But, more importantly, did we jump to any conclusions regarding the use of water to hose down rocket exhaust in the so-called “flame bucket” that we write about here?

No, thank goo-ness.

The above passage about Rocketdyne worker Jim Benson coming up with a way to solve the flame bucket degradation problem documented events at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory circa 1950. But was this system to cool down the hot zone under the test stands used past that time or was it a temporary measure used at the dawn of the Cold War?

A passage in the same book, “Rocketdyne: Powering Humans into Space,” confirms that this practice was continued for decades. We derive this conclusion from the following passage excerpted, in part, on page 219 of this excellent book:

“On April 7, 1982, Engine 2013 test 901-364 was planned as a 500-second FPL flight mission simulation test. At 362 seconds the engine was destroyed by a failure which originated in the HPFTP turbine. The engine was burned and ripped out of the test stand. It was found 100ft. away from the base of the test stand, in the spillway built for the flame bucket coolant water.” (Our emphasis)

This means that Rocketdyne used this method to cool off the thousands of rocket engine exhaust flames for at least 32 years and probably for the life of the rocket testing facility that ceased in 2006, according to the report “Historical resources survey and assessment of the NASA facility at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Ventura County, California,” released by Archeological Consultants, Inc. and Weitz Research in March, 2009.

56 years of hosing down the goo that has resulted in a grossly polluted facility that the land owner, Boeing, still is fighting to not clean up to standards mandated by state law.

And now, 60 years later, some community activists maintain that the rocket test stands should stay standing despite the now-obvious conclusion that they are the center of the chemical pollution that plagues the facility.

How the remediation of Rocketdyne, estimated to cost up to a billion dollars, can take place without excavating the area around and under the stands without the structures coming down has not been answered.

It seems unlikely that the community activists demanding that the rocket test stands stay in place have a solution for this vexing problem. And it seems unlikely that long-time community activists fighting for the cleanup of the lab since 1989 will settle for leaving polluted places at Rocketdyne intact simply to satisfy the whims of preservationists.