So, I’m leery of abandoning the ABM treaty, but when I saw the Minuteman II, launched from Vandenberg AFB, ripping across the twilight sky like a mad surfer of the apocalypse (Updated: photos from Simi Valley because no permament URL to photos on Skylights site), I pumped my fist and yelled “Go Baby Go!” Then I managed to get my car off of 101 so I could watch the rest of the boost.
Update: Dan Lyke caught a couple of photos of the view of the launch we had in the Bay Area.
The Minuteman was carrying the target and dummy warheads for another test of the balistic missile defense system, and flew up along the California coast. The contrail reached from the southwestern horizon to about 45 degrees from zenith. The motor was a briliant point of light, and when the bird staged, the resulting plume was wider than the moon in the sky.
I followed it until the upper stage shut down, and all that was left was a snaking contrail in the gathering dark.
According to Sgt. Stryker, the Pentagon announced that the inteceptor, launched from the Marshall Islands, distinguished the ‘real’ warhead from the dummies and nailed it some 140 miles overhead.
Now this brings a lot back home. Forty years ago, my father worked at Vandenberg. He was a ’site activation engineer’ for the Titan II missile. The Minuteman was going through flight testing at the same time. Back then, the engineers working on the missile were having trouble with getting the bird to stage. Sometimes the first stage would shut down, and the second stage would sail on, unignited. One time it staged successfully, but it was pointed back at the coast when the second stage motor started.
Dad remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis (also 40 years ago), and being escorted off-base, along with the rest of the civilian engineers and contractors, at gunpoint when the base was locked down. Update: I asked Dad for more of the details when I was visiting him during his 80th birthday. The Air Force had not evacuated the kids in the base school as I thought I heard, but had planned to bus them up into the Sierra Nevadas if war started. I didn’t arrive until JFK was dead, and LBJ was busy getting us into a real shooting war.
