Jeff Bezos touts a full-power firing of Blue Origin’s next-generation BE-4 rocket engine

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https://www.geekwire.com/2019/jeff-...blue-origins-next-generation-4-rocket-engine/

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is showing off a picture of his Blue Origin space venture’s BE-4 rocket engine going full blast during a hot-fire test in Texas.

“BE-4 continues to rack up time on the test stand,” Bezos said in an Instagram postaccompanied by a picture of today’s full-power engine test.

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Getting the BE-4 into operation is crucial to Blue Origin’s space ambitions.

The rocket engine, which runs on liquefied natural gas and packs 550,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff, is destined for use on Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket. It’s also supposed to power United Launch Alliance’s next-generation, semi-reusable Vulcan rocket.

Both those rockets are currently scheduled to have their maiden launches in 2021.

Bezos’ company tends to play its cards closer to the vest than rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has been letting its fans pass along real-time streaming video of its Raptor rocket engine test firings and Starship hops in South Texas over the past few months.

Blue Origin has been testing BE-4 engine components at its West Texas proving ground for more than two years, and the course has not always run smooth. In May 2017, for instance, Bezos acknowledged that a test of the engine’s powerpack went awry, resulting in the loss of hardware.

The fact that he’s sharing a picture of the full-power firing on a summery Friday night suggests that the test program is on track. But it also suggests there are more test firings to go.

Bezos has said more than once that he’s spending $1 billion or more on Blue Originannually. Just in the past few days, Bezos sold off more than $1.8 billion of Amazon stock, and it’s a sure bet that some of that cash is going toward the BE-4.

When the BE-4 gets an honest-to-goodness thumbs-up, that’ll clear the way for engine production to shift from Blue Origin’s headquarters in Kent, Wash., to a 200,000-square-foot factory that’s currently under construction in Huntsville, Ala. That, in turn, will set the stage for New Glenn rocket assembly to move ahead at Blue Origin’s 750,000-square-foot facility in Florida.

Bottom line? Keep an eye on Bezos’ Instagram account and Blue Origin’s Twitter account for word that the BE-4 has passed its final test.

 

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Blue Origin's BE-4 next to SpaceX's Raptor (BFR) and Merlin (Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy) engines

 

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With turbopump issues “sorted out,” BE-4 rocket engine moves into production

“That is always a good moment in time in the development program.”…

arstechnica.com

With turbopump issues “sorted out,” BE-4 rocket engine moves into production

Blue Origin appears to have solved some development issues related to the turbopumps in its powerful BE-4 rocket engine.

United Launch Alliance Chief Executive Tory Bruno said Friday that the problem was "sorted out," and that the full-scale, flight-configured BE-4 engine is now accumulating a lot of time on the test stand. Bruno made his comments about one hour into The Space Show with David Livingston.

Bruno's company, ULA, is buying the BE-4 engine to provide thrust for the first stage of its upcoming Vulcan-Centaur rocket. This booster may make its debut next year, although ULA is still awaiting delivery of BE-4s for the first flight. Two of these large engines—each providing about 25-percent more thrust than the RS-25s used on the Space Shuttle—will power each Vulcan rocket.

Blue Origin has been hotfire-testing the BE-4 engine for about three years, but there have been rumors of development challenges. Bruno himself confirmed during an interview two months ago that the turbopumps, which feed propellant at high pressure into the BE-4 combustion chamber, still required some troubleshooting. "It isn’t easy, but we know we can do it," he told the Denver Business Journal in August.

Now, those problems have evidently been sorted out. Bruno said the focus at Blue Origin is shifting from development of the engine to ramping up production. "That is always a good moment in time in the development program, because that means your big technical stuff is behind you," he said during Friday's interview.

Blue Origin has spent the better part of the past decade developing the BE-4, which is a staged-combustion design running on methane and liquid oxygen. The engine will power both Vulcan-Centaur and also the company's New Glenn rocket, which is unlikely to debut before at least 2022. It may seem odd for competing rockets to use the same engine, but as Bruno has explained, it was less expensive for ULA to procure its main engines from Blue Origin than Aerojet Rocketdyne.



During his appearance on The Space Show, Bruno said ULA was still planning to reuse BE-4 engines by separating them from the rocket after it was done firing and recovering them. However, he declined to put a date on when that activity might begin.

He also expressed excitement about the performance of Vulcan's new Centaur V upper stage. The current Centaur III vehicle uses a single RL-10, but the new Centaur V will use a pair of uprated RL-10s. The new upper stage should provide more than twice as much energy thanks to its low mass and high performance. "I'm really excited about that," Bruno said. "It's a pretty incredible upper stage."

 

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