What is so interesting about a Titan Missle?
Trip Start
May 26, 2005
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2
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Trip End
Jun 07, 2005
Tucson, Arizona
Friday, May 27, 2005
But Gary has it on his list, so I'm trudging sort-of happily along. After all, I'm not in the office working! We pull up, and it looks pretty flat. I tell Gary all the missiles must have been sent up in space.
For that I get "the look." Oh well, lets just walk around and see if there is still anything here. I guess I have the "dumb" beacon on, since a nice gentleman in a white jumpsuit comes over and asks if we are going to tour the Museum. I'm keeping my mouth shut for once - cause I still don't see a missle on a launch pad.
At the Kennedy Space Center you can see them for miles before you get to the Space Center. What the heck, lets just do it. We shell out $6 per person and wait for a family of three to join us. The tour starts at the top, close to where we are standing, and missed it is the missle silo.
Our guide takes us over to pier down a large hole. There it is - the 103 foot Titan Missle! Ok, now I think this just might be an interesting tour. This is what the Cold War was all about.
We learn (I missed this course in school) that the Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missle was the first that could be launched from underground. It had a 9 megaton nuclear warhead, and could hit it's target more than half a world away.
US to Russia in thirty minutes (and no jet lag). That is a big WOW.
Our guide is throwing out facts and figures like the last Titan II was deactivated in 1987. There were 54 of these missle bases in the US. Each base was "on alert" 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
I ask our guide if he ever saw a "Titan" before he worked here. Yep, seems that many of the docents here were former employees at this base. "Bet your stress level went down a lot with this job" I said.
We take a walk around the exterior. Be careful he warns, before we go down the stairs to the "Belly" of the operations. Rattlesnakes love hiding on the stairs. Oh, isn't that a comforting thought. It's fifty plus steps down, and we're gettin a closer view of the Titan.
The eigth foot thick walls in the hallway lead to the Command Center is a series of thick three ton metal locked doors. The Control room is where it all happens (or in tis case, thankfully never happened). The President of the US has the code, which is changed daily. If he says to fire the missle, there is a brief time in which the employee has to go to the cabinet, get out the code book, then turn the gold key. Once the gold key is turned, the rocket launch cannot be stopped, or redirected.
This is the position that must have given many an employee ulcers or a nervous breakdown. I got a chance to put the gold key in the control center and turn it... happy that it wouldn't launch. Ok, I admit I was wrong about this museum. I'd do it again.
