BGuthrie Photos: UT -- Thiokol Rocket Display (now Orbital ATK display)

UT -- Thiokol Rocket Display (now Orbital ATK display):

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. THIO_160714_033.JPG: Small ICBM Stage I The Small ICBM was developed in the late 1980s as an intercontinental-range, road-mobile, solid-propellant, single-warhead ballistic missile. Its first successful flight was in May 1989. The government terminated this U.S. Air Force program in 1992.
2. THIO_160714_040.JPG: TX-683-12 Sidewinder The Mk 36 Mod 9 rocket motor is the reduced-smoke propulsion system for the AIM-9 Sidewinder, close-range, air-to-air missile. It uses a steel case, a glass-filled phenolic nozzle, and a fixed forward-end igniter with a mechanical safe-and-arm device.
3. THIO_160714_046.JPG: TX-38 SPARM Thiokol holds the patent for this integrally boosted, solid propellant, air-breathing rocket motor referred to as a ducted rocket. It was developed for the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s. After ejection from the launch aircraft, the conventionally fueled integral booster accelerates the missile to Mach 1.8 at 40,000 feet. The integral booster chamber then becomes the ramburner for the ducted rocket, and the end-burning, fuel-rich grain completes combustion in the ramburner.
4. THIO_160714_050.JPG: STAR 30BP Apogee Motor The STAR 30BP apogee motor stabilizes satellites in geosynchronous orbits. Satellites in geosynchronous orbits (about 22,000 miles from Earth) maintain a constant relation to points of the Earth's surface. These satellites are often used for communications.
5. THIO_160714_057.JPG: TU-772 Solid Rocket Motor Segment The TU-772 is the cylindrical section of the aftmost Shuttle motor segment. Two similar center segments and a similar forward segment along with the frustrum [sic] and nozzle assembly make up the completed reusable solid rocket motor.
6. THIO_160714_059.JPG: Pre-Minuteman Test Motor The Pre-Minuteman motor, tested in February 1958, was the largest solid propellant rocket motor at that time. It was the first motor designed and tested at the Promotory site in Utah.
7. THIO_160714_063.JPG: TX-526-2 CASTOR IV The Castor IV motor was developed as a strap-on booster for the Delta launch vehicle. It has also been used on Athena H and on Europe's Maxus microgravity suborbital carrier. The TX-526-2 motor incorporates an eleven-degree-canted nozzle in its design. Castor motors first flew in 1971 and are used today as strap-on boosters for the Atlas IIAS launch system.
8. THIO_160714_072.JPG: Space Shuttle Reusable Solid Rocket Motor Forward Segments, Forward Skirt and Frustum The front half of the space shuttle reusable solid rocket motor (RSRM) consists of a forward center segment, forward segment (including igniter), forward skirt and frustum. The two segments hold solid propellant cast in a configuration that gives maximum thrust at ignition and, 50 seconds into the flight, reduces thrust by approximately 30 percent to prevent overstressing the launch vehicle. The forward skirt and frustum make up the first 27 feet of the 149-foot-long RSRM. Guidance and flight instrumentation, recovery and separation avionics and the range safety system components are houses in the forward skirt. It is also where the front end of the RSRM attaches to the external tank. Along with the nose cap, the frustum makes up the pointed tip of the RSRM. It houses the forward separation motors that push the RSRMs away from the launch vehicle after the first two minutes of flight and the three parachutes that slow the RSRM's descent into the ocean.
9. THIO_160714_078.JPG: TU-772 Space Shuttle Reusable Solid Rocket Motor The space shuttle reusable solid rocket motor (RSRM) is the largest man-rated solid rocket motor ever flown and the only booster capable of recovery and reuse. Developed for NASA by ATK Thiokol in the mid-1970s, the RSRM was successfully static tested on July 18, 1977. During the first 122 seconds of each flight, two RSRMs provide 80 percent of the thrust needed to accelerate the shuttle to a speed of 3,094 miles per hour before separating from the orbiter and external tank at an altitude of 24 nautical miles. Nearly seven minutes after separation, the spent boosters parachute into the Atlantic Ocean approximately 140 nautical miles downrange from Kennedy Space Center. The recovered boosters are disassembled in Florida and returned to ATK Thiokol's plant in Utah, where they are refurbished for use on future space shuttle flights.
10. THIO_160714_090.JPG: Space Shuttle Booster Separation Motor The booster separation motor (BSM) is designed to push the reusable solid rocket motors (RSRM) safely away from the Space Shuttle's main liquid fuel tank and the orbiter itself. At the time of ignition, the BSMs are traveling through the atmosphere at more than 3,000 miles per hour and an altitude of approximately 24 nautical miles. There are eight BSMs attached to each of the two RSRMs, four in the forward skirt on the aft-skirt. All 16 BSMs fire simultaneously to ensure a safe launch-to-orbit.
11. THIO_160714_092.JPG: Space Shuttle Reusable Solid Rocket Motor Aft Segments, Skirt and Nozzle The aft end of the space shuttle reusable solid rocket motor (RSRM) consists of an aft center segment, aft segment (including the nozzle), aft skirt and exit cone. The nozzle moves, or gimballs, up to eight degrees in any direction allowing the RSRM to steer the launch vehicle during the first two minutes of flight. An attachment ring on the aft segment connects the back of the RSRM to the external tank. While on the pad, the aft skirt (missing from this display) supports the launch vehicle's full weight. The aft skirt also contains four separation motors like the ones housed the the [sic] frustum.
12. THIO_160714_097.JPG: Frontiers of Transportation Here you stand on one of the great frontiers of transportation history in North America. In 1841, the route of the first emigrant train to reach California overland climbed the mountain pass to your left. And the Oregon trail passed just 80 miles to the north. Ahead, just over the Promontory Mountains, two hotly competing railroad companies, the Union Pacific coming west from Nebraska, and the Central Pacific working east form California, joined their rails on May 10, 1869, completing the world's first transcontinental railroad. The United States remains a nation on the move. Today's technological frontier has been lifted skyward by the Thiokol Corporation, which builds and tests rockets here in northern Utah to support America's space and defense programs.
13. THIO_160714_107.JPG: Route of the first emigrant train bound for California. Union Pacific Big Trestle Site Golden Spike National Historic Site - Last Spike Site - Visitor Center
14. THIO_160714_113.JPG: TX-30 Nikes Hercules The TX-30 is the sustainer motor for the Nike Hercules surface-to-air antiaircraft missile. Developed in the mid-1950s for the US Army, 10,000 were produced for service inventory by 1968. Several foreign countries adapted the Nike Hercules and produced TX-30 motors under license from Thiokol. Nike Hercules provided defense for critical installations and population centers.
15. THIO_160714_119.JPG: TX-140 Hermes RVA 10 Development of the TX-140, the first large solid propellant motor, began in 1950 for the T-140 Hermes A-2 missile program. Hermes was a low-cost propulsion unit capable of carrying a 1,500-pound warhead up to 75 nautical miles. This motor demonstrated the feasibility of large, solid propellant rocket motors. Many present-day rocket motors were derived from this successful Jet Propulsion Laboratory/U.S. Army program.
16. THIO_160714_128.JPG: TX-239 Spartan Third Stage The TX-239 Spartan third stage was originally developed for the Zeus missile in the 1950s. Vectoring was done by directing exhaust gas into a forward plenum chamber and ducting it into four movable nozzles, one in each missile fin. This motor was manufactured for the U.S. Army in the 1970s.
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Wikipedia Description: Thiokol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thiokol (variously Thiokol Chemical Company, Morton-Thiokol Inc., Cordant Technologies Inc., Thiokol Propulsion, AIC Group, ATK Thiokol; currently ATK Launch Systems Group) is a U.S. corporation concerned initially with rubber and related chemicals, and later with rocket and missile propulsion systems. Its name is a portmanteau of the Greek words for sulfur (Te?? "theio") and glue (????a "kolla"), an allusion to the company's initial product.

