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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.