Word: thiokol
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...major milestone in the shuttle's flight readiness will come in mid-July, when Discovery's three modified main engines will be fired in unison for the first time. A few days later will come the final test of a booster by Morton Thiokol, the builder. Some of the three synthetic-rubber O rings (increased from two on previous rockets) that seal the booster's joints will be purposely flawed to see how well the rings can prevent the kind of leakage that triggered the Challenger explosion. Based on the outcome of the tests, NASA will decide on a precise...
...Morton Thiokol, the company that built the booster rockets for the space shuttle Challenger, has decided to retreat from its long and painful association with the shuttle program. Last week the Chicago-based aerospace and chemical firm said it would decline to bid for the $1.5 billion NASA contract to build motors for the shuttle's next generation of solid-fuel boosters...
...Thiokol's stated rationale is to concentrate on correcting flaws in the current booster model, which will be phased out starting in 1994. Company officials may also have concluded that Congress would be reluctant to award another contract to a company that was partly to blame for the 1986 explosion that killed seven passengers...
...Morton Thiokol stopped its scheduled shipment of aft booster segments to Cape Canaveral, Fla., where an astronaut crew had hoped to resume flights on June 2. NASA estimated that the longest probable delay from the nozzle failure would be three months. But some of the agency's veterans speculated that the Administration will not want to risk a launch until after the November elections...
...twin failures at Morton Thiokol raised new congressional complaints about the troubled contractor. The comparative Soviet success in manned space flight worried other experts. Declared John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists: "The Soviet cosmonauts got a big boost on their way to Mars. They know where they're going...