Ran into a bunch of videos about the Atlas Missile Program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas
http://historicspacecraft.com/Rockets_Atlas.html
History of the program.
It’s a classic case of when you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Here’s the program outline
Love the classified tone and the optimistic “we met all test requirements” tone of the movie. Guys, you pranged the shot, admit it. Over and over.
The program gets going.
Firing live missiles for training?
The Atlas has gone on to other jobs.
Still, the Cold War missile stuff was scary. When one of the alternatives is the launching of missile that will kill millions of people, I would have wanted options, any options.
The Arts Mechanical 
May I suggest visiting the Titan Missile Museum south of Tucson? See
http://www.titanmissilemuseum.org/
http://nonplused.org/panos/titan_missile/index.html (Pictures)
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Which is why we supported SDI or Star Wars. Its why we fought in a bunch of little wars, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada. Its why the phrase ‘he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch’ made sense. Its why we let a lot of good people languish in Communist slavery because to rescue them was too dangerous.
Its why Gen Xers have a bit of freon in our soul, and a shadow over them. We’ve played in the Big Game, and nothing else is quite as serious. We went to bed knowing there was a decent possibility that we might wake to see a flash, and then in seconds rapidly achieve a state of ten thousand degrees (or whatever).
Its also why we had a lot of fearful sorts trying to convince everyone that slavery and concentration camps were better than the risk of defiance.
Its why Reagan was the greatest president of the Twentieth Century.
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