Secure Facility Dossier: Lunar Area-32 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Secure Facility Dossier: Lunar Area-32.

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MOONBASE DOCUMENT WOO

Jack Ike 08 Feb 2017 02:11

Image Attribution is as follows:

• Mare Imbrium photograph courtesy of NASA, released on Public domain.
• "Cyrus Hourdoon" picture is a photograph of Alberto Rodrigues Saa, released under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. This image is (originally) taken from the Presidency of the Nation of Argentina web site.
• "Devlin Winston" picture is a photograph of Tyler Monce, released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

sorry if it looks cluttered ive never done this before

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So, on this day - February 8th - last year, I uploaded SCP-2493. A year later, his home now has a dossier. Huzzah!

If any authors have an article or skip linked here that they do not want linked, feel free to remove it and post a note saying you don't want it on here. Is all cool.

If an author has made a new article involving Lunar Area 32 that has successfully stuck, feel free to link to said article on here somehow. Leave a message here if you need a hand, etc. (And yes, feel free to use Lunar Area 32 in any of your works. It is encouraged!)

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 02:25 by Jack Ike Show more

MrWrong 08 Feb 2017 02:17

You may want to double-check your image files. They do not see to be working on my end.

Jack Ike 08 Feb 2017 02:30

It's a client-side caching issue - clearing your cached image files should help. (Works for me, at least.)

GreenWolf 08 Feb 2017 02:34

I wasn't a fan of the Secure Facilities dossiers when they first popped up last year, and this does nothing to change that. As a hub, it's overly complicated to navigate, and as a tale, it's uninteresting.

Also, building a moonbase on the near side of the Moon is possibly one of the dumbest things an organization dedicated to preserving normalcy could possibly do. We can see the surface of the Moon here on Earth, and even amateur telescopes can see things as small as the Apollo landing sites. (To clarify, not the landers themselves, but the craters they landed in. Initial post saying "landers" was a mistype.) You might be able to edit the images taken by the LRO and other space-based assets, but you can't edit the eyeballs of everyone in the world with a telescope, no matter your resources.

It's basically like sticking a giant billboard in the sky that says "HERE WE ARE."

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:28 by GreenWolf Show more

Scorpion451 08 Feb 2017 03:03

We can see the surface of the Moon here on Earth, and even amateur telescopes can see things as small as the Apollo landers.

No. Very, very, wrong.

This page has pictures a satellite orbiting the moon took of the Apollo landing sites. The few-pixel-wide specks are vehicles about the size of a compact car. Again, that's a satellite in low orbit around the moon with a camera intended to photograph said sites. Even Hubble can't resolve anything smaller than a city block on the lunar surface from Earth orbit.

Basically, you could build a theme park on the Moon and no one would know except maybe a couple space programs if they were actively looking for it.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:09 by Scorpion451 Show more

GreenWolf 08 Feb 2017 03:08

Even Hubble can't resolve anything smaller than a city block on the lunar surface.

This is not because Hubble can't see the landing sites (it can resolve down to about 90 meters at that distance, theoretically), it is because Hubble is moving too fast to take clear pictures of the moon. This is also true of most orbiting telescopes trying to take photos of planets. Randall Munroe has more info about this here.

This is one of the few cases where ground-based telescopes are better.

Also, consider for a moment that the size of this base is stated as being over 14 square kilometers. That is easily resolved by even handheld telescopes.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:26 by GreenWolf Show more

Scorpion451 08 Feb 2017 03:12

So then it's even harder to see- the article I linked to there was only considering the lens resolution for Hubble. So it couldn't even see that city block. A telescope on Earth wouldn't have a snowball's chance even in ideal atmospheric conditions. There's a reason those photos I linked to are the first time we've been able to confirm that the landing sites weren't trashed by the takeoff of the return stage.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:14 by Scorpion451 Show more

GreenWolf 08 Feb 2017 03:14

I think you are ignoring the part about it being 14 square kilometers. That is much larger than a city block, and would be visible with binoculars.

There's a reason those photos I linked to are the first time we've been able to confirm that the landing sites weren't trashed by the takeoff of the return stage.

This is untrue. We've been bouncing lasers off the retroreflectors left at the landsites for literally decades now.

Also keep in mind that a base such as this will be emitting a lot of heat and radio communications, which just makes it even easier to spot. During the Apollo program, amateur radio operators were able to pick up their transmissions.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:32 by GreenWolf Show more

Scorpion451 08 Feb 2017 03:42

Yes, true on the laser thing, but they intentionally put those a fair distance away from the lander because they wanted to be sure that they weren't damaged.

Here's another article on the subject that includes that calculations. Apparently you'd need a 25m telescope to see the landing modules from Earth. Running the same calculation, you'd need a 7cm telescope to have any chance of seeing a 3km x 3km structure from Earth in ideal conditions, assuming you knew exactly where to look and they made no attempt whatsoever to hide it by something like, say, piling a layer of moon dust across it.

dankaar 08 Feb 2017 03:42

It should be pointed out that any earth-based telescope requires a resolution of about .002 arcseconds to see the lander as a dot.

