I hate to come in and be the debbie downer here, but how practical is building a launch site in a caldera atop a mountain? I've watched videos of NASA moving their rockets around and they seem to have a hard enough time building something to crawl them along the perfectly flat ground of Cape Canaveral, never mind god knows how far up who knows what gradient to the top of the fourth highest mountain in the world (by prominence).
I really hope there is a practical solution, because I'll be damned if this isn't the coolest thing I've ever heard of in a TL.
Also, I think this might be my first comment here? So, hi! Glad to hear you're on the way up MC, I was so happy to a proper Imperial Federation TL.
Okay so for some utterly incomprehensible reason I've been looking into the feasibility of this. First issue is Mt Kilimanjaro is surrounded by lush equatorial forests inhabited by elephants, buffalo, various primates and best of all leopards, ideal Bond villain stuff.
Unfortunately the region is also inhabited by humans of the Chugga tribe. Luckily this easily overcome by either simply forcibly removing them (something the Empire is an old hand at) or even better just leaving them there and not worrying about if a rocket falls on them (again behaviour not entirely unheard of by the Empire). Plus gives you on call "natives" for whatever purpose is required.
Okay having solved the "what happens if the rocket runs amuck " issue, we move on to the technical feasibility of actually getting the rocket up there. A Titan-Gemini two man spacecraft has a launch weight of 150,000kg. Obviously simply dragging it up there is not going to work. So the question is what will?
The answer of course is heavy lift helicopters moving rocket components to the crater for assembly in situ. Naturally these helicopters should be painted black sporting some suitable nefarious corporate logo to hide government involvement.
Right what we need is a heavy lift helicopter capable of lifting say 5,000kg to 6,000m. This is actually entirely possible which 1960s technology, with only 30-40 flights required to get the rocket up there. So I'd say the project is technically feasible. Insane but feasible. However it is a Bond villain lair we're talking about here so insane goes with the package.
We also have the fact that the rocket is being launched at an altitude of 6,000m just 3° off the equator. This should allow either the launch vehicle weight to be reduced or payload increased. I'll go with more payload for better Bond villain evil plans.
So we have the scene. The black heavy lift helicopter flies into the crater at night, a massive iris valve type camouflaged door opens to reveal a helipad. The Helicopter lands and is lowered by lift into the secret underground
lair base with the final payload required. The underground base is of course pressurised to deal with any altitude sickness issues. I'll let your imaginations fill in the rest.
So OMG it IS possible. Insane but possible. Now just need to figure out how to crowbar it into the TL lol.