Launch Time

Rocket engineer Arnie Sodergren walked up a driveway strewn with weeds and through the open door of a dilapidated, concrete building on a rocky hillside.

Except for the sound of his feet shuffling through broken ceiling tiles and other rubble on the floor, all was quiet.

He stopped in the middle of a bare room.

“Wernher von Braun used to stand where I am standing now,” said Sodergren, 62. “All around him would be engineers checking instruments, looking out the windows, waiting to see what would happen.”

This shell of a building, in an isolated area just west of Chatsworth, was the control center for test firings of rocket engines that first took Americans into space. It was here that von Braun and other German scientists shared their war-developed rocket technology, leading to the creation of engines for Redstone, Atlas, Titan and Saturn--the legendary rockets that powered space flights.

“This is a place of history,” Sodergren said. “You could say that right here is where space exploration began in this country.”

This week is a time of reflection for Sodergren and thousands of others in the San Fernando Valley area who played a role in the most triumphant event in space exploration history--the Apollo 11 mission that first landed men on the moon, 30 years ago Tuesday.

It was a moment of glory, preceded by years of round-the-clock work fueled by patriotism, almost unlimited funding and the excitement of scientific discovery. But even before that first moonwalk, the space program was undergoing drastic cutbacks, turning youthful enthusiasm and esprit de corps into disillusionment and in some cases, economic hardship.

Sodergren first came to the testing fields in 1958 to work in Canoga Park for North American Rockwell Corp.’s Rocketdyne Division, which built the Apollo engines and owns the Santa Susana test facility. He still works for Rocketdyne--now a division of Boeing Co.--but is more comfortable talking about the pre-moon launch days.

“I wish you could have seen all this in its heyday,” he said, walking out of the control center. In the distance were two abandoned towers where engines used to be bolted for firings.

At the height of the space program in the mid-1960s, there were numerous active test sites--each with its own control center and towers--spread over 2,700 acres of mountainous terrain in the Santa Susana remoteness.

About 6,000 Rocketdyne employees worked here and a normal day would include seven or eight engine firings, which sent rumblings sometimes mistaken for earthquakes by the few, nearby residents.

Rocketdyne developed and built 87 rocket engines that flew on the Apollo missions, including the giant F1s that powered the first stage and the J2s on the second and third stage, as well as smaller engines that maneuvered the capsule and moon lander.

Rocketdyne still owns the land. But now only about 600 employees work here, and some are assigned to projects not directly related to rocket engines. Just one of the test centers remains operational, and sometimes weeks go by with no test firings.

“It was not that long ago, but it was a different world,” said Paul Fuller, 71, an engineer who helped oversee the development of the J2 engine. Fuller retired as a vice president of Rocketdyne in 1994.

“You couldn’t do, today, what we did back then in such a short amount of time,” he said. “The whole country was behind us.”

In the face of the Soviet Union’s early triumphs in space, including the first manned launch, President Kennedy made a promise in 1961 that America would land men (there were no women astronauts then) on the moon by the end of the decade.

“Everyone was dedicated to fulfilling Kennedy’s promise,” said Angelo Diblasi, 72, hired at Rocketdyne in 1955 to work on development of the F1. “There was a real spirit of interaction on the part of the government, the company, the contractors--it was just a great thing to be part of.”

The space race was such a key battlefront in the Cold War that the government was willing to part with its most precious commodity.

“Money was not a problem,” said Herb Buswell, 68, an engineer on the J2 engine. “If you needed something for the project, you got it.”

Even red tape didn’t get in the way.

“I remember one time that I had to design and build a component in a week,” said Ray Mills, 62, a design engineer who worked on several engines used on Apollo. “Today, I couldn’t get a purchase order in a week.”

It was an incredibly exciting time for these young engineers, many of whom were also starting their families and buying their first homes.

“There was a housewarming every weekend,” said Tom Holwager, 63, who worked on the J2. “You’d get a couple cases of beer, invite the guys over and pour a patio.”

Not surprisingly for a program venturing so far into new scientific territory, there were numerous failures in the early years. Engines would blow up, sometimes spectacularly, on the test stands at Santa Susana. Others failed in flight.

“We had our early launches at Vandenberg [Air Force Base],” said Richard Aquila, an engineer at Rocketdyne from 1948 until 1990. “As soon as the bird would take off, we’d all run out of the blockhouse and watch it. Sometimes the thing would explode, and we’d run back in before the parts came down on us.”

Aquila laughed at the memory. “It was an exciting time.”

But the work took its toll. Many of the engineers were working at least six days a week and were often called out of town with little notice.

“I would get a call from my husband and he would say, ‘Just put a couple of shirts and some underwear in a bag,’ ” recalled Ellen Ginsburg, 59, whose husband Bernie Ginsburg is a retired engineer. “He would stop by on his way to the airport and pick it up. We’d never know if he’d be gone for two days or three weeks.”

Ginsburg said she and her husband accepted his long hours and time away from home as part of the job. “We were changing the world,” she said. “That was the feeling we had.”

Others couldn’t deal with the stress. One of the Rocketdyne engineers committed suicide, possibly, his former colleagues believe, because of the pressures involved with the work. Some families separated.

“I’m very thankful my wife was so tolerant,” Aquila said. “We had five kids. I didn’t get to spend the time with them that I should have. We hung together, but not everyone could.”

The most stressful time was yet to come.

As the Apollo engine development and manufacturing programs ended, drastic layoffs began at Rocketdyne. The company went from about 22,000 employees in the mid-1960s to about 3,000 in the early 1970s.

The race had been won. The days of unlimited budgets and the nearly unanimous support of the American public were over.

“We used to work at desks in groups of four,” Diblasi said. “One day in 1970, they came and got the guy to the right of me and told him he was laid off. Then they came for the guy across from me, and then the guy to my left. At the end of the day, I was the only one left.”

Understandably, the layoffs created bitterness among many engineers. Others left before they could be let go.

“I saw it coming,” said Sodergren, who took a job with another Valley firm in 1964. He returned to Rocketdyne in 1979 to work on a military project. “It’s the nature of the business,” he said.

But in giving a tour of the test fields, Sodergren can’t help but long for the glory years.

“You can’t imagine what it was like--the work, the camaraderie, the excitement. Everyone working for one goal, on a huge scale. I’m not sure we’ll ever see the likes of it again.”