Promontory » For two minutes the rocket motor burned with an almost unimaginable intensity only to gradually fade, its fuel exhausted.
And that intensity, at the firing at Alliant Techsystems' plant in Box Elder County on Thursday, marked the final ground test of a solid-fuel rocket motor designed for the space shuttle.
"The country invested 24 years in these rocket motors," said Michael Bloomfield, a former space shuttle astronaut who now serves as an ATK vice president and program manager. "They [the motors] have done everything we have asked them to do."
The test marked the 244th time that one of the ATK-made rockets was fired, both on and off the shuttle. All were successful, without incident.
Yet even as the rocket motor exhausted its fuel Thursday, ATK's future involvement with NASA's Constellation program -- the next generation of manned space flight vehicles -- remained as obscure as the exhaust clouds rising above the test range.
President Barak Obama's proposed 2011 budget may sidetrack ATK's efforts to design and build motors for the Ares 1 rocket, the centerpiece of Nasa's Constellation program.
If the president's budget recommendation is adopted, it likely will damper NASA's plans to get back to the moon by 2017, and eventually on to Mars.
And for Utah, that could mean that thousands of jobs are at risk, not only at ATK, which already was forced to idle hundreds of its workers due to the end of the space shuttle program. Workers at dozens of other companies that provide ATK and NASA with support services and materials also could be affected.
Everything now is in the hands of the White House and Congress, said Charlie Precourt, ATK general manager of space-launch systems. "It is hard to hypothesize at this point what might happen and what it might mean for us."
Still, he said ATK has the assets and experience to continue to play a key role in the future of both manned and unmanned space flight.
"There is definitely interest from the public in seeing us go deeper into space. The question is how we do that."
For the time being, the company has the contracts under the federal government's existing 2010 budget to continue to move forward with the development of rocket motors for the Ares 1.
And to that end, ATK is scheduled to conduct a static test firing of a solid-fuel rocket motor being designed for the Ares 1 in September, just before the 2010 federal budget period ends.
Kevin Rees, director of testing at ATK, said the company also has plenty of commercial work to keep it busy.
"We're scheduled to test fire one of our Orion motors [used to put satellites into orbit] in June, and we just tested one of our GEM 60 commercial motors two weeks ago," he said.
For many involved in shuttle program the last static ground test firing of a solid fuel rocket motor was a bitter-sweet experience.
"Keep in mind though that we fired this motor so we could fire the ones we will use [on the next space shuttle launch] in April," said Nasa's David Beaman, manager of the reusable solid rocket booster project office at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
For Mike and Christine Schend of Park City, who brought their 8-year-old son Hunter and his sister Lilah, 6, to view the test, it was a show that was not to be missed.
"I heard this was going to be the last test of a space shuttle motor and didn't want to miss it," Mike Schend said. "I never got a chance to see the space shuttle launch, but hopefully they will come up with something better in the future."
