NASA Press Release 99-100
August 27, 1999

NASA is finalizing plans to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for powered test flights of its X-34 rocket plane, scheduled to begin next year.

In order to carry out X-34 powered flights outside the boundaries of existing flight ranges, an Environmental Impact Statement is required. An EIS may also constitute a step toward establishing the feasibility and desirability, from an environmental perspective, of powered flights involving other, future NASA experimental vehicles. The X-34 EIS process plan includes California, New Mexico and Florida as reasonable alternative sites to carry out X-34 powered flights or flight
testing of other future NASA experimental vehicles at some time in the future.

Other states involved in the EIS process are Nevada and Utah, which the X-34 would fly over during California-based test flights. Those states also are being evaluated as contingency landing sites. North and South Carolina are being evaluated for contingency landings for Florida based flights. The final test plan will not be approved until after the final EIS is issued.

The first step will be a Notice of Intent published by the end of 1999 in the Federal Register. It will provide the public with a summary of all potential flight paths for the experimental craft for operations based in those three states. After the notice is published, public meetings will be held in each area under consideration.

"We want public involvement," said Dr. Rebecca McCaleb, manager of the Environmental Engineering Department at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL. "We are very interested in ensuring that we evaluate any issues that may exist specific to the sites under consideration."

Marshall manages the X-34 project for NASA. The unpiloted, reusable X-34 is designed to demonstrate technologies and operations necessary to cut the cost of putting payloads into orbit from $10,000 per pound to $1,000 per pound.