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CEDAR CITY — Local business and education officials celebrated Cedar City's involvement and commitment to the aeronautics and space industry during a press conference Thursday, just over three weeks after NASA's successful launch of Artemis 1.
"This really is rocket science," joked Hal Murdock, CEO of American Pacific Corp. as he talked about how his company supplied 2 million pounds of ammonium perchlorate used in the Space Launch System rocket's solid-fuel boosters.
"Seventy percent of those big solid rocket boosters comes from Cedar City," added Murdock, who attended the Nov. 16 launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Murdock said he and three other AMPAC executives watched the Nov. 16 nighttime launch from the spectator viewing area more than three miles away.
"Visually, when it lights up, there's a lot of light, but you don't hear the sound for a few seconds. And so it's like, oh, that's just beautiful. It's awesome. It looks big and bright, and then the sound hits you," he said, describing it as a reverberatingly loud and powerful rumbling noise.