The Thiokol Chemical Company was founded in 1929. Its initial business was a range of synthetic rubber and polymer sealants, and Thiokol was a major supplier of liquid polymer sealants during World War II. When scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered Thiokol's polymers made ideal rocket fuels, Thiokol moved into the new field, opening laboratories at Elkton, Maryland, and later production facilities at Elkton and at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville produced the XM33 Pollux, TX-18 Falcon, and TX-135 Nike-Zeus systems. It closed in 1996. In the mid 1950s the company bought extensive lands in Utah for its rocket test range, and continues to have major operations in the state, at Magna and Promontory (home of the Space Shuttle's SRB), and its current headquarters at Brigham City. As of 2005 the company employs over 15,000 people worldwide and records annual sales of around $ 840 million.

Company history:

* 1929: Thiokol Chemical Company founded.
* 1949: Thiokol produce the TX-18 Falcon missile, the world's first solid-fueled missile system.
* 1957: In anticipation of the forthcoming Minuteman contract, the company builds its plant at Brigham City, Utah.
* 1957: Thiokol Huntsville builds XM33 Pollux missile
* 1958: Merger with Reaction Motors Inc. (RMI), makers of liquid propellant rocket motor systems.
* 1958: Thiokol awarded contract to build the TU-122 rocket motor for the first stage of the LGM-30 Minuteman I ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (UT -- Thiokol Rocket Display) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2003_UT_Thiokol: UT -- Thiokol Rocket Display (9 photos from 2003)
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2016 photos: Seven relatively short trips this year: two Civil War Trust conference (Gettysburg, PA and West Point, NY, with a side-trip to New York City), my 11th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including sites in Utah, Nevada, and California), a quick trip to Michigan for Uncle Wayne's funeral, two additional trips to New York City, and a Civil Rights site trip to Alabama during the November elections. Being in places where people died to preserve the rights of minority voters made the Trumputin election even more depressing. Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Number of photos taken this year: just over 610,000.
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