Jim Cast
Headquarters, Washington, DC                    March 3, 1999
(Phone:  202/358-1779)

Dom Amatore
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
(Phone:  256/544-0031)

Fred Brown
Dryden Flight Research Center, CA
(Phone:  661/258-2663)

Ellen Bendell
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, CA
(Phone:  661/572-4155)

NOTE TO EDITORS:  N99-12

X-33 LAUNCH SITE BRIEFING SET FOR MARCH 5

     NASA and Lockheed Martin X-33 program officials will brief
news media about the completion of construction on the X-33
launch site and its operations at 1 p.m. EST on Friday, March 5.
The briefing will originate from NASA's Dryden Flight Research
Center, Edwards, CA, and will be broadcast on NASA Television.

     Scheduled to participate in the briefing are:

*  Steve Ishmael, NASA X-33 deputy program manager for
operations, Palmdale, CA
*  Carl Meade, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works X-33 manager for
flight assurance, Palmdale, CA

     Construction of the 30-acre, $32 million X-33 Flight
Operations Center began in November 1997 and was completed in
just a little more than 12 months, on time and under budget.
This unique facility marks a dramatic departure from traditional
launch sites.  Designers took advantage of lessons learned over
years of operating launch sites and aircraft facilities to create
a complex that supports aircraft-like operations for a launch
vehicle, which in turn supports the NASA X-33 program's overall
goal of low-cost access to space.

     The X-33 is a half-scale, suborbital technology demonstrator
of a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) Lockheed Martin calls the
VentureStar.  The goal of the program is to demonstrate
advanced technologies that will dramatically increase launch
vehicle reliability and lower the cost of putting a pound of
payload into space from $10,000 to $1,000.

     Currently being developed by NASA and Lockheed Martin Skunk
Works, Palmdale, CA, the X-33 is scheduled for a series of 15
flight tests beginning in mid-2000.  It eventually will fly at
speeds between Mach 13 and 15 and at an altitude of 60 miles to
prove its technologies and systems.

     NASA Television is available on GE-2, Transponder 9C at 85
degrees West longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency
of 3880 MHz and a1udio of 6.8 MHz.  News media will be able to ask
questions of the program representatives from participating NASA
Centers.

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