Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Runs First Rocket Engine Test Since Katrina

For the first time since Hurricane Katrina roared through NASA’s Stennis Space Center, a rocket engine roared to life on the B-1 test stand at the Mississippi site. An RS-68 booster rocket engine, built by United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Inc., was put through its paces for a planned 180 seconds.

“This was huge,” said Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne site director Dave Geiger. “Running the test, while marking a return to what we do here, was also a tremendous morale boost to our employees, many of whom lost their homes to the hurricane.”

Stressing that a complete resumption of “business as usual” is many months away, Geiger said test schedules and other areas of the workload are picking up. “A hot-fire test of a Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) is planned for this week,” Geiger said, “and engine assembly and processing have also resumed.”

“But again, what’s really important,” Geiger reiterated, “is what the sight of ‘smoke and fire’ has done for our people. For all of us, we feel like a corner has been turned.” More than 250 Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne employees work at SSC.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has been testing rocket engines at Stennis since the days of Apollo, and now routinely conducts tests on the Boeing Delta IV RS-68 and on the Space Shuttle Main Engine. An experimental rocket engine, the Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator, or IPD, is also being tested at the site.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Inc., a business unit of Pratt & Whitney, offers a complete line of propulsion products, from boosters to upper stage engines, used in a wide variety of government and commercial applications, including the Space Shuttle Main Engines, as well as the propulsion systems for the Atlas and Delta expendable launch vehicles. Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines, space propulsion systems and industrial gas turbines. United Technologies, based in Hartford, Conn., is a diversified company that provides high technology products and services to the aerospace and commercial building industries world wide.