Decatur rocket maker ULA blasts through milestones - WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL

Rocket maker United Launch Alliance, which manufactures Delta IV and Atlas V launch vehicles in Decatur, is marking an important step forward in U.S. space flight and ULA's role in it.  

NASA said that ULA has finished up a year-long study, part of the process to help establish that ULA's Atlas V rocket will be safe for manned space missions. 

It's a big step towards the Atlas V becoming the next launch vehicle to take astronauts into orbit - and beyond. 

"We still are innovating in this country," said Dan Caughran, ULA  Director of Production Operations.  "I think manned missions, early test manned missions, could be as early as late 2016 into 2017."

The news comes as ULA formally unveils its new exhibit at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.  The 250 square foot exhibit was inaugurated during the Werner Von Braun Memorial Dinner and sits beneath the massive Saturn V rocket, which dominates the Davidson Center for Space Exploration, surrounded by other legendary hardware from the U.S. Space program.   

In such a place, ULA is among family.  While it's a relatively new entity, only about six years old, as a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, it's already got plenty of connection to the space program.

"Our history and our roots go back to both the Mercury and the Gemini missions that flew on top of the history of our vehicles, so I think we can continue building on that," said Caughran.

There's even a bit of poetry to be divined here with the ULA exhibit in the Space and Rocket Center standing as an appropriate illustration for the ULA presence in the Tennessee Valley.

"Atlas and Delta are another product of the Tennessee Valley," said Deborah Barnhart, CEO of the Space and Rocket Center.  "And it's not just a good thing to have it here.  They're employing 839 people.  They have a $260-million impact on our economy annually, so they're also a good neighbor for Huntsville and Decatur."

After the retirement of America's space shuttle fleet, space supporters say a return to manned space flight on American spacecraft will be a welcome change from renting seats on Russian rockets. 

"Atlas and Delta have been the workhorses of reliability for space transportation for decades," said Barnhart.  "Now that they're going to be manned rating them in the next decade, we're going to have a reliable ride to space for a long, long time."

At the unveiling of the exhibit, Barnhart took particular pleasure in pointing out that many of those employees who now make rockets at ULA are themselves graduates of Space Camp at the Space and Rocket Center.

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