Shuttle Engine Tests Exit State with Roar

Secretaries, desk-bound engineers and other office workers joined burly technicians on a rocky bluff above the San Fernando Valley Friday to witness California’s final space shuttle engine test.

From now on, the Rocketdyne employees were told, the $40-million rocket engines that they design and build in Canoga Park will be tested at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility in Mississippi instead of in the Santa Susana Mountains above Chatsworth and Simi Valley.

Many of the onlookers held their ears during the thundering 4-minute, 50-second test. A white cloud of steam that shot from the engine turned to rain as it billowed over the rust-colored sandstone cliffs that ring what until Friday was America’s premier rocket motor test site.

“It’s an awesome amount of power,” said mechanical engineer Bob Dweck, who works at Rocketdyne’s main office about 10 miles from the test site. Friday’s firing was the first he had seen, and Dweck clamped his hands firmly over his ears as the wind whipped his tie.

Secretary Debbie Merrill and graphic artist Melinda Cohen sat on steps leading to the top of a concrete block house where test engineers huddled over gauges and dials. The women jumped at the abrupt, noisy start of the test. Like hundreds of others at the test site, they applauded the spectacle unfolding in front of them.

“It was so exhilarating, so exciting,” Merrill said. “I came up here on my own time to see this because it was my last chance.”

Rudy Maciel didn’t flinch when the engine roared to life, however. He kept his eyes glued to the engine’s huge nozzle, looking for telltale yellow or green flames that might signal a fuel-flow problem. Happily, the exhaust was colorless

“It’s the end of an era,” Maciel said. He is an engineer in charge of the few moving parts in the main space shuttle engine who helped oversee all 320 of the shuttle engine tests conducted at the Santa Susana Mountains in the last 13 years. “There’s a lot of sadness here today,” Maciel said.

Space shuttle main engine program manager Robert Paster said that Maciel and the other 150 shuttle test crew members will be assigned new jobs locally. He said Rockwell International has landed contracts that will lead to future tests of small satellite-launching rockets at the Santa Susana site.

The aging, 103-foot-tall steel test stand used for the shuttle engines will be mothballed. “It will be available for any future large-engine project,” Paster said.

Officials said the engine tested on Friday was one of 30 produced so far by Rocketdyne. Six more will be delivered to NASA before 1992. The shuttles are powered by three of the engines, which can be reused for 20 or 30 flights.

All future tests will be conducted at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., about 40 miles from New Orleans, said Sally Stohler, Rocketdyne’s shuttle engine marketing manager.

That test site is on a canal. This means that an unlimited supply of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellent can be pumped from barges into the 14-foot tall, 7-foot wide engines during tests, she said.

At Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana test stand, only 300 seconds worth of fuel could be stored. That meant that full tests were impossible since engines have to fire for 520 seconds during missions, Stohler said.

Still, that seemed like a poor reason to shut down their test pad to some test crew members.

“Right now we have a test facility right next to the manufacturing facility in Canoga Park,” technician Pat Petterson said. “If something has to be changed, everybody’s right here. It seems like a waste of time and money to me.”