CoL 49 (2) Giants of the aerospace industry

[Robin Landseadel]

On May 11, 2009, at 12:38 AM, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:

> In addition to Rocketdyne, I think it is safe to assume that  
> Yoyodyne also has a lot in common with
> Boeing, which Pynchon of course knew at first hand.

Rocketdyne has a lot in common with Boeing: Boeing owned Rocketdyne  
and their center near Canoga Park, merging in 1996 and selling off  
Rocketdyne in 2005:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne

http://www.nukeworker.com/maps/facility/Rocketdyne.html

. . . here referred to here as "Boeing Rocketdyne."

Rocketdyne was a giant during the space-age: they were responsible for  
the engines for the liquid-fueled rockets of the Mercury, Gemini and  
Apollo missions, along with the Space Shuttle and ICBMs.

This "Rocketdyne Worker UCLA Epidemiological Study":

	The Rocketdyne Worker UCLA Epidemiological Study of
	employees at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Canoga
	Park, and Chatsworth Facilities, located within Los Angeles and
	Ventura Counties, of Southern California, concludes that
	workplace radiation is responsible for more than one quarter of
	Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Lab worker deaths, (27.3%).
	SSFL is an open field lab and the testing areas consist of non-
	contained nuclear, rocket, and missile testing facilities.
	According to the report, the cancers and illnesses which killed
	the SSFL workers were caused by cumulative exposure to low-
	level radiation at the work site(s). The study evaluated 4,607
	Rocketdyne and Atomics International employees, (AI), which
	was a division of, and merged with Rocketdyne, during 1984.
	Los Angeles Cancer Registry Data which only examined
	deceased worker data, was included in UCLA's reported
	findings which evaluated cancer data from SSFL and AI
	radiation workers employed from 1950 until 1993 in addition to
	Census Tract Cancer Data of the deceased workers.
	Rocketdyne workers who are living with cancer are not
	included in the study as data was only gleaned from records of
	the deceased employees.

http://knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Rocketdyne/Boeing_Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory_Contamination/

. . . Calls the site the "Rocketdyne/Boeing Santa Susana Field  
Laboratory".

Interesting to note that the Rocketdyne/Boeing test labs included the  
incredibly dangerous sodium cooled reactor, a small reactor that had a  
meltdown and a release of radiation over 200 times greater than that  
of the Three-Mile Island reactor meltdown. This meltdown occurred back  
in July 26, 1959:

	"Rocketdyne is our Chernobyl," says Jonathan Parfrey,
	executive director of the Los Angeles public-health organization
	Physicians for Social Responsibility and longtime Rocketdyne
	critic. "People have died; others are chronically ill. But because
	it's so damned hard to link a hypothetical incident of exposure
	to the onset of a specific disease, I bet Rocketdyne will never be
	accountable for their acts."

http://www.larryflynt.com/notebook.php?id=10

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/q2/nr_020502s.html
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2005/q1/nr_050222o.html