Washington DC – Dec 4, 1997 – The advanced Delta IV expendable rocket project moved a step closer to reality this week, as Boeing selected contractors to build the assembly facility where the big booster's common core will take shape.
The Austin Company of Cleveland, Ohio in partnership
with the J.S. Alberici Construction Company of St. Louis, Missouri received
the contract award to fabricate and construct the 2 million square foot
facility in Decatur, Georgia where the Delta IV core units will be assembled.
The factory will assemble the center unit that Boeing envisions as the core
for a family of three sizes of Delta IV rockets. Once built, the core units
will be shipped via barge to Stennis Space Center in Mississippi where in
another facility to be built by Boeing, the Rocketdyne-made RS-68 engines
will be refurbished after test firings on converted Space Shuttle engine
stands and installed on the cores.
The completed units will then be shipped
once again by barge to either Vandenberg Air Base in California or Cape
Canaveral in Florida, where the Delta IVs will launch into space. Ground
breaking for the Decatur plant is scheduled for late this month or early
January at the latest. Completion is scheduled for 1999. First Delta IV
launch is expected in 2001.
