‘We’re All Sick’ : Suspicion Felt in Town That Built Rockets

This town nestled in the foothills of the snow-capped Rockies anguished with the rest of the country when the space shuttle Challenger exploded last week. But on Sunday the country seemed to be pointing a finger of blame here.

New film of the explosion, released by NASA Saturday night, showed a plume of flame reaching from Challenger’s right-side solid rocket booster to the main fuel tank for 13 seconds before the blast. That rocket was manufactured--and refurbished after each mission--at the Morton Thiokol factory in the northern Utah desert west of here.

“We’re all sick about the whole thing,” said Peter C. Knudson, an orthodontist and mayor of Brigham City. “We felt so close to this whole project. We had fallen in love with it.”

6,400 Work at Plant

Many of the 6,400 people who work at the Thiokol Corp. plant live in Brigham, a community of about 16,000 about 60 miles north of Salt Lake City. About 2,400 of those employees work directly on the NASA contract. When completed and assembled, the Thiokol solid rocket boosters on either side of the space shuttle help power the orbiter in its first two minutes after launch.

At the plant, Gil Moore, director of external relations for the company, said the videotape of the launch showing a flame from the rocket booster “is just one piece of data NASA and our engineers are studying.” He noted that NASA has said it is premature to assign a cause for the explosion that killed seven crew members.

The unusual flame “is a link in a chain” that led to the accident, he added. “But which link is it? Front or back? We don’t know.”

Nevertheless, folks here felt the fingers of a nation pointing at them.

“We hope it’s not what the fingers are saying. We just hope and pray they’re wrong,” Mayor Knudson said.

At the plant, a collection of brightly painted buildings set in the desert mountains, work continued as usual Sunday. Thiokol’s division here does other government contract work but, as the sign outside says, it is known as “the world’s largest solid rocket motor facility for research and production.”

Jerald Mason, general manager of the plant, had written a letter to the employees after the tragedy, urging them to talk about their feelings with each other but not to speculate on a cause.

A Moment of Silence

Employees joined NASA in observing a moment of silence on Friday, and at Mason’s request, “rededicated themselves to quality, safety and the importance of their work to the space industry,” a spokesman said.

“We’re very saddened,” said Moore, the company spokesman. “You can’t be involved with people and programs and be dispassionate.”

The somber mood here mirrored that in the rest of the country--only more so. The flag beside the old red-brick firehouse, now the Chamber of Commerce, was at half staff.

“It’s a difficult thing to get out of one’s mind,” said Wendell Hess, a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints here and a Thiokol employee.

‘A Risk Involved’

“We have mourned with the rest of the country the loss of the astronauts. And we fear for what it might do for space research. But we also recognize there’s a risk involved in this research,” Hess said.

For the Rev. Richard Lawson of the Community Presbyterian Church, facing his congregation--85% of whom are Thiokol employees--was especially tough Sunday morning. His sermon addressed the concern over those who died, “those blessed with pure motives and pure spirit.”

He said the plant workers have kept their worries--about the shuttle program and the effect this tragedy might have on their jobs--to themselves. Many of the workers’ wives, he said, had less difficulty talking about the tragedy, though.

“If we get our pink slip, we’ll be coming to see you, pastor,” one woman said after the sermon Sunday.

‘Atmosphere Like a Morgue’

Despite mounting suspicion, the chance that the shuttle explosion might be traced to a solid rocket booster was rarely mentioned last week at the plant, employees said. “But the atmosphere was like a morgue,” said one, who asked not to be identified.

At a retreat for church leaders on Friday, some of the workers opened up, Lawson said. “Some very directly fear loss of jobs, but there is also a feeling of caring, deep caring for the people who died. They knew these people.”

The exuberance that greeted the other 24 shuttle missions had, this time, left a peculiar feeling along with the horror and sadness. It was a lingering question: could it have been their fault?

Thiokol first came to the desert here 30 years ago, setting up a plant to make solid fuel rockets for the Minuteman space program. Government contracts followed in the Trident and MX missile programs.

A Few Problems

The plant, situated on 20,000 acres of scrub-covered soil, has had a few problems in its recent history. A construction worker died from burns he suffered in a flash fire in August, 1985. The fire had flared up while he was using a jackhammer inside a building where part of the solid fuel rocket booster work is done.

A fire two months earlier, blamed on lightning, caused $3 million damage, but no one was injured. It destroyed one of four buildings used to mix solid rocket fuels for the shuttle.

In March, 1984, a fire destroyed a building where solid fuel rockets were being cast for the shuttle, injuring 14 workers.

Moore, the company spokesman, said those incidents “had nothing whatsoever to do” with the shuttle explosion last week. “We are honoring NASA’s request not to speculate. We want to find out what happened so we can make certain that it doesn’t occur again.”