Call them a high-tech company. Call them a major Utah employer. Call them rocket scientists.
Just don't call them "Thiokol."
The rocket-maker's parent company, Minnesota-based Alliant Techsystems, announced Friday that ATK Thiokol has a new official moniker, one that eliminates "Thiokol" from the corporate or operating division name for the first time since the company was founded in 1929.
ATK Launch Systems Group is designed to reflect "the growth and our evolving role" from strictly a rocket motor supplier to a larger role in providing more comprehensive launch systems, according to Ron Dittemore, the group's president.
"We're broader in our scope, and that's why we felt we had to make some changes in how we represent ourselves," Dittemore said.
"Thiokol" won't be going away anytime soon, however. Because of its strength as a worldwide brand, Dittemore said it will be used as a bridge to the new name, showing up in corporate marketing materials, for example.
"We will no longer use Thiokol in our naming — in our group name or a division name or anything like that, but we will bridge to it. We will bridge Launch Systems with Thiokol," he said. "People will have some uncertainty in the beginning what Launch Systems represents, so we will bridge Thiokol with Launch Systems in our marketing literature, and we will do that for the future. We don't intend to eliminate 'Thiokol.' . . . We intend to preserve it and utilize it actively."
Dittemore noted that many people in northern Utah still refer to the operation as Morton Thiokol or some other name from the company's past rather than understanding that it is currently owned by ATK, a $3.4 billion company with about 15,000 employees in 23 states.
"Thiokol is a a great name, a great image. But what we want to do is, as our business grows and develops from a supplier of solid rocket motors into emerging systems where we become more of a provider of launch systems, 'Thiokol' doesn't necessarily represent that new direction," Dittemore said.
"So we made a decision to make that change, that we would represent what we're going forward with — and that is launch systems — while preserving the heritage of Thiokol. You have to have both."
Thiokol is known primarily for its reusable solid-fuel rockets for NASA's space shuttle program. But rather than providing only the four-segment rockets and a nozzle, the company in the future will be responsible for even more, including forward and aft skirts, the thrust vector control and assembly, plus an inner rocket stage and parachute systems.
And while the shuttle motors get most of the attention, the company has provided propulsion systems for the Minuteman III and Trident II D-5 missiles, submarine-launched intermediate range ballistic missiles and unmanned launch vehicles for commercial space activities, among others.
ATK Launch Systems Group has about 4,217 employees in Utah and will have more than 4,300 overall as the company has added programs previously managed by other ATK businesses. In addition to sites in Promontory, Magna and Clearfield, group employees operate in Huntsville, Ala.; Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla.; Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.; Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Omaha, Neb.
"Thiokol" is a combination word, referring to the Greek words for sulfur and glue. Those were key parts of the company's first major product, a liquid polymer sealant.
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com