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Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

It does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me. The whole point of, e.g., the facility at Groom Lake is that it's very remote. Accumulating a large town nearby would defeat the purpose.

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> It does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me.

Just a consideration: would it be cheaper to build and use an express railroad line between the remote facility and "the other commute destination" instead?

Maybe over the long term, but I wouldn't say that for certain given the insane costs of building infrastructure in that kind of environment. However, I can say that it would totally defeat the purpose of trying to keep things secret. Any tracks would be visible in satellite images and show exactly where the trains go.

planes are not hard to track

They were presumably a fair bit harder to track in 1972.

It’s a hundred pretty mountainous miles from Las Vegas to Area 51. The cost of building a fast line along that route would probably pay for decades of these flights.

It would have been a lot cheaper if the military didn't order the Tonopah & Tidewater Railway to be dismantled for its precious steel. That would be like half the line.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_and_Tidewater_Railro...

It had already ceased operation before the start of the war (in the US), and would have been taken up for scrap sooner or later anyway. Even without World War II, there is exactly zero chance that the railroad would have survived long enough to be useful again. Unused rail lines don't sit for 50 years without being scrapped. (At least, they didn't in those days. Tennessee Pass seems to be headed toward becoming the exception that proves the rule.)

No.

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