It was a blast. Speaking of mixing, the Army Lance Missile used a block of metal with ports bored through it for the fuel. Then there was a plunger that was crammed into the hole on the top to stop the flow of fuel. The hole was like 3" in Dia and the plunger tapered up to like 3-1/2" in Dia. Needless to say it was a one time valve, fused the metal into one piece. The propulsion to cram that plunger into the hole was created from a solid propellant gas generator. When we tested this valve a technician with a high powered rifle had to crouch behind a piece of think steel and shoot it if it misfired, or anytime it didn't go off after they hit the button. The design always befuddled me. We also got to do explosive forming up there at one of the facilities. That was really interesting especially when we blew up things that were not meant to blow up. One night we burned about a ten story test stand to the ground in just a couple of minutes. It's amazing how quickly steel will burn and melt when a little liquid oxygen in added to the fire. The sky over the San Fernando Valley would light up and sometimes the ground would shake. But the roar of those J2 engines was always exciting. We tested the F1's up at Edwards Air Force Base. They were too big to test at Santa Susana. I'm going to dream tonight, this actually brings back good memories and lots of excitement.

I lucked out with that job. My father-in-law (at the time a grounds maintenance manager at Rocketdyne) set me up to get a job in maintenance at Rocketdyne, Canoga Park. When I went to the employment office I forgot to mentioned him or the set up, but got hired as an instrumentation technician for a job up in the mountains at the Field Test Lab. I guess my electronics hobby and electronics correspondence degree helped me get a job up there rather than pulling weeds in Canoga Park.

A couple of weeks later he called me and asked why I didn't show up for the interview he had set up for me. I told I got the job and was working at Santa Susana Test Lab. He was astounded, we laughed about it and had a beer over it the next weekend. He never knew I had the background. I had come out of a job selling electronics and the latest new invention called Stereo Hi-Fi. You could actually get stereo on your radio by tuning one radio to an AM station and one to an FM station prior to that. this new technology could broadcast stereo on FM station by adding this new box to your receiver. It was an exciting time, around 1962(?)

You are spot-on about government and the fossil fuel industry destroying the options of new generation technology. I had the great privilege of speaking with Bill Bottum of Bottum and Townsend years past. I had technology applicable for micronizing coal for injection into power generation boilers....no one would look at it. Bill and I also discussed the "failure" of the MHD project in the 60's, run by Aveco-Everett. So many tools available to quash what would be healthy for a free economy.