FUJIFILM X-T1 (14mm, f/8, 1/750 sec, ISO200)

Some more rockets? We simply couldn’t pass the White Sands Missile Range Museum on our way back to Arizona.

The place doesn’t seem to be very busy at least at this time of the year. When we arrived the parking lot was empty. It was hot and sunny and the sky was filled with white clouds. I shot with the Fuji XF 14mm, my favorite lens from Fuji, to be able to include as much of the  sky as possible.

FUJIFILM X-T1 (14mm, f/10, 1/400 sec, ISO200)
FUJIFILM X-T1 (14mm, f/9, 1/420 sec, ISO200)
FUJIFILM X-T1 (14mm, f/9, 1/480 sec, ISO200)

Beside all the rockets there was also a model of the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki/Japan at the end of WWII. The bomb killed and injured thousands of people. It was the second and the last nuclear bomb ever used in a warfare. A truly sad day in the history of mankind.

But all the rockets of the space program that we saw in the morning were nothing but a by-product of the armament. Without Werner von Braun and his colleagues from Nazi Germany the USA would never be able to land a space ship on the moon in 1969.

FUJIFILM X-T1 (14mm, f/9, 1/400 sec, ISO200)
FUJIFILM X-T1 (14mm, f/9, 1/500 sec, ISO200)

Enough talk about the war. The missiles looked nice but more or less the same. Boring compared to airplanes. What surprised me was that most of them are truly small. Almost like big toys. Big toys for big boys.

The gate was closed so we parked out car outside. And because we entered the place from the roadside and not from the mall visitor center we saw this sign on the image below at the end of our little visit. Thank god that we didn’t see it before. We would have been less relaxed. But if they are really concerned that people might step on a sleeping rattlesnake they should invest in a second warning sign.

FUJIFILM X-T1 (14mm, f/2.8, 1/2000 sec, ISO200)