do not think you could ever have an absolute scale of 'believability'!

Btw - kudos to you for wading through his book - I find his writing bloody awful. I much prefer the parallel worlds series started by David Weber and Linda Evans (the Multiverse series).

I can tell you how this would be believable. John Rolfe was living in a Matrix like simulation of the real world, and by activating his radio in that certain spot he opened a doorway to another matrix like simulation of a different "real world".

But the main thing is whatever caused that gate to open, a man operating his ham radio in his basement attracts a lot less attention than the government spending tens of trillions of dollars to launch huge rockets to build a generation ship in a couple of years all while keeping it secret from the public and sending 100 colonists to the stars with the public being none the wiser.

Now don't get me wrong, building an Orion spaceship is possible, launching several with thousands of atomic bombs going off to get each craft into orbit while keeping it secret from the general public is impossible, But John Rolfe, given his little miracle with his radio set in his basement could more believably send people through while keeping the entire operation secret from the public, such that even the government doesn't know about it.

 

[Reynard]

In the 50s and 60s, things were simpler and less advanced. Distance and a lot more open land hid things. Radar was pointed toward Russia, of limited range and commercial systems often easily controlled by your benevolent government. As to TRILIIONS of dollars. That sounds like 21st century thinking. If they had the ability to build starships as the story states then there was technology, design and resources compatible with finances without openly breaking the bank. If the government actually thought these ships must save some humanity without national or world panic then it would be done in secret. Somewhere deep in a wilderness, desert and/or forest, would be a continuous launched of personnel and material to build that huge vehicle as agents make sure earth telescopes happen to not look in that spot in the sky. Some may see a bright flash and telescopes finally get to look but there's nothing but a mystery and a few 'kooks' claiming aliens.

Remember, we should have a greater footprint on the moon and, by now, Mars but budgets were severely slashed starting in the 70s. Science took a back seat for decades to come. The shuttles and Liberty Station seem more as a stall against complaints. If we had the same passion as in the Sixties who knows if going to the stars would be a reality now.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

In the 50s and 60s, things were simpler and less advanced. Distance and a lot more open land hid things. Radar was pointed toward Russia, of limited range and commercial systems often easily controlled by your benevolent government. As to TRILIIONS of dollars. That sounds like 21st century thinking. If they had the ability to build starships as the story states then there was technology, design and resources compatible with finances without openly breaking the bank. If the government actually thought these ships must save some humanity without national or world panic then it would be done in secret. Somewhere deep in a wilderness, desert and/or forest, would be a continuous launched of personnel and material to build that huge vehicle as agents make sure earth telescopes happen to not look in that spot in the sky. Some may see a bright flash and telescopes finally get to look but there's nothing but a mystery and a few 'kooks' claiming aliens.

Remember, we should have a greater footprint on the moon and, by now, Mars but budgets were severely slashed starting in the 70s. Science took a back seat for decades to come. The shuttles and Liberty Station seem more as a stall against complaints. If we had the same passion as in the Sixties who knows if going to the stars would be a reality now.

Also a starship in orbit ought to be easily a naked eye object, I mean if people can spot sputnik and the ISS, imagine how much larger an interstellar colony ship would be. Also imagine the cost of running a parallel space agency at the same time, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Imagine if the asked Von Braun to do all that.

 

[Rick]

Not Werner Von Braun, it'd be Freeman Dyson.

 

[Rick]

But John Rolfe, given his little miracle with his radio set in his basement could more believably send people through while keeping the entire operation secret from the public, such that even the government doesn't know about it.

I did read the book, just to see what you were talking about and found this one big central problem that ruined any belief; he's opened this gate in an underground basement, it opens in exactly the same place in the parallel world - but now, miraculously, it's above ground. How? In the very best possible case, there might be a 2-3 ft gap at the top of the gate, where he could climb out, but he'd still have to dig it out a lot more. Not in the book - it's described as being on the ground surface.

 

[Hopeless]

Interesting point about the story with the radio being used in the right place and time.

It gave me this image of one ship having the capacity to open a wormhole allowing the exodus through but due to the strain involved in using it in this manner meant that the ship crashed on the moon whilst the rest of the colony ships landed on the world but with no means of returning as they didn't have the means to locate the one ship that could open up the wormhole connection back home (By that I mean it crashed on one of the moons orbiting their new home world).

The idea is that they had been able to open it before and send probes through to identify an inhabitable world before making the trip but once through the inability to return left them to their own devices and that's what took them so much time redeveloping back to the level mentioned.

The colony as a whole is unaware why there's been no further contact with Earth after their arrival. Only a select few even knew the method used to travel to their new world and the fact only one ship had the ability to open the wormhole. To their knowledge its creator was murdered shortly before their exodus with their Founder doing so to escape being hunted down by the surviving family members and friends of that person he inadvertantly had killed in his efforts to force her to comply with his demands .

I picture the game starting somewhere between 2158-2160 still thinking I can work T2300 in there!

I'm pondering whether to make this a potential mix by asking the players if they want to play characters on this Earth-2 of the 50's or 60's or people waking up on a transport that includes the great great granddaughter of the ship builder whose attempt to jury rig a working stutter warp/jump drive inadvertedly locks onto the long lost and thought destroyed wormhole jump ship and it opens a wormhole allowing their transport through and it ends up crashlanding on the colony world.

