1996 June 14

A full-scale segment of a graphite-composite wing designed for a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) was successfully "tested to failure" at NASA's Langley Research Center. This was the first structural test of a full-scale component designed and fabricated to validate the use of graphite-composite primary structures for RLVs. The purpose of the test was to determine the maximum load that the wing-box could carry as well as to understand how it would fail.

1996 July 2

Vice President Al Gore announced today at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, that Lockheed Martin had won the competition for the X-33 Phase II contract over contenders McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell International.

1996 October 1

NASA filed Notice of Intent 96-118 with the Federal Register of its intention to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) and to conduct scoping meetings for the development and testing of the X-33 vehicle. The EIS addressed environmental issues associated with the fabrication, assembly, testing, and preparation of the flight operations and landing sites associated with the X-33 flight vehicle.

1996 November 13

NASA's Director of Space Transportation, Gary Payton, and the Vice President for Lockheed Martin's Reusable Launch Vehicle Program, T. K. Mattingly, held an informal meeting at 11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, November 13th, to discuss program status and answer questions on the X-33,. which was undergoing its Preliminary Design Review that week in California to formalize the engineering baseline of the X-33 vehicle prior to moving on to the detailed design phase.

1996 December 18

Announcement of the completion of the three-day Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for the X-33 Ground Support System and Launch Facility. Individual PDRs already had been conducted on the aerospike engine, the hydrogen tank, the structure, and most subsystems.

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