Rocket-maker Aerojet celebrates 70th year
By Mark Glover
mglover@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, Mar. 20, 2012 - 12:00 am | Page 6B

Rancho Cordova-based rocket-maker Aerojet marked its 70th anniversary on Monday.

On March 19, 1942, Aerojet Engineering Corp. was founded by aerodynamicist Dr. Theodore von Kármán and five California Institute of Technology colleagues.

Aerojet was launched as a single-product company, manufacturing Jet Assisted Take Off propulsion, or JATO for short. In the heart of World War II, JATO enabled heavily laden allied aircraft to take off from short runways and carrier decks.

Following WWII, Aerojet's production efforts turned to the development of solid rocket propellant motors for the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile, as well as solid rocket motors for the two-stage submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Polaris.

From there, Aerojet was a key company in the nation's space exploration efforts of the 1960s, including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon on July 20, 1969.

"As we reflect with pride on a heritage filled with amazing technological achievements and contributions to our nation's space and defense programs, we look forward to the future with excitement as we set out to create the future chapters that will extend this legacy," said Aerojet President Scott Seymour.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/20/435100 ... ss=History#storylink=cpy

Or read another opinion here...

There are other sides to this story.

James, can we get some thank you music?

Thanks AG for your help in winning WWII with JATO. Thanks for using rubber (in partnership w/General Tire) as a binder for rocket fuel, brilliant. Thanks for the Aerobee, the 1st US designed rocket to reach space. Thank you for Titan and Minuteman ICBM's. Thank you for the main engine on the Apollo command/service module. Thanks for the Polaris propulsion system. Thank you for the MX missle. Thanks for keeping us moving forward with the OMS pod motors for the shuttle. Thank you also for the armor pierecing explosive TATB, Prowl herbicide, OBPA, tagamet intermidiary, and so many drug related, and research related products as well.

Thank you for the great work you did. All this, right in our backyard.

Also thanks so much for the 2 little known deepwater injection wells - WS1 and WS 2, and for at times pumping untreated chemical waste down them, right in our backyard. Thanks for piping all that waste into an open dredger pit when WS 1 & 2 were down and unable to accept the waste generated.

Thanks for later claiming in ads in the Sac Bee to have only "made mistakes whlie using the best available practices."

Thanks for using the "race to the moon, and protecting our country" to excuse dumping TCE, NDMA, coloform, perclorate in our drinking water. Thanks for then ignoring our pleas for a clean new source from Folsom Lake after the facts became widely known. Thanks for opting instead to weekly monitoring to see when the clean/polluted blend must be adjusted down to meet the new fed limits.

Only mildly polluted then. Thanks.

Until 20 more years pass and we learn more and need less. Thanks.

Thanks for making us, and our future generations pay for your lack of responsibilty from the begining.

Corporate greed, or did not know any better in as late as 1979? Are you still polluting today? Thanks.

Yeah, its a trade off. Thanks. Money and jobs out shine the damage done. Somehow? Still? Thanks.

Ha, and if you need help finding them so they may be occupied?

Just follow highway 50 and jump off at the toxic plume.

This is disturbing for someone who, like myself, learned 1st year aerodynamic design from Von Karman's book on the subject. This is just one example of what has caused "the crying earth... the weeping shores."

Now the fad is fracking. As of 2009 we started seeing rashes of quakes like never before. With all the buildup in solar activity over the last 200 years and the seeming enormous jump in tornadoes from practically unheard of to suddenly being recorded in Massechusetts as of 1643 and increasing more frequently ever since, with the inclination of the geomagnetic and magnetic poles accelerating twice by a tenfold factor over the last 100 years, it is tough to tell anymore whether it is all this blasted pollution and deliberate abuse of the planet or mother nature causing all these changes in the climate. Whether man started it or it's just that time of evolution, Mother Nature looks as though she's going to finish it.