Rocketdyne is an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, California. The company was related to North American Aviation for most of its history. NAA merged with Rockwell International, which was then bought by Boeing in December 1996. In February 2005, Boeing sold the company to Pratt & Whitney, which merged it with Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion to form Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation. Rocketdyne was formed by North American Aviation after World War II to study the German... V-2 missile and adapt its engine to SAE measurements and US construction details. Rocketdyne also used the same general concept of separate burner/injectors from the V-2 engine design to build a much larger engine for the Navaho missile project. This work was considered unimportant in the 1940s and funded at a very low level, but the opening of the Korean War in 1950 changed priorities. Navaho ran into continual difficulties and was canceled in the late 1950s when Redstone missile design had caught up in development.
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