A Trip To The Missile Field
Getting there Is Half The Fun....
0700 HRS: Now that you've made it off the main base, you hunker down behind the wheel of your "L-Van", basically a 6 seat pickup with an oversized cargo box over the bed. It handles like an aircraft carrier, barely keeps out the brutal wind-chill outside, and suffers from a mixture of overuse, under funding, and contract maintenance by the lowest bidder, which means you run a mild chance of anything from the defrosters to the engine crapping out along your way, leaving you stranded. Many are the times you have limped home with peephole vision thru an iced-over windshield, or with 1 headlight wired to the battery because the electrical system fried. Or waited for hours for a tow.
The roads are no piece of joy, either. A constant barrage of winter storms can leave many sections of highway little more than smoothed out snowpack, or buried under 3 foot drifts. The secondary and dirt roads to access the missile silos are even worse, as many do not get plowed for days, and when things melt, become mile-long bogs of mud. Depending on visibility, road icing, drifts, and windchill, the Wing Commander can lower the official driving speed for vehicles to far below the posted speed limit, turning a 1-2 hour drive into an all-day event. The Travel Control Center (TCC) can also change the travel allowance as well, having 3 main ratings:
At any rate, roads today are clear enough to make decent time there; the snow has melted in most places. This is good, since it's still a 2 hour -plus jaunt at normal speeds... UH-OH... Job Control has called you on the radio and asked you to "swing by" one of the Launch Control Facilities. Big surprise - you normally aren't asked, just told. The "capsule crew" there has reported some equipment problems; it's in the general neighborhood - only 40 miles out of the way! What will you do?
Like so many other things in the missile field, time is everthing, and there are ways for both sides of the house to get around the travel conditions to an extent. Controllers on base can delay issuing restrictions; it often seems as though Job Control or TCC will wait until most maintenance trips have departed base to go to TC-YELLOW or TC-RED. Mostly this is because they rely on radio reports from teams to tell them how bad the roads are. Teams returning home will often lie, since bad road reports might force Job Control to direct them to RON until things are better. And outgoing teams have to practically get stuck in the parking lot to convince them to change things to TC-RED before leaving base. If travel restrictions go in effect after the team leaves base, they are often directed to drive to their work destination, instead of returning to base. This is because the silo is equipped with a sheltered, temperature controlled environment. Once on site, the team may find they must stay there until things are TC-GREEN again.
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