Today, we started at the Pima Air & Space Museum. We were also going to see the "boneyard" of mothballed Air Force plances, but we found that they weren't open on weekends. Luckily, the museum was more than enough. They had a half dozen hangers full of restored airplanes of all sorts, from the Wright Flyer to modern jet fighters. We walked the "space-program" hanger by ourselves. The guys got to see an actual moon rock and were
fascinated by the videos shot from the moon and the videos of the "vomit comet" where astronauts trained. They really liked the nickname the most. After that hanger, we took a guided tour through a couple more hangers and then took a tram ride out onto the grounds where the rest of their over 300 planes are sitting. The driver kept a constant stream of description coming for over an hour. Jake and Tyler never stopped being fascinated by the diversity of the aircraft and their duties. There were quite a numer of experimental and one-of-a-kind aircraft, too. They were amazed at the size of the plane NASA had built to carry Saturn rocket boosters across country. 
Each of the five engines was too big to go by train and took far too long to ship by barge. There was also one of the last of the propellor-driven Air Force Ones. Kennedy and LBJ were the last to use it and only used it when travelling to areas with small runways.
As we left the Pima Air & Space Musem we headed directly to the Titan Missile Museum. This is the only one of the 54 Titan ICBM silos to survive destruction when they were decommissioned. The original missile with the 900 kiloton warhead was removed, but a practice missile that had an empty warhead and had never been fueled was placed in the silo. We saw an informative video that helped the boys understand what the Cold War was and explained the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction. That triggered some wonderful conversations and led the bo
ys to decide that nuclear weapons are "stupid." We went outside to the silo and started with looking at spare engines and then looked at the silo cover, which was puulled back. The silo had been covered in glass so we could look dwon inside and see the actual missile. After that we walked down six flights of steps and entered the command and control area. Tyler got to swing one of the 12,000 pound blast doors. They were so well built that he could do it by himself, even so many years after decommissioning. Once in the cotrol room, the guide ran us through a simulated launch; explaining all the procedures and codes necessary to get the missile to go to its target. Amazingly, the missile had three possible targets which are still classified today.After getting back to our campsite, we hooked up and spent the rest of the afternoon pulling our trailer from Tuscon to Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix. The temperature went from 103 to 106. Tomorrow we'll visit Taliesin West, one of Frank Lloyd Wrights' famous homes, studios, and schools.
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