Up on Solid Fuel

Back in 1928. Kansas City Chemist J. C. Patrick stirred up a gummy mess of sulphur, carbon and hydrogen in an attempt to find a better, cheaper antifreeze. What he got was not antifreeze but one of the first types of synthetic rubber. He 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 the propulsion systems for the Army's Pershing missile (TIME, April 7) and the Air Force's Bomarc, which will be converted from liquid to solid fuel.

Thiokol sales have gone from $4,800,000 in 1951 to last year's $31 million, which brought net profits of $1,452,000 (but still far behind the $162 million sales of its chief competitor. General Tire & Rubber Co.'s Aerojet-General Corp.). Though Thiokol's first-quarter sales are off a bit because some of its military contracts ran out and one plant was damaged by fire, Thiokol expects a 50% gain for all of calendar 1958. Reason: solid fuels are far simpler and safer to handle than liquid fuels that require a maze of tanks, valves and pumps, and they show the greatest promise for powering missiles until the atom-powered engine comes along.

"We'd Like to Try." Thiokol got into missiles in the same way the rubber was invented--by accident. Its researchers had found a way to process solid Thiokol into a liquid, and during 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 to try producing Thiokol-based solid fuels.

President Joseph William Crosby, 61. a greying, jowly hustler who had joined the company as a salesman in 1936 and became boss in 1944, "started ringing every Army doorbell we could find in Washington. We told them what we had, that we didn't know anything about rockets, but we'd like to try.''

Persuaded by Crosby, the Army gave Thiokol a $250,000 development contract in 1947. By 1953 Thiokol had produced solid-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 in the case of "people who we think have greater creative ability.'' This liberal policy has paid off handsomely. Says Crosby: "When we started in solid fuels, we hired people we felt had good mentality, and taught them a new field. Now we have half a dozen people who know as much about the subject as anyone else in the country."

To give its free-ranging scientists more challenges (and to hedge its bets on the solid-fuel boom). Thiokol is diversifying into other fields. Last year it edged into electronics by picking up Washington, D.C.'s small National Electronics Laboratories (sales: about $500,000), and last month it bought up Pennsylvania's Hunter-Bristol Corp. (sales: $2,000,000 from electronics, aircraft and missile components, etc.). It has joined with Gallery Chemical Co. (25% owned by Gulf Oil Corp.) to explore boron-based solid fuels.

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 its sales as high as $75 million this year.

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