Being hunted by paranoid military, literal men in black who are cybernetically enhanced agents of the Pirate group using the world as their base of operations.

Hmm maybe have the colony be a bit more varied in its make up because they wasn't the first colonists as the creator of that wormhole drive was attempting to seed another world on the quiet only to be betrayed by someone close to her who revealed her secret to the wrong people.

Imagining there being a resistance group on the colony world some of whom are aware the person who helped them emigrate was killed and others who blame her for the new colonists who've managed some measure of control but there would be distinct nationalities present.

What do you think, say if these people were recruited secretly being not wealthy or powerful but selected because of their familial links and perhaps loyalty and willingly volunteered to investigate the new world... what kind of nationalities do you think I could get away with being present?

Make it resemble Earth or maybe look at further alternative Earth's for examples of what nations might spring up let alone what kind of technological capabilities... I was thinking not much as the means to travel to and from our Earth to theirs was lost with the death of its creator but the opening events would reveal that knowledge wasn't entirely lost it just wasn't understood as the original wormhole drive was a mite faulty with the corrected version becoming the Stutter drive of T2300 and the gradually being perfected model being the Jump Drive.

So if Pirates are out there then either they're preying on one of the Arms or maybe not even in T2300 sector of space... the T2300 setting sounds a better match at least for now.

Am I going too far here?

 

[Reynard]

"Also a starship in orbit ought to be easily a naked eye object, I mean if people can spot sputnik and the ISS, imagine how much larger an interstellar colony ship would be. Also imagine the cost of running a parallel space agency at the same time, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Imagine if the asked Von Braun to do all that."

By 1967, I believe the year of your birth, satellites were still few and far between and there were no space stations. Sputnik and its successors of that era were tiny. The vast majority of people in the 50s and 60s did not look up and squint to find things nonexistent in their minds. Even today, a moving dot of light is waved away as a high flying plane. If a ship under construction is in stationary orbit, it looks like another star. If the government is performing this operation, I'm sure they can find ways to spin reported sightings of liftoffs in secluded areas as classified rocket weapons tests during the height of the cold war. Look how often the US government handled flying saucer reports during that time. It was a different age.

 

[Hopeless]

So no one would be paying attention to all those extra rocket launches they would need to supply such an operation?

Just how astronomical would it need to get to fulfil such an attempt?

Assuming they go the way of multiple atomic bombs detonating to propel it to the their destination and how will they be sure there's an inhabitable world there upon their arrival?

Would it be easier to colonise Mars than travel to another star system in hopes there's an inhabitable world present?

Back then did they have any means of identifying such a world and if not just how much further could they travel to continue their mission to find a new home?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

But John Rolfe, given his little miracle with his radio set in his basement could more believably send people through while keeping the entire operation secret from the public, such that even the government doesn't know about it.

I did read the book, just to see what you were talking about and found this one big central problem that ruined any belief; he's opened this gate in an underground basement, it opens in exactly the same place in the parallel world - but now, miraculously, it's above ground. How? In the very best possible case, there might be a 2-3 ft gap at the top of the gate, where he could climb out, but he'd still have to dig it out a lot more. Not in the book - it's described as being on the ground surface.

The house was probably built on a graded surface, that is in order to get a flat lawn. Perhaps the lawns were terraced with retaining walls. A minor quibble.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

So no one would be paying attention to all those extra rocket launches they would need to supply such an operation?

Just how astronomical would it need to get to fulfil such an attempt?

Assuming they go the way of multiple atomic bombs detonating to propel it to the their destination and how will they be sure there's an inhabitable world there upon their arrival?

Would it be easier to colonise Mars than travel to another star system in hopes there's an inhabitable world present?

Back then did they have any means of identifying such a world and if not just how much further could they travel to continue their mission to find a new home?

If they colonized Mars, it would not be secret. the idea behind the show is they launched a secret starship without telling the public what they spend their taxpayers dollars on. When you look at it that way, it would have been really unfair to steal 10 trillion dollars from US taxpayers build a starship without telling them and then launch it! How do those dollars benefit the taxpayer? They don't! I'm pretty sure JFK would not have done this. Besides, what would have been the point of keeping it secret? Suppose the Russians knew about it? Big deal, what are they going to do? If the USA could do that, there would be no way the Russians could possibly catch up, their primitive Soyuz rockets would be totally outmoded, in fact the project would almost certainly have had to have begun in the 1950s during the Eisenhower years, Von Braun would have been kept fairly busy with multiple rocket launches.

 

[Hopeless]

Just to get it ready for launch in 1964 you might actually be talking about the late forties given the magnitude of the operation.

Huh what if the Germans began this operation and the US gained full knowledge of their scheme and took advantage that way it would have been being built since the early forties and arguably have another reason why noone noticed with access to facilities used by the WW2 Germans which have otherwise escaped scrutiny possibly because of the US-Russian Space Race with the world staring at them instead of whats happening either near the Arctic or the Antarctic perhaps?