ULA is building a new ship to help increase Vulcan launch cadence

ULA announced last week that it will be building a second cargo ship capable of transporting its Vulcan rocket hardware from its factory in Decatur, Alabama and its launch sites on both the East and West Coasts. The press release also emphasizes the importance Amazon‘s Kuiper satellite constellation plays in Vulcan’s launch services.

In order to help increase its launch cadence with the company’s new Vulcan rocket, United Launch Alliance (ULA) will be building a second “Roll-on/Roll-off” class ship for transporting rocket parts to its launch sites. The company has used a very similar ship, called RocketShip, to do that for its Atlas V and Delta IV components for years. It also moved the first Vulcan rocket on its journey to Florida before launch.

ULA will partner with Bollinger Shipyards in Louisiana and Bristol Harbor Group in Rhode Island to design and build the ship. However, renders make it to look like a copy of RocketShip.

Unlike SpaceX, who uses roads, ULA has used the water to transport its rockets thanks to the factory’s placement on the Tennessee River, which connects up with the Mississippi which then flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Once in the gulf, ULA’s ship could then swing around Florida to Port Canaveral or go through the Panama Canal on its way to California.

The genius part of RocketShip’s design, and most likely also SpaceShip’s, is it can operate smoothly both on the open sea and in shallow rivers.

The purpose for a second ship, which ULA hasn’t needed until now, is the hope to speedup its launch cadence of Vulcan. That increased cadence will be important for ULA’s largest customer, Amazon, to deploy its Kuiper satellite constellation quickly.

“Over the next year, ULA will be doubling its launch rate capacity in support of our Amazon customer and to ensure timely deliveries of the rockets to the launch site, we needed to build a second ship to support our transportation needs,” said Chris Ellerhorst, ULA’s vice president of the Kuiper Program.

ULA seems to be relying hard on Amazon to come through as its anchor customer for its new Vulcan rocket. With signs of a third provider of the Space Force’s large National Security Space Launch contract, gaining and keeping commercial customers will be key to ULA’s survival.

However, rumors still linger about ULA’s acquisition.