WORKERS CELEBRATE MOON GLORY; ROCKETDYNE EMPLOYEES TELL HOW THEY HELPED POWER AMERICA'S GREAT JOURNEY.

Byline: Steve Carney Staff Writer

All they had to use were slide rules and some of the best engineering minds in America - but that was all they needed to send men to the moon 30 years ago.

Some of the people who made it possible - and their successors - gathered Tuesday at Boeing's Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power to celebrate that accomplishment, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

``When we first started, in my group there was only one guy with a calculator. It couldn't even figure square roots,'' said Ronald Urquidi, an engineer who began working on engines at Rocketdyne in 1962. The most advanced computer on the Earth was actually on the lunar module.

Yet Urquidi and the 22,000 other employees at Rocketdyne's peak in the mid-1960s were able to create the six types of rocket engines that sent Apollo astronauts into space, to the moon, and back. Examples of those were on display in the Rocketdyne parking lot for the celebration, amid balloons and refreshments.

``It was great times. We were working 60 hours a week, and really enjoying our work,'' said John Klea, 57, of Northridge, who worked on sensors that measured whether the rockets were working properly.

Klea was still attending Penn State University, just before he came to work for Rocketdyne in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy made his challenge to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade.

``I had no idea I would be attached to a program that would make that happen,'' he said. ``The moment they landed on the moon, I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. The fantasy had actually been accomplished.''

Retirees and engineers with 40 years of service examined the engines on display Tuesday - machines identical to the ones used in the Apollo missions, which themselves dropped into the ocean or burned up in the atmosphere after their jobs were done.

They talked with junior colleagues and gestured with rolled up commemorative posters of Buzz Aldrin, pointing at pipes and hoses and assemblies they helped perfect.

Other employees milled about, munching chocolate and marshmallow Moon Pies the company provided in honor of the anniversary.

Some stood in the shadow of the massive F-1 rocket engine, which can produce 1.5 million pounds of thrust, and is on permanent display in the Rocketdyne parking lot. Five of the engines in unison lifted the towering Saturn V rocket off the ground to begin the lunar journey. Four decades after it was designed, the F-1 is still the most powerful rocket engine in the world.

The display also showed the SE-8 rocket engine - smaller than a loaf of bread - six of which were used to maneuver the Apollo space capsule so it wouldn't burn up re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

And the systems these engineers created are still being used today to launch communications satellites into Earth orbit.

``Some of the drawings I work on are older than I am. It's like working on a piece of history or national heritage,'' said Cameron Nosler, a 27-year-old engineer who has been with the company two years, and who works on Atlas and Delta rockets.

Engineers Julie Souders, 24, and Alfons Menanno, 23, took time from their jobs in the company's kinetic energy weapons division to examine the handiwork of colleagues laboring a decade before either was born.

``One of the cool things about working here is the prestigious past,'' said Menanno, whose father was a Rocketdyne engineer on the Apollo missions.

``I wish I could've been back there,'' he said.

``Even to be a fly on the wall,'' Souders added. ``It's impressive to read the history behind it all. Every time the Shuttle goes up, this company has a hand in it.''

But they recognize they're living and working in a different age, in which most Americans take space travel for granted.

``I remember when I was a kid, the Shuttle going up was a big thing and it was always televised,'' Souders said. ``Now they don't even televise it.''

And during Apollo, she said, work at Rocketdyne was more driven - ``everything to get to the moon.''

Then, money was no object. Now a project's cost is the primary concern, they said.

But even with the change in philosophy and objective, they said they're glad to have joined the lineage of engineers who powered men to Earth's nearest neighbor in space, built the Shuttle's main engines, build rockets that routinely push satellites into orbit, devised the power system for the international space station under construction above the atmosphere and are working on the engines for the X-33, the Space Shuttle's replacement.

``Bottom line,'' Menanno said, ``you still feel like you're working on part of something big.''

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Photo: Boeing employees look over vintage rocket engines on display at the Canoga Park Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power plant Tuesday.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer