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Titan Missile Museum
Rating Details »
Categories: Landmarks & Historical Buildings, Museums [Edit]
1580 W Duval Mine RdSahuarita, AZ 85614
(520) 625-7736
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
8 reviews for Titan Missile Museum
I really enjoyed doing this tour. It's a total return to the Cold War era and you can learn a lot from this hour tour. You do a lot of standing in one place, then walking quickly, then standing more so be sure to wear comfortable shoes for this place!
The tour starts with you watching a video and learning a bit about the location and the Titan Missile program. This is the only Titan Missile silo left in the US! At this point, if you're over 6' (I think), you get to put on a neat looking hard hat for the rest of the tour. I was quite happy to be short at this point!
Next, you'll stand outside while the tour guides, which were extremely knowledgeable, talk about some of the rockets and such that would have been used to launch the missile. You also get to look down into the silo which is really neat.
After that you go down in the silo and see various parts of the base which includes watching a simulation of a launch sequence. You get to walk around a lot of the underground complex. You'll end with getting to go as close as possible to the missile.
Beware, there are 55 steps you'll have to go up and down to get in here. However, there's an elevator you can use if you have difficulty, but be sure to let them know before the tour starts since you need a tour guide to operate the elevator. My mom (who's not so fond of heights) used the elevator and she said it wasn't scary, despite it being service like.
Oh and there isn't a ton to do while you're waiting for your tour to start and the gift shop has neat stuff but is tiny, so try to get there not too far before the next tour.
People thought this was:
- Useful (5)
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Great place to go to see the nuts running the USA in the 50's/60's during the idiotic, paranoid "Cold War". Wasting billions upon billions in money to go to the drudgery of the military industrial complex cycle. Two sides sat in concrete missle silos ready to annhilate humankind.
Kids will love it though, so will people who don't read & believe everything their governments tell them.
Be sure to bring your 'toxic rain" suit & "I don't know where my taxes go to" sticker.
People thought this was:
- Useful (1)
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- Cool (1)
This is a unique place, especially for those old enough to remember the Cold War. Explore the area where nuclear weapons were stored and potentially launched! If we had to nuke The Soviet Union, this is one of the places where the bombs would have been launched. Apparently the Salt Treaties rendered this place obsolete, but its weird, cool, and scary touring this place knowing what it once was capable of.
People thought this was:
- Useful (1)
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One of the most interesting and unusual museums you'll see. This is a hangover from the cold war.
The Titan II is the largest production missile produced by the US. At 9 megatons, it would take a train 1500 miles long with every carriage packed with TNT to equal its power. The Hiroshiima/Nagasaki bombs had a flash point of 1/10th of a mile, and killed around 100,000 people, while the Titan II would have a flash zone of 3 miles, thus devastating any city it would have landed on.
You get to see its rocket engines separately up close, the nose cone - bomb itself (pretty big!), then a top view of the missile - huge. They took us through all the safety measures - two people sat there 24 hours ready to insert their keys and turn, all based on a phone call from one human - the president.
Once that person elected to initiate the destruction of mankind, the two people needed to enter a code to unlock the fuel valve, each get their keys from the filing cabinet (not a safe!), then at the same time insert and turn their keys for three seconds. Once this was done, there's nothing left to do but pray, as the missile could not be stopped from this point.
All this is carried out in the original control room, and the bells and alarms go off, as they would in the event of a launch. Why is punched paper still used to program the computer? Because paper is not affected by intense electromagnetic radiation in the event of a nuclear strike on the site.
The guides are full of facts and information, and the hour long tour is very interesting. The site is very well preserved, so you can see the missile, fueling suits, control room etc just as they used to be.
Tours leave on the hour.
People thought this was:
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Yes it was a bit out of the way but totally work it if you sort of dorky and you grew up on post apocalyptic movies. It a bit eerie and you get a sense of awe at what the world could have been. My wife went along and she actually said it was sort of cool which says a lot.
And when your there say hello to a cool guide Fred who is himself a part of history. Kudos Fred and your duty.
Very interesting place to visit.
Some other factoids provided by the tour... the warhead of the Titan alone was more explosive power than ALL of the bombs EVER used in World War II, thats all of the iron bombs dropped by the Axis and Allies in the Pacific and European theater. PLUS the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The rocket used to deliver the Titan is the same first and second stage as the Saturn V rocket that carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon in July 1969 aboard Apollo 11.
People thought this was:
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On a trip across the US, I found myself in Tuscon and decided to visit the Titan Missile Museum. All the Titan Missile silos except this one were shut down (and destroyed). This was an operating facility and, during the cold war, a very secure site, indeed.
It's certainly worth a visit although I don't know if I'd say it exceeded my expectations. The launch sequence demonstration was somewhat anti-climactic (since the missile doesn't even launch!) LOL!
An out of the way detour that is worth taking for the aviation or science buff in the family. The museum is housed in a decommissioned silo used for one of the many intercontinental ballistic missiles sites through out the US. From the gigantic blast doors down to the delicate star tracking optics, used to preset guidance information before launch, this museum is truly unique. I have to correct another reviewer though, the Titan booster was not the booster used in the Apollo missions to the moon. Although the Titan booster is large it is no where near as powerful or as big as the Apollo systems and was not used in the Apollo launches. The Apollo engines are still some of the biggest and most powerful rocket engines ever produced. Print a map before going to this museum is in the middle of nowhere.
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