🚀 go-pugleaf

From: uunet!rob!elliston (Keith Elliston)

>> part of the arms-limitation agreements. What better PR for the Army than
>> to take one or two of those Pershings to this meet and set them off for
>> the entertainment of the attendees? This would also allow the budding
>> rocketeers to meet the Soviet observers and some of the actual hands-on
>> military missile people, so it would be good "glasnost" PR for the USSR
>> and a recruiting aid for the US. 
> 
> I may be a little naive, but sending up a pershing missile, even in this
> day and age of Glasnost, I would think that the russians would view thi
> this as being just a little questionable... I dont think that the powers
> that be would be amenable to this sort of experiment.

Legally, something like this is entirely possible.  The INF Treaty allows 
for the destruction of missiles by static display, elimination in situ, or 
elimination by means of launching.  Specifically, the treaty requires the
launch to be monitored, for the launch to not provide a target vehicle for
interceptor tests (i.e. SDI test), and for the launch to ignite each stage.

Has anyone found out the exact launch capabilities of a Pershing II?  Surely
they could be used as a sounding vehicle or a microgravity experiment.
--
Andrew J. Higgins	             | Illini Space Development Society
404 1/2 E. White St apt 3            | a chapter of the National Space Society
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e-mail: ahiggins@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu | Champaign IL  61825
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"When the Waters were dried an' the earth did appear,...The Lord He created
 the Engineer"
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