Today is your lucky day! Normally, you'd use this equipment to load data into the Missile Computer, after a long day of waiting for a Missile Maintenance Team (MMT) to install the Missile Guidance Set and Reentry System on the missile. Today the reverse is true - you are erasing the data, so that everything can be removed. This includes erasing the Top Secret Universal Unlock Codes used to launch the missile. You also will be removing some classified drawers from the equipment racks and returning them to base, but this is only a small part of what will be removed later. So today's tasks will go fairly quick, allowing you time to watch the other teams work, afterward, and still get home by dark. Given the short daylight hours at this time of year, this is unusual; normally you would leave and return in darkness. The equipment hooked up to the Signal Data Converter rack is used to communicate with the missile computer to load or erase data. The unit on the left is a Cartridge Tape Unit; the right-hand box is a Control Monitor, which gives simplistic keyboard access to the computer. As you can see, its State-Of-The-Art Equipment....for 1960. No DOS or Windows here: any commands to or data from the missile computer have to be entered or read in "octal" code, a tedious process at best - excruciatingly so if gyro calibration data has to be read. With modern equipment and software, all of this could be replaced by a cheap laptop....maybe even a handheld computer. Anyway, after a "quick" 20 minute overwrite of the computer data (a process that takes a couple of mouse-clicks on most home computers), and zeroing out the mechanical "Enable" code units in the Missile's first stage, you call Job Control and the Launch Crew, and inform them the Missile is now "Off-Alert". Another silo begins it's trip into the history books. About this time, the teams that will pull the missile and its cargo out of the launch tube have arrived, and begun processing on site. You and your Team Member quickly haul all your heavy equipment, plus the classified electronic drawers that weigh up to 120lbs, up the 20 foot personnel access tube. Now the site is literally crawling with people - Missile Maintenance and Missile Handling Teams, security escorts and convoy commanders for the warhead and missile, supervisors, Quality Assurance and Safety Inspectors, and a few training people, to boot. You and your team load the truck with your equipment, and stand back to watch the next team go into action.