Down the miracle mile

...The woman in the store answered my question with a long list of franchise restaurants-Burger King, McDonald's, Sirloin Pit, and so on...

...There are gaps in mainstreet now, a lot of the old stores are empty and the ones which remain are sleepy establishments, thin on inventory, tended by unhurried men and women who seem a bit surprised to hear the screen door creak and slam...

...It represents about a third of the total value of all the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange...

...But $321.6 billion worth of waste...

...The real question to be asked is what we need...

...The engineer dropped his caution fora moment and said, with sharp, evident passion: "You can tell that to the Russians...

...In addition to water the AEDC uses a lot of power, $20 million worth a year...

...We aren't faced with a choice between guns and butter, but guns and bread...

...In this case, however, the boldness of Reagan's plan makes such a trade-off difficult...

...There was no discernible pattern...

...This seems to be characteristic of military bases...

...The idea that the Congress can seriously consider all of them, in a single package, within a matter of weeks or at the most a few months, as the administration is strongly urging, is absurd...

...One was a nose cone for the tips of re-entry vehicles (RVs) which heat up enormously and take a terrific battering from dust and ice crystals as they roar back into the atmosphere carrying a nuclear warhead to some target on the surface of the earth...

...In Europe they're to be found on every street corner, but Americans have little sense of the size of our military establishment because the bases are all out in some flat, isolated part of the country...

...THOMAS POWERSonger...

...He has presented it as an all-or-nothing proposition, and so far Congress seems to be considering it in that spirit...

...In addition to their work they worry a good deal about the Russians...

...This is a very large sum...

...It's a boring job...

...The drift is clear enough-an increase of $33 billion in the first two years, growth in the projected budget from $ 178 billion now, to $367 billion in 1985...

...It is natural, in situations of this sort, to assume a compromise will be reached- some budget cuts in exchange for some new military spending...

...The AEDC is impressive, in the literal sense...

...Then I drove back to my motel, a good twenty or thirty miles away on the far side of the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) where the Air Force tests aircraft, missiles, rocket motors, and such...

...One was plunked down every little way...

...Reagan's plan calls for about $40 billion in spending cuts over the next two years...

...I'm not sure what the reason is...

...Some of the big air compressors for wind tunnel tests require 100,000 horsepower...

...Last fall I visited half a dozen big Air Force bases, talking to people about missiles...

...Most Americans never see a man in u-niform...

...These are what the Air Force refers to as "gee whiz" figures...

...Not long after his program was presented it was reported that an error in addition might require another $8 or $9 billion in cuts on top of those already announced...

...It was where it was, and that was about all you could say about where it was...

...Believe me, it's getting to be a long wait...

...Reagan's answer is the military-more military and civilian personnel at higher pay, a boost of the Navy from 450 to 600 ships, a new strategic bomber, a new strategic missile system, hundreds of new aircraft of all types, more tanks, research into esoteric new weapons systems like charged particle beams, beefing up the Rapid Deployment Force, expansion of the inventory of munitions of all kinds...

...Until the ASTF is completed the biggest Russian test facility will be about twice as big as the AEDC...

...The grand total-funds which will not be spent on the poor, on transportation, on education, on the exploration of space, on scientific and medical research-is $321.6 billion...

...The liquor store was just where it was, at the corner of two streets...

...The biggest of the rocket motor test cells uses 500,000 gallons of water per minute to cool the exhaust when motors are being fired...

...That would be enough to provide 1.15 million students with $5000 a year for the four years of an undergraduate education...

...If Reagan gets only the defense half of his program-new military spending, without cuts-he will wreck the nation's economy...

...That is a very large investment...

...I don't know if there was a railroad...

...At any rate I haven't seen the total figure anywhere else...

...I stopped at a liquor store surrounded by parking lot to ask for a restaurant...

...It was a one-story affair with a flat roof, plateglass windows in aluminum frames, a counter topped with formica, the sort of display stands-paperboard printed to look like wood-distributed by the big California wine companies...

