Test of Shuttle Booster Rocket Proves Roaring Success

A powerful rocket intentionally riddled with 14 defects roared to life in the Utah desert Thursday in what appeared to be a thunderous validation of the redesigned space shuttle booster system.

The 126-foot rocket, loaded with 1.1 million pounds of fuel, shook the ground for two minutes as it strained against a horizontal frame that locked it on the desert floor near the community of Brigham City.

The test was a critical hurdle for the resumption of the nation’s space program because a failure in a booster rocket led to the explosion of the Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986, killing seven people and grounding the nation’s space program.

Officials with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the redesigned joints in the rocket seem to have worked satisfactorily, although closer analysis will have to be carried out over the next 10 days.

Some officials were quick to claim total victory, however.

‘Ready to Go’

“The hardware and the data tell us that this booster is ready to go,” NASA project manager Royce Mitchell said in a press conference after the $20-million exercise.

“It (the test) demonstrates we have an outstanding joint,” NASA engineer Gerald Smith said shortly after the midday test.

Meanwhile, workers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida began trying to plug a leak in the shuttle Discovery’s steering system after gaining access to the cramped area by cutting two small holes through the rear wall of the vehicle’s 60-foot-long cargo bay. The holes allowed workers to reach into the compartment and begin clamping a 4-inch-long device over the leak. Sealant is to be pumped into the clam-like device to close off the leak.

If the tactic fails, the Discovery probably will have to be hauled back from the launch pad and returned to a nearby assembly building, delaying the launch for an additional couple of months. NASA hopes to launch Discovery in late September or early October.

The test of the booster rocket in Utah was clearly one of the most important milestones along the way to the resumption of space flights.

Four Segments

The solid rocket, which cannot be shut off once it has been ignited, is made of four segments joined together to form a single rocket as tall as a 12-story building. The seals and the joints between the segments have been redesigned since a joint ruptured and precipitated a series of failures that destroyed Challenger.

Four previous tests yielded satisfactory results, according to officials with NASA and Morton Thiokol Inc., which builds the boosters for the shuttle program. But this, the final test, was designed to stress the joints more than they would be expected to endure during an actual launch.

If even trace amounts of hot gases leak through any of the joints during launch, the results would almost certainly be catastrophic, triggering other failures throughout the system, as the Challenger disaster demonstrated.

Joints in the test rocket were flawed in several ways, including the punching of holes in the insulation that protects the rubber O-rings inside the joints from the intense heat in the rocket’s core. The flaws were large enough that they would have been detected and corrected before an actual launch, NASA engineers said, so the test really subjected the rocket to conditions far worse than would be expected during routine operations.

‘Several Changes’

The “2 1/2-year redesign effort cost NASA $500 million and resulted in several changes in the rockets. The modifications include improved insulation to keep hot gas from reaching the O-ring seals and a metal lip called a “capture feature” to help hold the segments tightly together. In addition, instead of two O-rings, each joint now has three, offering an increased redundancy in the system.