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ATK Thiokol Aims to Continue to Be Relevant to Space Program

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

Aug. 17--PROMONTORY -- Officials and employees at ATK Thiokol watched their ties to the space program go up in smoke Tuesday, but in a good way.

Thiokol hosted officials from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, representatives from other aerospace companies, and thousands of local citizens in viewing a stationary rocket motor firing test to show NASA that the facility will be as relevant as ever to the next generation of space travel.

A glitch in the recent launch of the space shuttle Discovery has prompted NASA to ground its shuttle program indefinitely. NASA insists American space travel and exploration will continue, although the space shuttle in its current form could be gone by 2010.

Officials at Thiokol expect the facility will remain an integral part of future space-flight missions, as it has been since the 1960s.

"We've been doing studies over the past year on new shuttle-derived vehicles that use a lot of the same components -- vehicles that will support future uses of our rocket motors," said Scott Horowitz, Thiokol's director of space transportation and exploration. "The key to our relationship with NASA is our ability to effectively transition to new programs without stopping."

NASA is expected by September to release its specifications for a new generation of "shuttle-derived" launch vehicles, after which numerous aerospace companies will be jockeying for position in the space program.

NASA officials present at Tuesday's rocket motor test said it's too early to say what role Thiokol's Top of Utah facilities will play in the next generation of space vehicles, but noted the strong bond NASA has formed with Thiokol over the years is unlikely to be severed.

"Thiokol has been our premier contractor since the beginning. They've been integral to launching the shuttle since the early days," said David Beaman, deputy manager of the Solid Rocket Motor Project at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Solid booster motors will be used in future programs, and Thiokol is the leader in that area."

Current designs based on NASA standards resemble rockets similar to those used on the Apollo missions. Crew members and cargo would be launched separately under such a design, and Thiokol hopes to be producing boosters for both manned and unmanned vehicles.

Tuesday's test, which burned more than a million pounds of solid rocket propellant fuel in less than two minutes and sent a thick plume of smoke towering into the sky, will offer mounds of data to Thiokol employees as they work to improve their processes and products.

"This motor was produced shortly after the Columbia disaster (of 2003), when our production was slowed to half rate," said Cary Ralston, manager of Thiokol's Reusable Solid Rocket Motor program at Promontory. "This test validates that nothing bad crept into the process during that time."

Horowitz said ensuring and demonstrating that its motors meet NASA's needs is critical at a time when the agency is looking to retire the existing space shuttle fleet and hand out new contracts.

"We need to understand the motor as well as we can, and this test helps us do that," said Horowitz, a former astronaut who has been on four shuttle missions. "We want to keep actively engaged, even during the slower times."

Beaman of the Marshall Space Flight Center said advances in production have allowed the motors to be built faster in recent years.

"This test helps us make sure the motors produced now are consistent with past performances," he said. "What it really offers to us is support for future exploration."

Thiokol's current contract with NASA it set to expire in 2007.

The space program has provided tens of thousands of jobs over the last four decades at Thiokol, where the solid rocket booster motors have been produced through a contract with NASA since 1974. Before that, the facility produced motors for previous space vehicles, since opening in 1960.

Company spokeswoman Melodie DeGuibert said the program accounts for about half of all work done at the sprawling campus near Promontory, which currently employs about 3,000.

Top space program officials have expressed support for using existing shuttle parts as a way to save money in future developments. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin recently told members of Congress the agency has ways to construct such vehicles using many major components of the current shuttle fleet, including the rocket boosters Thiokol produces.

"We think the existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper. That's what I have proposed doing," Griffin said during a speech in May.

ATK Space Systems, the division of Minnesota-based parent company Alliant Techsystems that includes Thiokol, has about 500 employees at the Freeport Center in Clearfield in addition to the 3,000 in Box Elder County.

Another 1,000 work at a Thiokol facility west of Salt Lake City in Magna, and about 50 work at smaller offices in Logan and at Business Depot Ogden.

Lt. Col. Rick Sturckow, an active astronaut who most recently went to space in 2001 and is scheduled for another mission in July 2006, said tests like Tuesday's add to his and other astronauts' confidence levels.

"There have always been problems and challenges with the shuttle," Sturckow said. "What's different these days is that the folks behind it have a better handle on which ones present the biggest threats."

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ATK,

Source: Standard-Examiner

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