...One knows the military goes about things in a large, comprehensive way, but one is impressed all the same by a wind tunnel, for example, with a door in the side of a testing chamber three or four stories high...

...Some of the Minutemen are twenty years old, but it turns out they're as good as new...

...You can continue the list as well as I can...

...By 1986 he proposes to "save"-we shall consider that word save in a moment-a total of $13.4 billion from these seven programs alone...

...In the next two years, if Congress goes along, Reagan will cut $1.97 billion from the food stamp program, $720 million in aid to students under the Social Security program, $520 million from Aid to Dependent Children (the backbone of welfare), $1.1 billion from Medicaid, $1.7 billion from extended unemployment benefits, $1.9 billion from student loans, $1.6 billion from various lunch programs for school children...

...I'd say it was on the outskirts of town but there wasn't really any town anymore...

...The cuts were naturally described as reductions in "waste" or "frills" we couldn't really afford...

...The administration has not been eager to spell out the military programs it is planning to fund with all the money cut from domestic spending, for obvious reasons...

...missile inventory, to determine its shelf life...

...In a missile everything is the best-the brass fittings, printed electronic circuitry, floating guidance systems, computerized fuel ignition, and so on...

...There's a lot of construction work going on at the AEDC now, some of it gearing up for tests of the new MX missile, but most of it for the new Aero-propulsion Systems Test Facility...

...What Reagan is proposing is a breathtakingly direct trade-social programs for military programs, not a "saving" of $321.6 billion, but its reallocation pure and simple...

...On February 18 President Reagan presented his program for cuts in eighty-three domestic programs...

...My guess is that his gamble will mostly work: he'll get most of his spending cuts, and most of his military programs...

...The ASTF is budgeted at $37 million but inflation is probably pushing up the cost...

...The New York City subway system really and truly is breaking down, starved for money...

...It would take a serious student weeks to get an idea of what the cuts in any one program really mean...

...But tell me: is this really going to make us stronger...

...The car changed everything...

...Sometimes I think about this while waiting for the Seventh Avenue IRT subway in New York...

...The trick is to make the nose out of some material which will wear away- "ablate"-in a smooth and regular manner in order to minimize the flight perturbations which might edge it off target...

...If he gets both he will wreck the nation...

...This ring is where the heat of re-entry reaches its maximum temperature...

...They're all flat, everybody speaks with a faintly Southern accent, everything is always a long way from everything else, something very large and expensive is going on, and outside the gates the Miracle Mile begins...

...Larger grains about 650 microns, roughly the size of beach sand, simulate what is called a "nuclear environment"-the debris-filled air left by the detonation of a preceding warhead...

...The center covers 44,000 acres, most of it flat woodland...

...A handful of store fronts had been modernized back in the 1950s but it hadn't worked...

...The power drain is so great that most tests are conducted at night...

...The eighty-three programs which Reagan plans to cut cover the entire range of federal programs to support the health and welfare-in the broadest sense-of the American people...

...At this point you might ask what is worth the money...

...Farmers came to town on Saturdays, old men sat on benches, you could walk from any part of town to any other part in ten or fifteen minutes...

...But in the world where we all live the subways are filthy, the cars are plastic and vinyl, nobody can afford to buy a house, the kids aren't learning anything in school, college tuition has just gone up twenty percent, Chrysler is tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, the steel industry needs special protection to survive, there are more people employed by McDonald's than by Ford...

...I picked a place and had dinner and don't recommend it...

...Once upon a time there was a downtown with a courthouse, a post office, churches, a hotel, res'taurants, a mainstreet with redbrick buildings and stores on the ground floor-a small city like many others in rural America...

...But outside the gates of the AEDC one returns to the Miracle Mile of motels, shopping centers, and fastfood franchise restaurants...

...I headed out the road she suggested and there they were, squares of tarmac surrounding one-story buildings of stucco and plywood in what must have been some farmer's field ten or fifteen years ago...

