Miami Herald - It happened nearly half a century ago: Florida City was once part of the fight to beat the Russians in space as home to a solid fuel space rocket project.
Doug LaRue has created a documentary on the space-era AeroJet solid fuel rocket project southwest of Florida City. The project began in 1963 with the awarding of a large contract for construction of the facility.
During the early years of the U.S. space program, NASA explored both solid and liquid fuel for the rockets which boosted men into space. General Tire won a contract to manufacture solid fuel rockets.
The concept was to assemble the rockets at the South Dade facility, fuel them and transport them by barge up the inland waterway to Cape Canaveral. This required the digging of the AeroJet Canal from the ocean to the site, but with the space race on with the Russians little got in the way of NASA.
