White Sands Missile Range

White Sands Missile Range will be the secondary landing site for the space shuttle this fall because of runway repairs at Edwards Air Force Base in California. White Sands Space Harbor will become the backup site for three months, said Nicole Cloutier, a spokeswoman at Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. But the possibility of a White Sands landing is remote based on the current shuttle schedule.

White Sands Missile Range will be the secondary landing site for the space shuttle this fall because of runway repairs at Edwards Air Force Base in California. White Sands Space Harbor will become the backup site for three months, said Nicole Cloutier, a spokeswoman at Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. But the possibility of a White Sands landing is remote based on the current shuttle schedule.

TRINITY'S CHILDREN: Living Along America's Nuclear Highway by Tad Bartimus and Scott McCartney (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $21.95; 326 pp.). The road to which Associate Press reporters Tad Bartimus and Scott McCartney refer in this book's subtitle is Interstate 25, the thousand-mile asphalt spine that extends from New Mexico into Wyoming and that ties together much of America's nuclear-weapons industry.

Game managers were simply looking for a good trophy animal to improve the hunting in this empty quarter of southern New Mexico. What they got, it turns out 30 years later, was a desert antelope with a talent for breeding that would make a rabbit blush. The oryx, a native of Africa's Kalahari Desert, has taken to the Chihuahuan desert at White Sands Missile Range as if it were home turf.

Driving across the Southwestern desert to stand at the ground-zero point of an atomic explosion sounds like a strange way to spend a Saturday. But twice each year, several thousand people do just that in a pilgrimage to Trinity Site in the New Mexico desert northwest of Alamogordo.

For over three decades, cattle ranchers near this high desert hamlet have evacuated their homes whenever rocket testing was under way at White Sands Missile Range. Few groused about the daylong dislocations because the Army paid up to tens of thousands of dollars annually for the disruption and anxiety of abandoning homes and livestock while experimental weapons slammed down onto the missile range a few miles away.

At Space Vector, things have been going in the right direction lately--up--and the reason is the space-based missile defense plan popularly known as Star Wars. On Sept. 5, an Aries rocket made by Space Vector was launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, part of the most sophisticated test so far in President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. The test was cause for celebration at the company's Northridge headquarters.

Game managers were simply looking for a good trophy animal to improve the hunting in this empty quarter of southern New Mexico. What they got, it turns out 30 years later, was a desert antelope with a talent for breeding that would make a rabbit blush. The oryx, a native of Africa's Kalahari Desert, has taken to the Chihuahuan desert at White Sands Missile Range as if it were home turf.

After a half-century of disappointment and delay, a band of Southern California treasure hunters has launched a high-tech search for a hoard of gold they believe lies deep beneath a fissured limestone ridge on the White Sands Missile Range. With the help of ground radar, a miniature television camera and a global satellite positioning system, descendants of the late M. E.

The Trinity Site, on the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, lies on a stretch of desert that the Spanish explorers called jornada del muerto, "route of the dead man." It is a faint crater of scruffy grass that one would never notice except for the two concentric fences enclosing it. On July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was exploded here, a fireball vaporized the tower that held it and fused the sandy soil beneath it.

The Trinity Site, on the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, lies on a stretch of desert that the Spanish explorers called jornada del muerto, "route of the dead man." It is a faint crater of scruffy grass that one would never notice except for the two concentric fences enclosing it. On July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was exploded here, a fireball vaporized the tower that held it and fused the sandy soil beneath it.

For over three decades, cattle ranchers near this high desert hamlet have evacuated their homes whenever rocket testing was under way at White Sands Missile Range. Few groused about the daylong dislocations because the Army paid up to tens of thousands of dollars annually for the disruption and anxiety of abandoning homes and livestock while experimental weapons slammed down onto the missile range a few miles away.

Driving across the Southwestern desert to stand at the ground-zero point of an atomic explosion sounds like a strange way to spend a Saturday. But twice each year, several thousand people do just that in a pilgrimage to Trinity Site in the New Mexico desert northwest of Alamogordo.

After a half-century of disappointment and delay, a band of Southern California treasure hunters has launched a high-tech search for a hoard of gold they believe lies deep beneath a fissured limestone ridge on the White Sands Missile Range. With the help of ground radar, a miniature television camera and a global satellite positioning system, descendants of the late M. E.

TRINITY'S CHILDREN: Living Along America's Nuclear Highway by Tad Bartimus and Scott McCartney (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $21.95; 326 pp.). The road to which Associate Press reporters Tad Bartimus and Scott McCartney refer in this book's subtitle is Interstate 25, the thousand-mile asphalt spine that extends from New Mexico into Wyoming and that ties together much of America's nuclear-weapons industry.

At Space Vector, things have been going in the right direction lately--up--and the reason is the space-based missile defense plan popularly known as Star Wars. On Sept. 5, an Aries rocket made by Space Vector was launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, part of the most sophisticated test so far in President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. The test was cause for celebration at the company's Northridge headquarters.

It's called the Trinity Site, an expanse of baked-white land in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert - the spot where "the gadget" was set off, launching an era of nuclear proliferation. Reactions to this place - the site of the world's first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945 - vary widely and are usually influenced by age and background. For a 65-year-old Californian, it summons images of having to hunker below her school desk in a drill during the Cold War. For a 79-year-old Texan, it conjures up memories of sitting next to the radio as joyous news arrived - World War II was over and the boys were finally coming home.

A German Air Force Tornado fighter jet crashed Tuesday during a training flight at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, but both crewmen ejected safely, the Defense Department said. The Tornado was among jets assigned to the German Air Force Tactical Training Center at Holloman Air Force Base. The cause of the crash was not known.