Redstone missile (Warren town green)

A real Redstone missile rises from the village green of Warren, New Hampshire, a small town with no obvious link to the space programme. NHPR put its height at 83 feet in 2013, about the same as the church beside it.

According to the plaque at the site, as transcribed by the Cow Hampshire blog in 2006, native son Henry "Ted" Asselin brought the missile to Warren from Huntsville, Alabama, arriving on April 21, 1971, with the permission of the US Defense Support Agency and the town's selectmen. According to a brochure quoted by the Cow Hampshire blog, Asselin had seen surplus Redstones at Redstone Arsenal while stationed there, wanted children far from the space programme to see "the real thing", and noted that astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. came from New Hampshire. The brochure adds that the missile had been stripped of its engine and guidance package and used for display. The plaque gives its weight as eight tons, set in an eight-foot-deep foundation with five steel I-beams; NHPR describes one I-beam running almost 70 feet to the centre, with four more cemented into the ground. Governor Walter Peterson dedicated it on Old Home Day in 1971.