(The following article by Todd Halvorson was posted on the Florida Today website on October 12.)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Segments of the shuttle’s solid-rocket boosters are being rerouted to and from their Utah manufacturing plant because of railway damage done by Hurricane Katrina.
Katrina damaged almost 40 miles of CSX rail line between New Orleans and Pascagoula, Miss., knocking out six bridges along the way.
So NASA and booster manufacturer ATK Thiokol now are shipping segments over an alternate route that winds through Alabama on its way to Kennedy Space Center.
The 3,000-mile trip between KSC and Corinne, Utah, now takes a day longer than the typical 7 to 8 days to complete, but the new course carries the highly flammable segments through less populated areas.
“It is probably a route that we will continue to use in the future. It’s probably a better route,” said ATK Thiokol program manager Russell Bakes. “We will continue to maintain the old route as a way to go as well, but this is a very viable route, and it’s one that we are pleased with.”
A pair of four-segment solid-rocket boosters and three liquid-fueled main engines are used to launch shuttle orbiters into space. The 149-foot boosters are jettisoned two minutes into flight and then retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean for refurbishment and reuse.
The spent boosters are towed back to a hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where they are washed and inspected. Ultimately, they are disassembled, and segments are loaded on to hump-shaped rail cars for the trip back to Utah.
A NASA locomotive transports the rail cars over a 40-mile KSC railway that connects with the Florida East Coast Railway at a point north of Titusville and south of Haulover canal.
The FEC is one of four rail companies involved in shipping booster segments to and from ATK Thiokol’s manufacturing plant near Brigham City, Utah. The others are Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern and CSX.
The route change is the latest repercussion Katrina has had on NASA shuttle operations.
The storm also caused an estimated $1.1 billion in damage at Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., where shuttle main engines are tested, and a shuttle external tank manufacturing plant in New Orleans.
Said Tracy Yates, a spokeswoman with shuttle prime contractor United Space Alliance: “The hurricane has had impacts that no one ever would have suspected.”