Last Rocket Test at Santa Susana

According to:

"http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/12776301.htm"

there is only one more rocket engine test planned
at Pratt & Whitney (Rocketdyne)'s Santa Susana
Field Laboratory. It is a test of an RS-27
Delta II engine. (A wildfire interrupted the
planned test schedule this week.)

Question: Is this the last RS-27 engine, or are
such tests moving to Edwards (or somewhere else)?

- Ed Kyle

Ed Kyle wrote:
According to:

"http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/12776301.htm"

there is only one more rocket engine test planned
at Pratt & Whitney (Rocketdyne)'s Santa Susana
Field Laboratory. It is a test of an RS-27
Delta II engine. (A wildfire interrupted the
planned test schedule this week.)

Question: Is this the last RS-27 engine, or are
such tests moving to Edwards (or somewhere else)?

- Ed Kyle

O.K. Here's the deal. Boeing sold Rocketdyne, but it didn't
sell Santa Susana to UTC Pratt & Whitney. The rocket test
stands at Santa Susana are being phased out. Pratt & Whitney
will test RS-27A engines somewhere else.

- Ed Kyle

In article . com,
Ed Kyle wrote:
O.K. Here's the deal. Boeing sold Rocketdyne, but it didn't
sell Santa Susana to UTC Pratt & Whitney. The rocket test
stands at Santa Susana are being phased out. Pratt & Whitney
will test RS-27A engines somewhere else.

Part of the reason for this, if I recall correctly, is that Santa Susana
is no longer a good place to test engines. When it got started, it was
well out in the boondocks, but now the area is increasingly urbanized, and
frequent loud noises and occasional releases of toxic chemicals are viewed
with growing disfavor.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article . com,
Ed Kyle wrote:
O.K. Here's the deal. Boeing sold Rocketdyne, but it didn't
sell Santa Susana to UTC Pratt & Whitney. The rocket test
stands at Santa Susana are being phased out. Pratt & Whitney
will test RS-27A engines somewhere else.

Part of the reason for this, if I recall correctly, is that Santa Susana
is no longer a good place to test engines. When it got started, it was
well out in the boondocks, but now the area is increasingly urbanized, and
frequent loud noises and occasional releases of toxic chemicals are viewed
with growing disfavor.

That's correct. Santa Susana was in the boonies
when it was first established, but now something
like 1/2 million people live around it, within
a few miles distance. (I've never understood this
phenomena, where people move near an airport or
factory or test site or hog farm and then start
complaining about the noise/smell/pollution etc.).
There was an experimental reactor partial meltdown
at Santa Susana in 1959. There has also been
documented groundwater and soil contamintaion (both
chemical and radioactive) both on and off site, so
Boeing has been sued in recent years by just about
every person living near the place who happened to
developed cancer. Boeing appears to be settling
most of these claims.

BTW, the hottest topic now in this legal area seems
to be perchlorate contamination. (ATK stockholders
take note.)

- Ed Kyle

"Ed Kyle" wrote:

Santa Susana was in the boonies
when it was first established, but now something
like 1/2 million people live around it, within
a few miles distance. (I've never understood this
phenomena, where people move near an airport or
factory or test site or hog farm and then start
complaining about the noise/smell/pollution etc.)

In connection with Katrina, I and many other netizens recalled John
McPhee's _The Control of Nature_, with its account of the Old River
Control project that tries to keep the Mississippi from changing its
main outlet to the Gulf as it has many times in the last 10,000 years.

It also has a section on rock- and mudslides in the San Gabriel
mountains. Untuil the 1950s they'd spill out into orange groves with
little harm, but as the $100,000 and then $1,000,000 homes moved up
into the canyons, it became a Problem (and generated an expensive
program to haul away loose material upslope, build concrete "snow
fences" to stop house-sized boulders, etc.).

After giving you the background of destructive slides every few years,
or whenever wildfires have burned off the brush, McPhee devotes two
deadpan pages to quotations from real-estate agents active in the
area: 'I never heard of any problem with slides'... 'Used to be a
problem, but it's totally under control'... 'It's a problem in some
places, but not in the neighborhoods I handle,' etc, etc. The
cumulative effect is side-splitting.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

It's perfectly rational behavior. What's not is the behavior of those
who let them get away with it.

I have a house in the Maine woods, seven miles from the nearest
landline phone and sixteen miles from the nearest fire hydrant. It's
cool even on hot summer days, with the tall birches and pines all
around shading the roof. It's been 28 years since the last time I had
to lug an Indian water-spray tank and a cough brush axe through
those cough woods.

I don't suppose you'd be interested in subsidizing my insurance, would
you?

-Monte "looking for an enabler" Davis

On 3 Oct 2005 10:01:10 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

I've never understood this
phenomena, where people move near an airport or
factory or test site or hog farm and then start
complaining about the noise/smell/pollution etc.).

What's not to understand? People move there because the housing is
cheap (because it's near an airport, or factory or test site or hog
farm). Then once they have a stake in the place, they attempt to
increase the value of their property by getting rid of said nuisance.
It's perfectly rational behavior. What's not is the behavior of those
who let them get away with it.

On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 19:44:07 GMT, in a place far, far away, Monte
Davis made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

After giving you the background of destructive slides every few years,
or whenever wildfires have burned off the brush, McPhee devotes two
deadpan pages to quotations from real-estate agents active in the
area: 'I never heard of any problem with slides'... 'Used to be a
problem, but it's totally under control'... 'It's a problem in some
places, but not in the neighborhoods I handle,' etc, etc. The
cumulative effect is side-splitting.

I heard the same thing from realtors about hurricanes last year
(before Frances and Jeanne) when we were house hunting in southeast
Florida...

Of course, they probably believed it (though I didnt), since things
had been pretty quiet here (other than Andrew) for most people's
living memory.

On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 19:51:44 GMT, in a place far, far away, Monte
Davis made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote:

It's perfectly rational behavior. What's not is the behavior of those
who let them get away with it.

I have a house in the Maine woods, seven miles from the nearest
landline phone and sixteen miles from the nearest fire hydrant. It's
cool even on hot summer days, with the tall birches and pines all
around shading the roof. It's been 28 years since the last time I had
to lug an Indian water-spray tank and a cough brush axe through
those cough woods.

I don't suppose you'd be interested in subsidizing my insurance, would
you?

I probably already am, whether I'm interested or not. But I might be
happy to pitch in a little, as long as it's not for fire insurance.

Or maybe I can pay your fire, and you can pay my flood and wind...