Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...named it Thiokol (after the Greek for sulphur and glue), and with friends formed Thiokol Chemical Corp. As a rubbermaker, Thiokol did not go very far saleswise (one reason: it smelled so foul that it was dubbed "synthetic halitosis"). But since the age of space, the company has rocketed because Thiokol is a chief component in most solid rocket fuels. Thiokol powered the second, third and fourth stages of Explorer I and III into orbit, supplies the propellant for a whole family of missiles. This week word leaked that Thiokol is the hottest candidate for the whopping contracts to produce...
...World War II the armed services used it as a sealant for aircraft-carrier decks, pipelines, and the wing tanks of planes (the average commercial plane today carries about 300 Ibs. of Thiokol sealants). Then in 1946 Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on a radically new solid rocket fuel, tried mixing an oxidizing agent with rubber. But it had trouble combining the oxidizer with solid rubber, tried liquid Thiokol by happenstance (a Shell Oil Co. salesman recommended it to a Jet Propulsion lab technician). When Thiokol's management found out what was going on, it decided...
...fuel engines, i.e., basically cylinders packed with the fuel, for the first full-scale Army test missiles. When the Army successfully launched four of them-proving that solid fuels worked-contracts flowed into Thiokol. Crosby's scientists turned out the first-and second-stage engines for the Farside rocket project, won the contracts to produce the propulsion systems of the Air Force's air-to-air Falcon and the Army's antiaircraft Nike-Hercules, surface-to-air Hawk, surface-to-surface Lacrosse and Sergeant...
Applying Research. President Crosby, a self-taught scientist who did not graduate from college ("I am probably the only rocket-company president without a degree"), credits much of Thiokol's fast climb to its investment in research. Thiokol's top executives, almost all scientists, put 9% of sales into research, mostly applied research because Crosby holds that some scientists spend too much brainpower on basic research, have "too damn much independence from management." On the other hand, Thiokol encourages all of its 450 scientists to devote 10% of their time to their own pet projects, even more time...
Thiokol has set its most ambitious expansion for next week: a merger with Reaction Motors Inc., a major maker of liquid-fuel rocket engines (TIME, May 27), owned 49% by Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. and 23% by Laurance Rockefeller. The merger will give Thiokol all of Reaction's $16.5 million missile contracts, including those for the liquid rocket engines for North American's piloted X-15 plane, which is expected to climb to 100 miles, and may well be the first step to manned outer-space travel. With Reaction (1957 sales: $24 million) Thiokol expects to swell...