Aug 072010
All you need is some money and a time machine.
The sad finale of the Navaho intercontinental cruise missile program: selling off the stuff. In this case, the massive launcher. One of the missiles was given to a local high school. My high school never had a strategic weapon… 🙁
5 Responses to “Own Your Own Missile Launcher”
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IIRC, that launch pad later became one of the main Atlas pads at the Cape.
The Soviet equivalent, the Burya missile (here misnamed “Buran”… which was a competing missile design), had a elevating launcher that was very similar to that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chs6LbtnrIE
I’d forgotten just how big that thing was; those booster units are around the size of IRBMs.
There was a story that someone bought a trailer with an enclosed cylinder for transporting Nike Ajax missiles; when the buyer got home he found his purchase included a Nike Ajax. No word on the state of the warhead or the engine. This was in Popular Mechanics in about 1970.
I used to get flyers from the DoD inviting me to buy WW2 fleet submarines. I think my wife called someone to get those to stop coming to the house.
My high school didn’t have a strategic weapon either, except maybe for Melanie Seyler and Jane Houston. *sigh*
My grade school had an old bulldozer. I’d sit in the seat, take hold of the welded-in-place control levers, and pretend I was flying one of the Eagle spacecraft from the Space: 1999 series.
No rockets, but my high school physics teacher was an H-3 pilot in the Naval Reserve and landed one of them in our parking lot (with prior permissions secured), maybe as some kind of recruiting thing. I honestly don’t remember. OK, not that impressive today, but back then it caused quite a stir.
I actually dated a Class I High School Strategic System, much to my amazement and the consternation of my fellow male students. Wonder what ever happened to her? Probably a destabilizing influence to this day, I’d guess.
I’ve got you beat; my college astronomy teacher not only helped develop the radar proximity fuse for the Navy in WW II, he later worked on the Atomic Airplane Project.