The power of engineering

When I was in Tucson this weekend, Maggie and I visited the only intact Titan-II nuclear missile facility in the country.  This former Air Force installation sits roughly twenty miles south of Tucson and is now open for tours daily.

Visiting the Titan-II facility was surreal--easily among the coolest museum-like experiences I've seen.  This was a missile that sat ten stories below the surface, weighed more than three-hundred thousand pounds and carried a nine megaton nuclear warhead that was roughly six hundred times more powerful than the weapons used over Japan.

Consider some of these statistics to understand why I left so astonished at the power of engineering ingenuity when funded and challenged appropriately:

• In less than fifty-eight seconds from key-turn, a 300,000 pound rocket had left the surface.
• Time from launch to impact at any site on the planet to within an eighth of a meter: thirty-five minutes.
• The facility itself was capable of withstanding a nuclear blast within 1.5 miles.
• All of this achieved in a world without GPS, without laser guidance, without wire guidance, etc.

All in all, a highly recommended artifact of the prestige afforded to engineering during the Cold War.  And, if you're interested, my entire set of photos is available here (with a few photos from a stop at the Jesuit mission in the San Xavier Indian reservation, also south of Tucson).