Doug:

The Atlas V rocket that is shown in the link that you provided is almost nothing like the Atlas E’s and H’s I used to launch at VAFB. The Atlas V is a new vehicle developed under the USAF EELV program and utilizes a rigid aluminum tank rather than the pressurized stainless steel skin of the earlier Atlas boosters. The pressurized skin approach was the most efficient structure ever devised (booster structure being on the order of 1% of the total lift off weight) but due to the increased hoop stresses, that design is not usable much over 10 ft in diameter.

The Atlas V also uses a Soviet-developed, Russian built first stage engine. This was necessitated by the Space Shuttle program’s ruthless elimination of the rest of U.S. launch capabilities. We did not just take perfectly good Atlas E’s and run over them with bulldozers; we also quit building new rocket engines, or even designing them. Thanks to the Soviet engine, the Atlas V has become the most successful of the new USAF-developed boosters. Boeing quit marketing the Delta IV commercially a few years ago, but it is still used for military missions.

The towers around the Atlas V launch pad (not the delivery lane) are for lightning protection. They were erected during the Titan IV program and were retained for the Atlas V. The Atlas V is unique among large U.S. rockets in that it does not have a mobile service tower around it at the pad before launch.

And as for that article, I think those are pretty poor pictures of the USAF space museum and SLC-34! I would have picked some different perspectives.

By the way, it turns out that one of those Americans rescued from the FARC lives about 2 miles from me.