Government-Owned, Private Facility Options : NASA Studies New Shuttle Rocket Sites

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration selected two sites in Mississippi Tuesday for potential use in building new, more powerful shuttle boosters in a plan that would create 2,000 jobs and provide a new use for a canceled nuclear power plant.

NASA chose TVA’s Yellow Creek property as its choice for a government-owned facility to build the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor, or ASRM, a more powerful version of the boosters currently used to lift the space shuttle into orbit, that would be available starting in fiscal 1994.

The giant rockets would be tested at the Stennis Space Center at Bay St. Louis, where the shuttle’s on-board, liquid-fueled main engines are test fired during certification.

But a proposal by Hercules Inc. of Magna, Utah, and Atlantic Research Corp. of Gainesville, Va., to build a privately owned booster plant near Montgomery, Ala., will also be considered by NASA as a possible alternative to government-owned facilities at Yellow Creek and the Stennis Space Center.

Decision Not Made

A final decision on how to proceed has not yet been made.

Yellow Creek, in Tishomingo County near the Tennessee-Mississippi border, originally was developed by the Tennessee Valley Authority as a nuclear plant site. Although some on-site construction was begun, the plant was abandoned in 1984 after a re-evaluation of power demand.

NASA said construction of the the 14-story, segmented rocket motors at the Yellow Creek facility would bring an estimated 1,400 new jobs to the area. The government plant will be operated by a private contractor, and four aerospace companies are expected to compete for a lucrative contract.

Two Louisiana sites, the Martin-Marietta Michoud plant at New Orleans and a NASA facility at Slidell, would be involved in computer operations and manufacture of some accessory parts, creating an additional 200 jobs in the New Orleans area and 400 along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

First use of the advanced boosters is planned for fiscal 1994.

“This decision is a major victory for Mississippi,” said Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.)

Modified Motors

The Tishomingo County Board of Supervisors recently authorized a $6-million bond issue to acquire the Yellow Creek site from TVA and turn it over to NASA.

The new rocket motors will allow NASA’s space shuttles to carry an additional 12,000 pounds of cargo into low-Earth orbit. They will be significantly modified to preclude any Challenger-style malfunctions.

Challenger was destroyed by the failure of an O-ring seal in a joint between two fuel segments of the shuttle’s right side booster, built by Morton Thiokol.