IT�S odd, the feeling of comfort you get staring up at a 103-foot-tall intercontinental ballistic missile from the bottom of a hardened silo buried in the Arizona desert.

It�s not that there is any joy in knowing that an ICBM like this, the centerpiece of the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Ariz., about 20 miles south of Tucson, could have been launched in just 58 seconds, hurling a city-destroying nuclear warhead at the Soviet Union. Armageddon is not a pleasant prospect.

No, the sense of comfort in seeing a Titan II comes from knowing that it was never launched.