[ARC5] Surplus Disposal

[Robert Eleazer]

I was told that when they shut down radar stations in the Arctic they would take the equipment to be disposed of, stack it on the ice on a nearby lake and just wait for the spring thaw...

Who would want a bunch of R-390's, anyway?  They are no doubt still there if anyone wants to go diving.

But the all time great one was in the early 1970's when they took at least 25 Atlas ICBMs, and in order to save the horrible storage costs of $3000 a year, ran over them with bulldozers at Norton AFB.  

We converted the Atlas missiles that escaped the bulldozer into space boosters and launched them for $15M each for 4 decades thereafter.  But a USAF Colonel decided that with the wonderful new development we had coming the old boosters would not be needed.

The new development was called the Space Shuttle..... 

Wayne