...It is fair to conclude Reagan has no plans to throw anything at the problems...

...When the train comes the windows are a sulphurous yellow with dirt, the lights in the car flicker, people are packed in to bursting...

...An iner-tial guidance system, for example, or the MIRVing process by which a single missile can target ten or more sites on the ground with stunning accuracy...

...A 4000-acre lake is used for cooling purposes...

...To a degree one has to read between the lines...

...One man described a series of tests on the Minuteman HI ICBM, the backbone of the U.S...

...All sorts of noses have been tested in a dust erosion tunnel where they are bombarded with magnesium oxide or aluminum oxide in dust-sized particles-about 200 microns across-at 3200 feet per second...

...Curious what Reagan's proposed cuts would add up to by 1986, I went down the list with my calculator and totted them up...

...Maybe it's political...

...Who is going to provide those funds-much of them in the form of loans-if Reagan's proposed cuts are accepted...

...Everything about the AEDC has the look of the big, the ambitious, and the expensive...

...THOMAS POWERS...

...Before the tests they are gun-metal grey, about as rough to the touch as 120 sandpaper...

...A distinct ring, blue-grey to violet in color, about three inches in diameter, centers on the tip of the nose...

...The magnitude of Reagan's program is hard to grasp...

...I ought to have known better...

...The deer inside the fence are fat and tame...

...It's on the site of an old Army post, but that isn't the reason it's there instead of some place else...

...If it were pinpoint sharp it would melt...

...I talked to a couple of engineers with long histories in defense work and they all seemed intelligent, .articulate, cautious, and highly disciplined men...

...But small things can be impressive too...

...Doubtless there is waste in the federal budget...

...Even the hinges, way up there, seemed the size of a Volkswagen bug...

...There was much slighting talk of liberal attempts to "throw money at problems," but no talk of the problems...

...This is not an exercise in economy, but a broad conclusion that all these undertakings just aren't worth the money...

...There is waste in my budget...

...This represents only two programs...

...It probably cost something on the order of a zillion dollars to bring the art of metallurgy to this level, all so the MX will be able to place warheads within a couple of hundred feet of two intersecting lines on a map of the Russian heartland...

...The noise, I was told, is awesome...

...By 1986, for example, a total of $23 billion in various forms of student loans and assistance will have been scrapped...

...If Congress goes along over the next two years he will cut $96 million from mass transit subsidies, $301 million from mass transit grants, $350 million from Amtrak subsidies, $40 million from railroad branch lines, $300 million from Conrail, $260 million from airport construction, $50 million from airline subsidies...

...I was looking for the sort of place where you might sit in a wooden booth, the seat backs rubbed blond, and order a ham steak...

...After a wise and balanced decision has been reached about them, there will still be eighty-one left to consider...

...The rest, about 2600 acres, is fenced...

...The AEDC is the sort of place best seen from a small plane...

...Perhaps things will work out that way...

...I tried to imagine what it sounded like closing...

...I certainly didn't see anything like a train station when I drove through one evening last October, looking for a place to have dinner...

...I came away from all of these conversations with the same impression: that the men I had talked to were able and conscientious, that there was no limit to what technology can be made to do, and that outside the gates is the world of the Miracle Mile, where everything is quick, slick, and cheap...

...Business had all moved away to the shopping centers...

...They have been enacted over a period of decades, frequently after long debate, and they touch every aspect of American life, from basic scientific research to the arts and agriculture...

...We know what Reagan wants to do, and we pretty well know why...

...No one else seems to have done this...

...The engineers can't understand how we let the Russians get ahead of us in this manner...

...Tullahoma isn't there any more...

...If you look closely you can see gradations in the color, there is even a delicate line, thin as a horsehair, almost magenta in hue...

...I'm not a technically literate person and it took quite a while for me to grasp how some of these things work...

...Something about this re-entry ring suggests-or it did to me, at least-the awesome, tearing approach of a warhead...

...The nose is round, about the size of a baseball cut in half...