Getting Back Above Ground

By Tom Lacock

Some folks ask each other about the weather as an ice-breaker, other times people ask because they are no less than 20 feet below anything a high-pressure center could throw at them.
I admit it was a strange feeling to have Anja Bendel ask me what the weather was outside Friday and an even stranger realization that there really is no way she should have known by then. No windows to open, sounds of Mother Nature blowing into the side of her home in Chugwater. Anja and her husband, Tim, live in a decommissioned Atlas Missile Silo, which resides 20 feet underground.
Since the last blog entry on the Bendels and their business – Frontier Astronautics – the biggest question we have gotten back has been how people can live 20 feet underground and maintain any sanity. Simply put – they are doing just fine. Tim is one of three partners who works on rocket engines for the private space tourism industry in what seems to be a pretty lucrative, although admittedly unusual field. He points out there are roughly three companies who can make “strap-on” style rocket engines for anyone trying to get into space and they deal in bulk to the point if you are not a Lockheed-Martin-sized firm, you won’t get a phone call answered.
That is where Frontier comes in. They are developing rocket engines and attitude control systems (systems that can detect which direction a rocket is actually going) for the entrepreneurs out there who are trying to get into space but don’t have the need or the cash for something as large as NASA would want.  Business is good right now and housed in a former missile silo, which has all the amenities he needs for the company including test space, workshop space and a really cool 400-ton overhead garage door.
But everyone wants to know how they live in a silo and how on earth did he get his wife to move underground?
To start, let me assure you they are both intelligent, very normal people. Before this trip I had met Tim once, had some laughs but came away with an overall thought that this guy could smoke me in the ACT’s. While I am wondering where Alfonso Soriano will hit in the Cubs’ line-up (I know he is a lead-off man, but I wouldn’t mind him in the three-hole), Tim is trying to figure out how to get people into space. He is so excited about the work he does that living underground is no big deal – fewer people to bug him and more shop space to play with.
Anja has her bachelors and Masters degrees in German and is very outgoing with hardly a hint of being anything less than a supportive wife. She admits to having been skeptical at Tim’s choice of living quarters, which was more than she says her parents were.
“They knew Tim, so I don’t think they were too surprised,” she said with a laugh. Tim acknowledges the statement by blushing.
The concept of a missile silo may be a little misleading when it comes to this particular site. Since the Atlas was stored vertically, then brought to a horizontal position, then fired after it was fueled, it is not a 25-foot trip straight down into the ground. You enter the site through a prison-style door which opens by remote control and leads to a hallway which surrounds you in metal and sort of like something on the Death Star and takes you down to the living and shop space. After that, things get pretty normal – or more normal anyway.
The Bendels deserve huge applause for what they have done with the living space – basically that it looks like living space. The kitchen is functional and well-decorated, they have laminate flooring which is made to look like hardwood, the walls area a very contemporary yellow and the living room has a fresh coat of green paint and new carpet, along with a lava lamp in the shape of a rocket. The shop space looks like shop space – with the exception of a pit they use to test-fire rockets and the 400-ton door.
In the end, it looks like any other couple’s first apartment, only it is a little tougher to get into and a little bigger garage. Ironically enough the car of choice for the rocket scientist and his wife?
Saturns.
What else would you expect?
To see some shots of the shop and outside of the silo, check out:  http://frontierastronautics.com/facilities.htm