Austin developed more than 2,000 design and engineering drawings for the Delta IV facility.
Construction of the Delta IV plant began in the spring of 1998. Early in the project, Boeing revised its original plans — reducing the facility from 2.5 million square feet to 1.5 million square feet.
ever, the market continued to demand larger and more powerful rockets. During the mid1990s, a shift began to occur, predicting greater commercial applications and a larger class of rockets capable of a much higher payload. In response, Boeing began developing the larger Delta IV rocket. Concurrently, Lockheed Martin was also developing their Atlas V vehicle for commercial applications. Although the government was the primary customer of all early launch systems, the heightened demand for commercial products led the government to limit its initial order to both Boeing and Lockheed Martin, offering only a partial order to both companies with the balance of the order to be awarded later, based on certain criteria. A race was on to see who would get the balance of the government order. At the time, Lockheed Martin was a bit ahead of Boeing in the development of their rocket, which placed extreme pressure on the Delta IV program, both in development and pro-
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