Pacific Furnace, 6633 Canoga Avenue, Canoga Park, Los Angeles County, CA

Significance: The Pacific Brazing Furnace is located at the south end of the Rocketdyne facility in Canoga Park, California. This facility played a key role in the development of the technology for using hydrogen as a rocket fuel. The Rocketdyne engineers and skilled workers was also responsible for extraordinary work in developing lightweight, regeneratively cooled, hydrogen-fueled rocket engines. The design of rocket nozzles used on the space shuttle main engines (SSME) required development of brazing technology that bonded tubes carrying liquid hydrogen coolant to a casing that formed the rocket nozzle. The successful development of the SSME rocket could be largely credited to the work carried out here. Research personnel at this facility built or developed much of the equipment, technology, and methodology for constructing rocket engine nozzles using ingenious solutions to resolve design and operational problems.

Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1534

Survey number: HAER CA-2280

Building/structure dates: 1964-1965 Initial Construction

heat treatment furnaces rocket development rocket propulsion rocket engines rockets space exploration space flight man in space national space program apollo program shuttle program california ralph alan thomas m behrens douglas bradley al brown gaetano arturo crocco gencorp inc robert goddard historic american engineering record aleksei mihailovich isaev anne e kidd dana lockett jet lowe alexander matsov national aeronautics and space administration national aeronautics and space administration nasa north american aviation pacific scientific company kaus riedel rocketdyne robert c stewart fridrikh tsander inc pratt and whitney rocketdyne division united technologies john wachtel photo canoga avenue canoga park los angeles county pacific furnace nasa library of congress architectural diagrams

1969 - 1980

Library of Congress

https://www.loc.gov/

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