Wednesday, March 8, 2000

It's the End of the World As We Know It...

.....well, not really, but in any event, if you would have seen what I saw last night, it would have been the last thing your eyes would have seen.

I actually witnessed for the first time in my life an Intercontinental Ballistic Missle in action.

Here in the islands in the Kwajalein atoll, the lagoon that it surrounds acts as a large catchers mitt for Vandenburg Air Base. They launch a missle, and we recieve it.

Last night, they sent up one missle that had a MERV,or Multiple Re-Entry vehicle inside the single missle. Once in orbit, it found it's target, and released the missle warheads (eight in all) and they looked like giant shooting stars or meteors falling out of the sky, one right after the other.

It was quite impressive, and humbling.

Had they been nuclear warheads or live, we would have been incinerated in a matter of seconds. But since it's only a test, obviously the missles aren't armed.

And it was definitely a story that my grandkids will hear about. These sort of missions happen every so often out here, and being able to see them is one of the perks of working on Kwajalein.

As for life, it goes pretty well right now. All the same stuff, but defintely getting more sun each day.

Stay tuned, more Kanestergrams are on the way in the future......

Kanester

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