A Blast from the Past and a Flight to the Future

CPA Fly-in Sponsor: Bill Marvel

Join our trip both back in time and forward into the future the weekend of October 2-4, 2020. 

We will be visiting two venues -- Richard Branson’s futuristic Spaceport America launch facility from which space tourists will venture into earth orbit and also Trinity site, where the world’s first atom bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945. 

The weekend Schedule:

Friday, October 2nd:

On arrival at Truth or Consequences airport (KTCS) October 2, you’ll receive “event unique” name badges and will be met by a private tour bus company and driven to Spaceport America for about a 4-hour tour.  The cost for that is $60 per person but practically free compared to the prohibitive cost of landing on the spaceport runway – several thousand dollars.  

Time constraints require us to have lunch in the bus on the way to the Spaceport but that beats missing lunch altogether!  Their tour buses hold 13 passengers, so the two available for us set the maximum number who can attend at 26.  Our buses will be dedicated to CPA members only. 

Afterwards, the buses will return us to the airport for the 50-mile flight north to Socorro NM (KONM) where city provided transportation will take us to the hotel, to and from Trinity Site the next day and then back to the airport the morning of the 4th for departure.   There are no rental or courtesy cars available in Socorro but with a little ingenuity I plan to solicit some local pilots to help out with transport in and around this small town.   Regardless, we’ll be staying at the Holiday Inn Express near restaurants and a brew pub so all of the necessities will be close by.    Our Colorado Pilots Association group room rate is $129 a night.

 

Saturday, October 3rd: Trinity Site is open only two days a year and is located in the White Sands Missile Range within both ground and air restricted areas.  We’ll actually stand on ground zero and see the many artifacts brought to the site for the event.  We’ll also visit the McDonald Ranch House where the plutonium core was assembled and which contains rarely seen photos of that day.  It is located several miles from the blast site.   Docents are at both locations to answer all of our questions.  Are you aware that the second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, was the type tested at Trinity but the first bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, was never tested beforehand?

And of course, we’ll have the ever-popular CPA Happy Hour events as well as a Saturday night group dinner in our own room at the Jackson Ranch Steakhouse. Sunday, October 4th: Sunday morning, city transport will return us to the airport for departure homeward.   Don’t miss this rare opportunity to fly both backward in time and forward into the future!

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