J-2 Engines in Building 7241

These engines were located in Building 7241 at the Redstone Arsenal in early 2009, just west of the intersection of Magazine Rd. and Deerberry Rd., located in the "7200" area in the lower right of my Redstone Arsenal map. Aerial view. The USSRC at one time stored excess artifacts in several buildings on Redstone Arsenal.

Building 7241 is long and skinny, and the three engines, on their engine handlers (transportation dollies), were lined up in a row. Various crates and miscellaneous equipment were stacked up against the walls of the warehouse, leaving relatively little room to walk (or take photographs) on either side of the engines.

The engines were all bare, just the thrust chamber, LOX dome, and turbine exhaust manifold, appearing very much like they did when on the assembly line. They all had the original red Rocketdyne covers over the exit plane of the thrust chambers, and the remaining openings on the engine were protected with white tape. At least one of the engines had the red cover around the thrust chamber and at least one had some sort of white banding around the thrust chamber; I don't remember what was on the third.

Since the engines were all basically in the same "raw" condition, and in the interest of time, I took detailed photos of only one engine (although I wish I'd have taken a couple of pictures of the engine with the red cover around the thrust chamber).

Alan Lawrie did some research on these engines and produced the following findings: "Four J-2 engines were disassembled after the program concluded and parts were used in various development tests. The disassembled engines were stored at Michoud before being transferred in 2008 to USSRC for restoration which was taking place in building 7241 at Redstone Arsenal. These engines are (or were originally before disassembly) J-2103, J-2133, J-2146 and J-2148."

I would encounter two of these thrust chambers again over the years: I saw one on its engine handler in the summer of 2009 and then that same one, removed from its handler, in 2013, 2014, and 2016 (and the Google Maps aerial coverage as of June 2025 indicates that it's still there at this time).

The other thrust chamber was transferred to the University of Alabama at Huntsville in mid-2019.

I have a number of J-2-related resources.