A Few Questions about Missile Silos

I thought the door slides to the side that is a lot of power throwing a 120 ton door 100 feet away.

For maintinance there is a hydraulic ram that gently pushes the door out of the way.

But yes, the blast actuators are quite large. There are 4 cylinders with a large amount (my guess would be about 50 lbs) of explosives, operating a piston with a diameter of about 6 ft, yanking on two 2 in. diameter cables. You could say they exert a lot of force. So much that one side of the fence surround the launch facility is designed to break away when the door hits it (about 200 ft away).

Does this take a lot of time, because if it takes over 20 minutes, using explosives to blow the door off doesn't seem like such a bad idea

[edit on 27/6/04 by Hyperen]

Yeah, it takes 30 minutes or more.

Also, the explosive charges can easily remove a door encrusted with feet of snow or ice. Or with rails damaged by some nuns (do a google search for Minuteman plowshare) ....

Nope, I never said I wanted anything more, just pointing out what I saw.

You folks bring back lots of memories talking about missile launches. I remember back in the 60's, I was stationed in Roswell-Walker AFB and we lost a few missile crews trailblazing with Atlas F missiles installed by GD.

The 579 SMS (Strategic Missile Squadron) lost some good people just by reacting to ORI's (Operational Readiness Inspections). The silos ringed the Air Base 20 to 30 miles out. In those days they had to liquid load the explosive liquid rocket fuel into the Atlas. We paid a huge price for tuition at the ICBM school for rocketry 101......

One of the Atlas sites formerly used to house the SMS crew went for $4000.00 at auction people had purchased for a home-Less 1 Atlas F- ICBM. I calculated that if a defcon 5 launch had taken place with all Atlas sites in the west about 14% (About 20 Missiles) would have succesfully launched. Then again, that was probably enough .


"Whiskey for my men and beer for my horses".

Now I know why everything is built by Boeing and Northrop these days...

I found a picture of a Titan II being loaded into a silo

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[edit on 4/7/04 by Hyperen]

No that's only its warhead.
Whole rocket booster is first lowered to silo, warhead is put on top of it after that.

That shows in Nuclear 911 document.

Here's nice site:
triggur.org...