Black Mesa was a civilian contractor, not military. And it’s hinted that nobody outside of the facility, even the military, knew about Xen.
Yeah, but there is an area that is under military administration. The places you visit in Surface Tension, like the missile storage. I mean, why would the government let a private contractor mantain an arsenal of mass destruction devises stored in a military-like facility ?
Missiles != weapons of mass destruction.
Anyways, why would a private research company want those missiles? They wouldn’t ever need them. It makes no sense.
Well, there is that missile you launch, and all the other missiles that had to have been launched to create the rest of the Lambda satellite network.
And that missile in EP3. They even launched that from a missile silo.
First who says bm wasnt a military contracor (weapon research as Tau and Gluon, missile silos, I suppose not only for civilian use…)? In fact, the HECU were part of BMRF (at least a part of them, just look at the Rocket Launcher for example).
I think that some Facilities may have been autonomic (in bureaucratic sense) and thus could have been either a civilian OR military-type contractor
well, to simply answer that question once and for all… vacation(sorry of im speaking nonsense, im actually drunk as fuck roght now)
edit: Corrected my jabbering
I never would have guessed.
The nuclear warheads in Black Mesa were there to be decommissioned. I assume whatever parts within the missiles that were able to be used for their own testing would be an added plus.
Given BM is government-funded, the government itself would presumably be kept in the loop with the goings on there, and, even more likely, would be directing the facility in areas they want researched. This would be consistent with the development of weaponry eg. gluon gun, tau cannon, given how military-focussed the US are. Also, it definitely would not be unlike the US to send a military task force into an “unowned”, potentially dangerous, poorly understood location, i.e. Xen, once the scientists had established stable teleportation there. It strikes me as perfectly reasonable, therefore, that the HECU could have been on Xen. Had they been there, they’d have had first-hand knowledge of the dangers of the creatures there, which would be consistent with their rapid response to contain BM after the resonance cascade.
This doesn’t mean to say they were actually there, of course. The arguments for the lack of evidence in the game seem fairly sound.
Then how did they change from Surface Tension’s skybox to Xen’s skybox? Why couldn’t they just change it for that particular scene?
I don’t recall that happening. What are you talking about?
I think it would have required a loading screen to bring up a new map.
ST’s and Xen’s skyboxes are two completely different chapters (or a group of chapters, speaking about Xen), which means completely different maps.
I think GoldSrc was unable to change the skybox without loading a new map, which I’m pretty sure they changed with Source.
And, uh… Necro much?
After you defeat Nihilanth, you fade to black, then fade in to a Xen elevator with the G-man talking to you. There is a Xen skybox in this scene. Then there is a transportation effect and then you’re on the desert map with the remains of the HECU. You are simply transported to a different part of the same map. In order to change skyboxes, they would’ve had to have a loading screen during the transportation effect, then you’re teleported back to Xen with a return to the Xen skybox, which would necessitate another loading screen.
The long version of my story, pretty much 
Much easier to comprehend, though.
they could’ve just made a “fake” skybox with the earth sky texture which would have solved that problem and we wouldn’t be talking about it right now
Well they didn’t, which means we’re talking about it.
Wait, would that even be possible?
It would be, but it would be ridiculously contrived and look stupid.
well normally it would look stupid as soon as the player walks to the edge and realizes that the sky is a box, but at the end of the game you pretty much have no room to walk around so it would have been totally fine in that case
I guess it’s on Earth, but it’s completely changed to Xen atmosphere (a view the Gman wants to give to Gordon what’s going to happen if he doesn’t help him)