Meeting Unique Requirements to Transport Sensitive Cargo
Foss' Delta Marine, a 312-foot long and 8,000 horsepower supply ship, transports space-bound hardware, including the common booster cores, for the Boeing Delta IV rocket program. Designed to navigate shallow inland waterways as well as the open ocean, this versatile transport vessel hauls rocket components approximately 550 miles from the Boeing factory in Decatur, Alabama down the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway to Mobile Bay and into the Gulf of Mexico. The ship either rounds the Florida peninsula en route to Cape Canaveral or transits the Panama Canal en route to the western range Delta IV launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Designing the Delta Mariner required special engineering and project management during construction to meet Boeing's unique requirements for transporting the valuable and sensitive cargos.
The Foss M/V Delta Mariner heading down the Tombigbee Waterway
from Dacatur, Alabama to the Gulf
of Mexico.
Loading a Delta IV common booster core into the cargo bay of the M/V Delta Mariner.
The M/v Delta Mariner is build to transit tight waterways as well as operate
in open ocean with the world’s most valuable cargo.
Preparing to load a rocket
booster core.