Without compensating for atmospheric distortion, the best resolution you can get on Earth is about .4 arcseconds. With compensation, such as used by the Very Large Telescope, you can get a resolution down to about .030-.060 arcseconds.

Seeing the landers from Earth using hobby/ameateur equipment is basically impossible at our current level of technology.

GreenWolf 08 Feb 2017 04:01

To clarify, since people apparently aren't actually reading my post, I meant landing sites (i.e. the individual craters that were landed in) which are visible.

This is all besides the point, however, because this isn't the same size as the Apollo landers. It's much much larger.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 04:01 by GreenWolf Show more

Jack Ike 08 Feb 2017 03:30

Lunar Area 32 does cover an area of 12.4 km², but the majority of this is (at least, intended to be) made up of the subterranian portion - the only features of the base visible on the surface are the main reception and the airstrip (both of which were intended to be small), while Sub-Level 1 and onwards are all concealed beneath the surface of Mare Imbrium.

EDIT: Just added a bit to clarify this.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:37 by Jack Ike Show more

Plilt 08 Feb 2017 03:35

While I assumed this when I read the document, it should probably be explicit.

See below for problems with the airstrip.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:35 by Plilt Show more

Plilt 08 Feb 2017 03:34

I can forgive the size by assuming most of the facility is underground, but I have a bigger problem with this.

Airstrip: Single airstrip three kilometres in length on the surface of Mare Imbrium. Vehicles that require the use of the runway are currently only in prototype phases; because of this, the airstrip is primarily used for VTVL landings or take-off.

This is just ridiculous. Leaving aside the fact that they're building the runway before they have anything that needs it, which should get someone disciplined (if the prototypes have issues you can't resolve, you've got a great big runway just sitting there), the Moon has no atmosphere.

Therefore, no runway needed. Forward motion cannot be converted into upwards thrust by acting against the atmosphere, vehicles can't decelerate by increasing their drag, and any craft capable of moving forwards is going to be capable of vertical motion.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:36 by Plilt Show more

Scorpion451 08 Feb 2017 03:47

They can decelerate by applying skids, airbags, or wheels with brakes to the ground, however. Several Moon colony plans have included a landing strip, because it's that much less delta-v you need to worry about, and you could use a rolling cradle or a linear catapult like you find on an aircraft carrier to help launch things back into orbit using less fuel. (Remember that it's not going up that keeps you in orbit, it's going forward)

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 03:51 by Scorpion451 Show more

Plilt 08 Feb 2017 03:52

I stand corrected, then.

(account deleted) 08 Feb 2017 03:48

Seconding Plilt about the logistical issues, but I really liked the Ethics Committee report section. It was a neat look into a type of formal interaction occurring within the ranks of the Foundation that isn't given much attention. (That being Ethics Committee and site management, in the form of dated events logged.)

Ogilvy 08 Feb 2017 13:04

Thanks! I was hoping for more information on the moonbase. If each room is designed to be jettisoned, are there a bunch of holes on the surface? I'm thinking of trying to build this in Space Engineers.

Scorpion451 08 Feb 2017 15:45

Based on how it describes it, my guess is that they're all buried just below the surface, and have some engineered demolition charge or similar way to make a hole in the surface as needed.

Genshed 08 Feb 2017 19:15

As a former civil servant, I enjoyed the persistent subtext about the Site Director. He sounds entirely plausible.

I imagine the Ethics Liason is not his favorite staffer.

NatVoltaic 08 Feb 2017 22:44

Nice seeing this finally up. I would suggest changing the airstrip to "landing strip." It would seem more fitting, considering the lack of (noticeable) air. Problem solved

+1

Last edited on 08 Feb 2017 23:27 by NatVoltaic Show more

Petrograd 10 Feb 2017 06:30

Hmm. I'm not quite buying this. You've got a couple stories you're telling on top of a dossier (mysterious text issues and tyrannical director) which I assumed to be somehow related to each other, but unless I missed something, neither of them are paid off in any way. This is really annoying, because the hints were pretty enticing.

This isn't like the Site in Alabama with the rogue God (I unfortunately don't remember the links, and I'm on my phone), which used an existing story to provide some rich lore from a cool perspective, hidden in a bureaucratic document. This is just big flashing letters saying "Foundation Site: Foul play is afoot!", and then nothing. You chose to tell a story, there's gotta be at least a scrap of meat at the end.

(Edit: the director thread might have been alright as is if I weren't so in the dark about the other thing, and if that's impacting him, and if any anomalies are involved.)

Also the fake links were annoying as hell, especially when I was trying to figure out the mystery. (And the sound file didn't load, so I might've missed something there.)

Last edited on 10 Feb 2017 06:36 by Petrograd Show more

spikebrennan 14 Feb 2017 22:47

My tale "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" http://www.scp-wiki.net/sic-transit-gloria-mundi is set here.

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