The company received $1.5 million from the City of Pueblo to fund the project. In exchange, Boeing will employ an additional 150 full-time employees for a period of five years beginning August 2000.

Construction of the building and related site improvements is slated to begin in early September, and is expected to be complete by March 2000. Beginning in first quarter 2000, Delta IV 13.1-foot (4-meter) medium fairing segments, fabricated in Huntington Beach, will be shipped to the Pueblo plant for manufacturing completion.

The plant also will assemble the medium vehicle's upper stage, in addition to its current operations of assembly, integration and testing of components for the Delta II and III programs. The Pueblo site expansion is the most recent installment in a comprehensive infrastructure development plan to support the company's Delta IV family of rockets.

Construction is 80 percent complete on a new 1.5 million-square-foot facility in Decatur, Ala., earmarked for low-cost production of the common booster core, a major component of the Delta IV. To date, Boeing has hired 300 workers in Decatur and plans to hire a total of 600 by year-end.

Employees are producing parts of the first Delta IV rocket - which will be used as a static test fire unit - in the factory's chemical processing, weld and assembly centers. That rocket will be shipped to NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center, Miss., for testing in March 2000.

Construction continues on Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., to accommodate the Delta IV family of rockets. This will be the nation's first launch complex to be built from the ground up in 30 years.

Awarded to Raytheon Engineers & Constructors, the project calls for construction of a new launch pad, mobile service tower (MST), fixed umbilical tower (FUT), 75,000-square-foot horizontal integration facilities as well as support and test facilities.

To date, over 30,000 cubic yards of concrete have been poured at the site. The launch pad deck, flame duct and the technical support rooms below are nearly complete. The Mobile Service Tower (MST) structural steel is erected to the 114-foot level (platform level 4). And work has begun on installing the 850,000-gallon liquid hydrogen tank and the 250,000-gallon liquid oxygen propellant tanks. Modifications to launch support buildings also are under way.

The Boeing Delta IV family includes five launch vehicles with payload capabilities ranging from 9,200 to 29,000 pounds: Medium, Heavy and three commercial variants of the Medium vehicle known collectively as the Medium-plus variants.

The Boeing facility in Huntington Beach, Calif., houses Delta IV program management, engineering and some manufacturing functions. Boeing designs and manufactures the RS-68 engine in Canoga Park, Calif., at its Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power unit. The company's plant in El Paso, Texas, will build electrical components.