Thiokol tests booster, faces changing future

"Everything that we know is that NASA is completing . . . what they're calling their 60-day study. They have to understand the architecture of how to go back to the moon and Mars. And that architecture should define the launch vehicles to go carry that out," Horowitz said.

Every indication is that when Congress returns from summer break, possibly in the first week of September, NASA may announce its plans, he said.

Asked if he places any credence in the supposed leaks, Horowitz said, "I never listen to leaks. . . . There's so much information out there. All I know is that we've been doing the studies and NASA has been doing their studies, and we believe that the type of configurations we've been looking at are probably the most suitable to carry out NASA's missions."

Tuesday's test had a number of unusual features, including live X-ray imaging of the rocket nozzle to see how it performed. Another was stresses that were built into the 126-foot-long motor for test purposes.

In various tests, Thiokol will "put a cut in a seal or we'll actually take a piece of material out somewhere, or take out some lining material, to make sure that the engineers understand exactly how much margin they have left," Horowitz said.

The engineers will then "calculate the predicted performance of the part, and it also stresses out their design tools."

After the motor is fired, Thiokol will check to see what happened during the test — how well performance met expectations.

With the X-ray examination, the nozzle is studied while 5,000-degree gases flow through.

"We can actually, real-time, go ahead and look at that with X-ray. It's like a movie shot in X-ray," he said.

"I'm very excited. It's always good to see space hardware in action here," said Lt. Col. Rick Sturckow of Houston, an astronaut who has flown aboard the space shuttle and is designated for a future flight, STS-117, which is to loft a piece of the International Space Station Into orbit.

He said he would love to go on a moon voyage eventually, "if someone will send me."

David Beaman, deputy manager of the solid rocket motor project at Marshall Space Flight Center, noted that rocket motor production slowed during the investigation of the accident that destroyed Columbia 2 1/2 years ago.

"What we want to do here is use this motor to demonstrate that what we've built over the last couple years is consistent with what we've built in the past, and that it's ready to support the program," Beaman said. "It's a pretty big motor. It's got about 1.1 million pounds of propellant."