Open pit copper mine and The Titan Missile Museum

There are quite a few open pit copper mines in Arizona. This one is just a few miles north of where we are staying in Green Valley.
The Titan Missile Museum is even closer. There were 18 Titan missiles around Tucson.  All the sites except this one have been destroyed.  This one was saved for the sole purpose of becoming a museum.  A couple of items needed to be done, though, to satisfy the Russians that it was inactive: there is no warhead (when you look at the photo of the missile below, you will see a small piece cut out of the nose cone. The Russian satellites can see that the nose cone is empty) and in another photo, there are huge concrete blocks that keep the silo door from opening.

Panorama of the mine.

Close up of the area they are currently mining.

The machine in the center is drilling holes for dynamite.  If we had gone to the 4PM tour, we probably would have seen them blasting.  

Wild horses on the mine property.

An obsolete truck.  The ones they use now are twice as big.

These tires are $37,000 a piece - and each truck has 6.  They last about 6 months.

Yum, Yum !! That's copper being separated from the ore.

Giant rock crushers.

They say they recycle a lot of the water they use.  I guess these are the tanks used to clean the water.

The waste has to be stored somewhere.  This 'pond' is at least 6 square miles and is made up of several layers.  You can see them building another layer.

The Titan Missile Museum. All you see from the ground are the doors that open when the missile is launched. 

The 2 rectangular concrete blocks keep the silo doors from opening. 

The Titan missile.

The long corridor between the missile and the control room.

Marge, our tour guide in the control room.  There were 2 officers that manned the control room and Marge was one of them.  She served  when the missiles were armed and ready to go. 

A close up of the missile.