RE: Missiles of October - Part Deux

Jim Whitehead (ejw@ics.uci.edu)
Mon, 4 Oct 1999 09:03:25 -0700


Well, they never let me get close to any missile stuff -- that was what the
Missile Systems Division did, and I was in the Equipment Division. You
know, we made, "equipment" (I wonder if other names in the running were
"Stuff Division" or "Things Division"...) Anyway, I only got to play with
air traffic control systems, "equipment" that is actually used on a daily
basis, and hence far more dangerous :-)

After the Persian Gulf War they came around and gave every employee a
"Scudbusters" pin... of course, this was before the reports that showed the
Patriot wasn't quite as effective as the media had portrayed.

- Jim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eugene Leitl [mailto:eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de]
> Sent: Sunday, October 03, 1999 6:18 PM
> To: Gregory Alan Bolcer; fork@xent.com
> Subject: Missiles of October - Part Deux
>
>
>
> The rainbow stuff is called silver clouds and (rarely) sometimes
> occurs naturally in the stratosphere. Beautiful sight.
>
> As to the launch, I almost pissed my pants, waiting for more launches
> to come within the next half an hour.
>
> Gregory Alan Bolcer writes:
> > They just put the rainbow colors in for the peaceniks. EJW actually
> > used to work at Raytheon. They didn't tell you that the ICBM actually
> > blew up because the XML parser overran it's allocation boundaries
> > and that harmful goto.
> >
> > Greg
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/national/100399/missile.sml
> >
> > > A Raytheon-built Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, a
> > > 55-inch-long, 120-pound device sent
> skyward on
> > > a booster rocket, was launched from
> the Marshall
> > > Islands and then intercepted,
> collided with and
> > > destroyed a modified, unarmed
> intercontinental
> > > ballistic missile that had been
> fired 20 minutes
> > > earlier from California, 4,300 miles away.
> > >
> > > Observers said the resultant
> explosion 140 miles
> > > over the Pacific Ocean caused a
> vapor cloud of
> > > rainbow colors that could be seen
> for hundreds of
> > > miles. Inside the military
> observation room, it
> > > created a flurry of celebration.
> >