NORTHERN VIRGINIA DAILY

Article Date: February 11, 2003

Avtex Fibers - Company Manufactured Fabric Used On Shuttle

Avtex was the world’s largest producer of rayon— an instrumental product for NASA’s space shuttle program.

By:  Mary Beiler

As he sits in his office, Tommy Wimer holds a delicate piece of fabric that has more meaning today than it did a fortnight ago.

While the fabric may look quite ordinary, the rayon yarn used to make it was manufactured at the Avtex Fibers plant in Front Royal and was used in the space shuttle Columbia.

“That’s it,” said Wimer, owner of House of Fabrics in Front Royal, as he held the piece in his hands.  “There is no more.”

Most people now associate the Avtex Fibers plant with contamination.

But before it was a dumping ground for chemicals, it was the world’s largest producer of rayon— an instrumental product for NASA’s space shuttle program.  That rayon was included in the makeup of Columbia, which was built in 1979.

Last week, the nation mourned the loss of the shuttle and its crew — six Americans and Israel’s first astronaut— as Columbia disintegrated over north central Texas at an altitude of about 200,000 feet as it was preparing to land in Florida.

While NASA continues to investigate different theories as to what happened, Front Royal is living the legacy of the role it played in the shuttle’s makeup.

“You couldn’t know [that would be Columbia’s fate],” Wimer said.

Avtex worked closely with NASA’s space shuttle program with its rayon production.  While there does not appear to be a direct correlation between the rayon and the Columbia tragedy, Avtex retirees said a piece of Front Royal was in fact part of the shuttle.

Fitzhugh “Fitz” Wickham, who worked at Avtex from 1953 to its closing in 1989, said the company make a precursor fiber used in the shuttle.

“Some of that same technology was used for the parts of the shuttle, for instance the nose of the shuttle, would be made of that same material,” Wickham said.

A supplier for the government bought the rayon fiber produced at Avtex.  That fiber then went through a process that burned off the fiber, except for the carbon in it.  The carbon that was left was heated again, then hardened so that it could be formed, according to Wickham.

“Rayon was just the basic material,” he said.  “It was a formed carbon source.”

While rayon was as insulator material on the shuttle Columbia, because it was only used in the nose cone, it is not considered to be related to the accident last week.

“Avtex had an indirect role,” Wickham said.