Titan Of Interesting

When the rocket was launched, 100,000 gallons of water, the volume of one and a half 25m lap pools, were sprayed into the exhaust plume. This was to absorb not just heat energy from the rocket exhaust but also to absorb sound energy and prevent shock waves created by the supersonic exhaust which could damage the vehicle. To consider this is some advanced engineering. To model it and plan for it properly is even more impressive. To have a plan for dumping swimming pools' worth of water in a matter of seconds is getting really extreme. Just considering how you’d store so much water 100 feet underground so that it could remain intact after a nuclear weapon attack becomes incredible.

Reading the aforementioned Command and Control it becomes clear that nuclear missile systems are complicated, technical, and full of danger even when the warhead doesn’t detonate. Fires are carefully planned for; all of the checklists required all fire extinguishers to be checked daily. One interesting fire suppression system that was pointed out was able to fill the entire area with foam very quickly (so we were told). What magic chemistry enabled this? Apparently before 3M invented a synthetic substitute in the 1970s, the foaming agent that was used was ox blood. Yes, the blood of a bovine ox. Seriously. Not only that, but there were blood red streaks down the wall where it had spilled while they were refilling the tank of the stuff.

One thing that I found surreal in its ingenuity and execution was how they aimed the missile. This is a "ballistic" missile and that means that it is basically thrown by a rocket like a bullet is thrown by a chemical explosion in a gun. The rocket had a rough mechanism, almost equivalent to clockwork, for doing all the maneuvering that needed to be done. The rocket basically blasted off and needed to fly straight for a certain amount of time until it would do a roll program which would make sure it was pointed for a correct apogee. Then in space, after having spent its stages, the payload (the R/V, reentry vehicle) needed to be on a perfect path to the strike zone. To know if the thing was pointing the correct way as it ascended and to direct hard linked control reactions to the rocket gimbals they used very fancy gyroscopes. These gyroscopes always knew if they had changed orientation, but the subtle question that remains is how did they know what orientation they were at to begin with? For example, if one of the gyros had a horizontal axis which pointed north, how exactly was that known? Did it use an internal compass or something? No, that would not have been nearly accurate enough to throw 3700 kg 10,000 km away and have it land within a few km of the target. What they did was bore a special diagonal shaft from the missile silo to the surface with hardened hatches. On the surface they had a tripod mount. Surveying equipment was periodically set up and sighted on monuments placed out in the desert to establish a very accurate directional bearing. This was then linked to a very fine mirror system that was used with an autocollimator which was permanently mounted in a special room on level 2 of the silo. The missile tube had a strong round glass window that allowed the collimator room to see through to the missile with a direct line of sight. By opening a hatch in the side of the missile, the gyro package could be exposed and a mirror on it could be used to calibrate the exact bearing of the vehicle with respect to surveying references above ground. Some of the first useful software I wrote professionally was to interpret angular measurements taken from an autocollimator into surface straightness and flatness geometry. Having worked with this kind of technology personally, I am quite impressed at the technical solution the engineers came up with to solve this tricky problem.

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse or EMP describes a phenomenon where a nuclear explosion creates an electromagnetic disturbance that is likely to cause substantial damage to electrical equipment. This is part of tactical planning with nuclear weapons, i.e. the assumption that the enemy will seek to destroy your power grid in this way. For this reason, the entire missile complex needed to be able to be self sufficient with respect to electricity (and everything else). There is a huge diesel generator in the missile silo that is supposed to come on after no more than two minutes. Instead of a high current starter, this generator is started using compressed air which is kept at the ready. If it doesn’t start in a couple of attempts, the site is effectively dead, so it’s mission critical. At first they used to test this thing often, but then they realized it was wearing it out somewhat to test it so much and since the complex had been built around this massive thing, they couldn’t easily recondition or replace it. Eventually they had to back off on tests. Another interesting EMP protection is the main silo door which weighed 800 tons which had to slide 10m in about 15 seconds, again, without electricity. The trick they used there was to set it up with a hydraulic system that would push the door open with rams. The energy came from a large tank of 3500psi nitrogen effectively acting as a spring which could push the pistons.

Many rockets and missiles use liquid oxygen (LOX) oxidizer and something like hydrogen, methane, or kerosene as the fuel. The problem with this setup when playing nuclear war is that you really want your bomb up and away as soon as possible and a LOX based system needs to be fueled just before take off or else it will evaporate away during long term storage. The Titan II designers wanted their missile to be ready to fly instantly and this meant it needed to be fully loaded with fuel and oxidizer at all times. The stuff they chose was a bespoke fuel for the Titan II program called Aerozine 50 which was a 50/50 mix by weight of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and an oxidizer of dinitrogen tetroxide. All you need to know about this stuff, both fuel and oxidizer, is that it’s outrageously toxic. Like crazy toxic. What could go wrong, eh? But wait, there’s more. This fuel is hypergolic which means that when these two chemicals are combined, the reaction takes place instantly. So keeping them separated until you’re sure you’re ready to go is critical. But wait there’s more! The fuel boils at 70F. And if it boils things get very bad. So they had to keep the missile between 58F and 62F at all times. To do this they had a hefty air conditioner. And what if that failed? Well, catastrophe. But air conditioners have never failed, right?

One interesting thing I learned is that the rocket was supposed to be pretty robust and able to fly rain or shine. However, they did keep track of wind speed with an adorable little toy airplane on a pole and apparently wind speed over 40 knots would make the missile too unreliable to fly. I guess the thinking was that if they had to wait a day or two for the wind to die down to retaliate, well, that’s what they’d do.

I used to work with tape readers just like this to program machine tools. I have even personally replaced such units with tape emulators that can be loaded with RS-232. I’d love to know what’s on that mylar tape.

The guide was describing the checklist for launch and he pointed to a filing cabinet that contained the launch codes which needed to match the ones radioed in (the complex is bristling with redundant antennae systems). This red filing cabinet, or "EWO safe" as it’s properly known, had two combination locks on it which the guide said each had to be opened by one of the silo commanders. Or, as I pointed out, someone with a hacksaw blade. And although I was being witty, I was also seriously probing the physical security arrangements for this extremely critical information transfer. The guide stunned me by mentioning the "EWO Tool Kit" (Executive War Order) which he said contained bolt cutters, a portable hydraulic pump, and all manner of hand equipment to hot wire the missile in case something went wrong with the correct and proper mechanized procedure. If that doesn’t give you chills, then you probably don’t understand what I’m trying to say.

The guide pointed out some graffiti deep in the bowels of the complex. Most, he said, were things like "Sgt so-and-so is a dick". But this one he showed us was, for me, really quite poignant. This is an addition problem worked out on the wall.