hiding a spaceship

[kengr]

I've been thinking on yet another variation on the "people stumble across a spaceship and get it working" trope.

I'm trying to figure ways this (not alien, but from the future) spacecraft could be hidden yet findable. I figure it should have been hidden several hundred years ago, after getting sent back to the past via [much handwaving]

I figure that about the only practical way is for it to be in an underground location. Probably one that was excavated, not natural. I'm sorta stuck on how to hide the entrance since most of the ways that come to mind would either require gear they wouldn't have or look suspicious to surveyors ("Looks like somebody blasted down that cliff face, Charlie.")

So I'm asking for ideas.

Technology is pretty much that of the Treveller RPG, but with somewhat better computers.

Comments

[warriorsavant]

In some ways, that was what happened at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The Ark filed itself onto a shelf in a government archives, which it would be buried by bureaucracy.

[siliconshaman]

Exactly... it was filed away in the proto area-51 and forgotten, along with crystal skulls and other assorted weirdness that the government would prefer to forget about but didn't want anyone else to have.

This would be a little more private enterprise than that, but essentially the same idea.

Hm.. come to think of it... if we're talking about a spaceship being there since 1850's or earlier, you could order a building started, with a basement, land your ship while it's at the big hole in the ground stage, backfill with concrete, and bury the ship under the building with a hidden staircase down to the hatch. All it would require is a bit of precision building to have the brick-built staircase in place down into the [open] basement first, lay off the the initial workforce, land, fill in around the ship and brick over the entrance, then hire a new workforce to finish the building on top of the concrete pad.

Getting your spaceship out again however..

That also raises the question of why though. Fugitive time traveller perhaps?

[warriorsavant]

Not that hard to get it back out, depending if you needed to do it stealthily or not, and how big said ship was. If no bigger than a TARDIS, quite easy. If you don’t need to be stealthy, could wrap it in plastic (or equivalent, put sand around it, then cheap concrete over it. Later, just jack-hammer the concrete. Don’t need an access stair (rather same as your bury it in a peat bog idea doesn’t need access stairs).

I wonder. How long have self-storage rental places been around?

The key to having it be in a building would be the administrative/corporate structure that does the upkeep and continuity of the building itself. I suppose it’s rather like stories about vampires, where they run corporations for 100’s of years to keep their wealth/treasure/keepsakes. In those stories, they pass the directorship on to a “nephew” or “cousin,” who is actually the same vampire. I suppose our time traveler could do the same, show up at the annual corporate board meetings once/year as “a different person.” Even without that, banks and trust companies can run a building for you for 100’s of years. I suspect that in UK/Europe, there probably are such things, with or without vampires or time travellers.

[kengr]

Well, they *could use the low berths (cold sleep) to do something like that, but over centuries, that could get risky.

Though this talk of buildings has given me an idea. cut the cavern back into the side of a canyon or mesa, and then build a fake pueblo in front of it.

[siliconshaman]

If we're talking North America that could work, but you might have problems with archaeologists poking around... OH! unless you're far enough back to have actual natives build the fake pueblo, which would mean it's not a fake.... you'd still have archaeologists, but they're unlikely to take a sledge hammer to the back wall, and it would have protected status.

[warriorsavant]

Yes, but still the issue of keeping people out of said pueblo. National Park/ landmark, someone living there, rented out by a “corporation,” whatever. Biggest question is what timeline. Even if National Park, that could change over the centuries.

I think your peat bog is best idea.

[kengr]

Nope, Folks on their way to explore so new systems several thousand years in the future who somehow came out of jump a long ways from where they were aiming. In both space and time.

*If* this is their own past (something they aren't all that sure of) they don't want to try making contact with any nearby civilizations because that have *major* consequences to their history.

If it isn't they have even more reason to stay put.