SCP-1565 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-1565
Expected annual
$3.1B
One-time setup
$20.8B
Annual recurring
$3.1B
Personnel
32
One-time program capital dominated by large contingency/reserve items (including a long-term doomsday contingency); annual operations dominated by an administrative overhead and ongoing science, monitoring, and covert-influence budgets. Baseline recurring costs are on the order of a few billion per year once large contingency reserves are included as overhead; baseline program-year recurring operations (excluding extremely unlikely doomsday spend) are ~3.13B/yr.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $20.8B
Doomsday Contingency $20.0B
[#18] Long-term worst-case contingency (human mission / industrial excavation) included for scale; extremely unlikely near-term.
Probe Lander Per Mission $325.0M
[#7] Per-probe/lander development + launch (budgeted per mission; baseline not assumed annually).
In Situ Capture Attempt Per Attempt $300.0M
[#16] Cost per attempted in-situ capture/restraint mission (high complexity; historically not baseline-budgeted).
Contingency Response Fund $50.0M
[#10] Rapid-response contingency reserve for emergency remediation or neutralization.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $30.2M
[#6, #13] Radiation-hardened remote-sensing R&D program setup and code/algorithm adaptations (R&D program, initial instrumentation and software).
Indemnity Reserve $30.0M
[#17] Insurance/indemnity reserve to cover partner agency exposure and quiet settlements.
Orbital Asset One Time $15.0M
[#4] Constellation/medium-class orbital monitoring asset (chosen baseline: 3–6 cubesat constellation alternative).
Covert Influence Reserve $10.0M
[#2] $10M reserve for multi-year covert influence / mission-retargeting campaigns.
Archive Sanitization One Off $2.0M
[#12] Occasional large retroactive archive sanitization event (one-off).
Equipment $1.7M
[#3, #9, #15] Secure, hardened servers and appliances (#3 ~112,500), initial secure comms/archival systems (#9 ~350,000), spares inventory and test lab hardware (#15 ~1,250,000).
Facilities $250K
[#14] Sterilization / planetary-protection facility buildout and related small infrastructure.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $3.1B/yr
Administrative Overhead $3.1B/yr
[#19] Administrative overhead, audits and inflation buffer (15% applied to combined program one-time and recurring baseline budgets).
Staff Wages $4.6M/yr
[#1, #3, #8] Embedded personnel in international space agencies (~10 at $150k = $1.5M), digital-forensics/imagery team (~7 at $120k = $840k), and long-term modelling/science team (~15 at $150k = $2.25M).
Research And Monitoring $4.5M/yr
[#6, #9, #12, #13, #15] Recurring R&D follow-ups and upgrades (~$3M/yr #6), secure comms/ops bandwidth (~$350k/yr #9), archive maintenance & sanitization workflows (~$500k/yr #12), HPC/modeling time (~$350k/yr #13), and radiation spares/repair budget (~$350k/yr #15).
Covert Influence Fund $3.0M/yr
[#2] Annual covert influence / discretionary operations fund for mission retargeting and decision shaping (~$1–5M/yr; baseline assumed ~$3M/yr).
Orbital Asset Ops $2.0M/yr
[#4] Operational costs for orbital monitoring asset (chosen baseline constellation ops ~$1–3M/yr; mid ~2M).
Cover Story And Legal $1.8M/yr
[#11] Public relations, legal cover and information-control budget (~$0.5–3M/yr).
Logistics And Transport $1.5M/yr
[#1, #5] Travel/liaison discretionary fund for embedded staff (~$500k/yr #1) and satellite tasking/instrument scheduling fees (~$1M/yr #5).
Archive Maintenance Recurring $500K/yr
[#12] Ongoing archive maintenance and retroactive sanitization workflows (annual portion).
Hpc Time Recurring $350K/yr
[#13] HPC cluster access and modeling budget (recurring).
Radiation Spares Repairs $350K/yr
[#15] Annual spares/repair budget for radiation-damaged components and testing.
Facilities Maintenance $100K/yr
[#14] Ongoing maintenance for sterilization/planetary-protection facilities and small site costs.
Supplies And Consumables $0/yr
[]
Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $3.1B/yr
93.0% probability / year
Normal year with routine monitoring, covert funding, archive maintenance, and administrative overhead; no major probe launches or emergency remediation events.
routine_monitoring ongoing_r&d no_incidents
🚨 Minor Incident $3.1B/yr
5.0% probability / year +$8.8M vs baseline
Limited disclosure or leak requiring expedited forensic response, archive sanitization, extra covert influence payments and legal/settlement costs.
data_leak public_image_exposure
🚨 Probe Deployment $3.5B/yr
2.0% probability / year +$323.8M vs baseline
An investigative probe/lander mission is approved and executed (one-off high cost for development and launch).
decision_to_probe funding_approval
👥 Personnel 32 total
Role Count Notes
Embedded personnel / Liaison officers 10 [#1] Full-time embedded Foundation personnel in international space agencies to influence mission planning and prevent disclosure.
Digital-forensics & Imagery Team 7 [#3] Imagery analysts, software engineers and forensics staff responsible for editing imagery and maintaining hardened servers.
Planetary science / Modelling team 15 [#8] Planetary scientists, geophysicists, modelers and data analysts for long-term modelling and interpretation of Hellas/SCP-1565 data.
📋 Confidence Notes
Estimates are based on analyst-provided ranges and programmatic intent; many entries are discretionary reserves or extremely-low-probability catastrophic contingencies (not precise procurement quotes), so uncertainty remains moderate.
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