The range can, and does, provide everything from rat traps to telephones, from equipment hoists and flight safety to microsecond timing. Range employees shake, rattle and roll the product, roast it, freeze it, dip it in salt water and roll it in the mud. Facilities on range can duplicate more than 90 percent of known environmental conditions. The range has laboratories to test the product's paint, bend its frame and find out what effect its propulsion material has on flora and fauna. In the end, if the product is a missile, the range fires it, records its performance and brings back the pieces for post-mortem examination.
All test data is analyzed and the customer receives a full report.
To do this work, last year the missile range had about 6,700 employees. Half were government civilian employees, eight percent were military and the rest were contractors. Fifty percent of these workers live in Las Cruces. Since 1947, the New Mexico Highway Department has allowed the missile range to set roadblocks on public roads like Highway 70. With this safety program, the missile range has fired almost 41,900 rockets and missiles without injuring anyone in the general public.