Whoa. I just found an old post of mine that somehow never got published. o.O. So it is now presented in it's entirety, for your reading pleasure.
I'm willing to bet that few people noticed my absence this week (myself included). So, for the unedcucated, I was gone all last week to Colorado. Though Civil Air Patrol, I hitched a Gulfstream down to Colorado Springs and spent a week on Peterson AFB, touring all the Air Force Space Command facilities within an a three-hours drive with 21 other cadets from all around the nation.
Yes, it was a blast.
First day took us to the Air Force Academy Chapel, a beautiful place to be sure. They built it in the 50's at a cost of 23 million, and it still looks futuristic. Radical place. Too bad the main chapel area is set up for a church service three-hundred years old. Yes, I'm a hardcore contemporary-service kinda guy.
A main area of responsibility for the Space Command are the ICBM's, of which we have 500. They are all Minutemen missiles equipped with single warheads, a far cry from the 10 warheaded Peacekeeper we had in the Cold War. Ah well. Even so, it's about enough to make all of Russia and Asia glow for centuries to come. We were able to enter the simulators that they use to train the key-turners, and launched enough nukes to make Denver below sea-level (literal, we did the math). The pictures are of older launch systems, as they prohibited pictures of the real systems. The current computers are slower then a commodore 64, but they work, so there are no plans to replace them.
These are the helicopters that the military uses to respond to any emergencies that the missile sites might have. Some sites can be a two hour drive, and they can get there in 20 minutes.
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