In article .com,
Roger Coppock wrote:
But it definitely was not all politics.

What nonpolitical reason caused Utah to be picked then?

The fact that Thiokol was bidding segmented SRBs -- an established
technology that was well proven on Titan IIIC -- against the novel and
uncertain technology of big one-piece SRBs. Remember, the #1 priority
for the shuttle boosters was low development cost; had that not been the
dominant issue, they would have been liquids, not solids.

Also not insignificant was that segmented SRBs could fit within the
existing KSC infrastructure, while the handling problems of the immensely
massive one-piece SRBs would have required a number of changes, e.g.
heavier cranes in the VAB. (And there were technical unknowns there too:
you can *damage* a big solid if you don't handle it just so -- as witness
the Delta II explosion some years ago -- and solids are quite spectacularly
intolerant of even minor damage.)
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