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I had the joy of seeing 2 F-1 engines in one week. The first is at the old RocketDyne (now Pratt & Whitney) facility in Woodland Hills, CA (on Canoga, I think)

• EEGuy 14y ago
  * Confirmed, an F-1 engine stands tall [1] outside Rocketdyne corporate HQ on Canoga Ave just north of Victory Blvd in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. One can walk right up to the engine and have a gander; it's 18 feet tall. You can admire the maze of cooling pipes on the upper half of the nozzle and imagine the heat and roar. * In decades past, during development of the Apollo space program, Rocketdyne tested engines at its Field Laboratory test facility in the Santa Susana Mountains a few miles West. The sustained outdoor roar of those engine tests was audible better than 7 miles away. Source: My elementary school classmates, blase about the whole thing, saying "Oh, that's just Rocketdyne testing again". * Lots of facility pictures of several of the Rocketdyne facilities (with engines under assembly) in the Rocketdyne Archives [2] * It's a safe bet the name "Rocketdyne" would be a portmanteau of "Rocket Dynamics". * Some rocket equations and stability discussion at [3] [1] http://www.dailynews.com/ci_21138479/pratt-whitney-rocketdyne-sold-sacramento-based-gencorp-550 http://www.dailynews.com/ci_21138479/pratt-whitney-rocketdyn... [2] http://www.rocketdynearchives.com/canoga.html http://www.rocketdynearchives.com/canoga.html [3] http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/~space/ess472/Lecture_RocketDynamics.pdf http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/~space/ess472/Lecture_Roc...