Aerojet
Aerojet was an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in Rancho Cordova, California, with divisions in Redmond, Washington, Orange and Gainesville in Virginia, and Camden, Arkansas. Aerojet was owned by GenCorp. In 2013, Aerojet was merged by GenCorp with the former Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to form Aerojet Rocketdyne.
History
Aerojet developed from a 1936 meeting hosted by Theodore von Kármán at his home. Joining von Kármán, who was at the time director of Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, were a number of Caltech professors and students, including rocket scientist and astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky and explosives expert Jack Parsons, all of whom were interested in the topic of spaceflight. The group continued to meet from time to time, but its activities were limited to discussions as opposed to experimentation.
In 1938, the United States Army offered two research projects, one for aircraft windshield de-icing and another for rocket engines to launch aircraft (known as JATO). Dr. Jerome Clarke Hunsaker at MIT had the first pick and, feeling that the rocket research was a "Buck Rogers" project, left rockets to the Caltech team.
