Minuteman missile silo tickets10/31/2023 ![]() Built to execute a nuclear war, the historic Delta-01 compound cannot be made fully accessible. At the Delta-09 silo, view a nuclear missile which once carried a 1.2 megaton warhead. The Launch Control Facility Delta-01 is located four miles west (tickets required for entry) and the Delta-09 missile silo is fifteen miles. Discover the Cold War events that shaped our lives and still remain through a tour of the underground control center at Delta-01. There are three sites to the Minuteman Missile park. The Visitor Center is located immediately north of I-90, exit 131. All told, there were 15 launch control facilities and 150 missile silos at the ready during this time. Since the first Minuteman launches from Cape Canaveral in 1961, nearly every missile has generated a perfect ring of smoke. Minuteman Missile National Historic site consists of three sites along a fifteen mile stretch of Interstate 90 in Western South Dakota. Those 1960s-vintage missiles carried 1.2-megaton warheads (equivalent to one-third the explosive force of all bombs dropped during World War II, including the two atomic bombs). ![]() The historic site operated by the National Park Service was formed from the last remnants of Minuteman IIs dismantled after the strategic arms limitation treaty (START) in 1991. Grouped in clusters of 10, each silo is at least three miles from the next. Within five years of the first Minuteman launch in 1961, more than 1,000 silos had been dug into remote corners of the West, including Wyoming, the Dakotas and Montana. “Vandenberg AFB is right on the Pacific Coast, so it is windy.” Wisps of smoke from Vandenberg launches float downrange like haunted hula hoops. “Smoke rings can be different shapes and sizes due to wind factors,” says Tise. ![]() Sometimes the Minuteman pierces its center like a bull’s-eye, but more often the ring drifts away from the line of flight to linger like a halo. The ring can rise hundreds of feet, and the missile usually doesn’t climb past its own ring until several seconds into the flight. “It’s just like someone puffing smoke from a cigar,” explains David Tise, a park ranger at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota.
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