Tuesday, Oct 18
Today was the last of the Arizona relaxation days. I had a late start because I had a phone message about a problem at my condo that I had to deal with and then I went to Jiffy Lube to get the car serviced before the longer drives that lay ahead. When I eventually got on the road I only drove about 90 miles, from Tucson to Sierra Vista, AZ, stopping off at the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita. To see the map, and rather boring video, please click here.
Back in South Dakota I had considered visiting the Minuteman National Historic Site which is a decommissioned launch complex for Minuteman Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) but that would have forced me to bypass or backtrack to see Badlands National Park. Today I visited the less extensive, but still impressive, Titan Missile Museum. The Titan was the largest ICBM used by the US Air Force in the Cold War and carried a single hydrogen bomb that was capable of completely destroying an area with a 35 mile diameter. Under the START treaties all Titan launch sites were destroyed except for this one.
After watching an introductory movie we were taken on a tour of the control room and the missile silo. Our tour guide, Jerry, had worked on the Titan program for 10 years and was able to give us a real feel for how things felt at that time. The US nuclear missiles are only a retaliatory weapon so they have to be designed to take a first strike and launch within a very short time. Since an incoming nuclear strike nearby would cause devastating pressures and temperatures and likely create an earthquake, the control room and missile silo are in hardened bunkers that are literally supported on huge springs and hydraulic shock absorbers behind reinforced concrete walls up to eight feet thick. In the control room we saw the extraordinary lengths the Air Force goes to in order to prevent accidental launches and Jerry went through a simulated launch procedure in a very realistic way. It was all good stuff.
Jerry in the control room explaining exactly what each piece of equipment did
One of the hundreds of large springs supporting and isolating the control room can be seen behind Jerry here
The missile as seen from about one third of the way down its silo
and from the top of the silo.