A tour of Blue Origin’s New Glenn factory
Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut on May 30, 2024 was given a detailed tour by founder/owner Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin’s New Glenn factory at Cape Canaveral.
It is incredible to watch, because for the very first time, Bezos shows us what the company is finally doing to prepare for the first New Glenn launch, targeting no earlier than the end of September. Unlike every other visual shown of this facility in the past, this tour actually shows a factory floor where work is going on.
Much of the backgrounds inside the stages have apparently been put out of focus to protect Blue Origin’s proprietary rights. No matter.
As for the state of the manufacture of the BE-4 engines, Bezos stated that he expects next year to be building one engine every three days. Cross your fingers that he is right.
I have embedded the video of the tour below. Enjoy, and get excited by the competition and capability this rocket will create when it finally starts flying.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut on May 30, 2024 was given a detailed tour by founder/owner Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin’s New Glenn factory at Cape Canaveral.
It is incredible to watch, because for the very first time, Bezos shows us what the company is finally doing to prepare for the first New Glenn launch, targeting no earlier than the end of September. Unlike every other visual shown of this facility in the past, this tour actually shows a factory floor where work is going on.
Much of the backgrounds inside the stages have apparently been put out of focus to protect Blue Origin’s proprietary rights. No matter.
As for the state of the manufacture of the BE-4 engines, Bezos stated that he expects next year to be building one engine every three days. Cross your fingers that he is right.
I have embedded the video of the tour below. Enjoy, and get excited by the competition and capability this rocket will create when it finally starts flying.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Another look behind the scenes at Blue Origin from December 2023.
https://youtu.be/QVa1bP92TIg?si=fzB2o5po1tNDfrff
They would likely have been flying already were it not for Bezos’ number one distraction…..Bubbles.
The contrast between those gleaming white high tech facilities and the nearly open-air foundry like atmosphere where Starship is built is amazing. Even the newer portions of the Star Factory that do look like an old school indoor aerospace production facility don’t go as far as these facilities of Blue’s with all the machine guidance pathways, specialized carts, dedicated gantries, etc.
The difference in attitude shows on the vehicle itself. Bezos had the typical “look at this amazingly huge part” or “check out this whiz-bang gizmo” attitude, which is entirely opposite to “the best part is no part” that Elon pushes.
I was particularly struck by Bezos bragging about the biggest hydraulic actuator on a spacecraft ever for the first stage fins, while SpaceX is in the process of reacting to lessons learned and removing hydraulics entirely from their vehicles in favor of electric motors.
As compared to being at the Starbase for Starship, Tim Dodd had to do a lot of the talking and had to get technical for Elon to open up. Elon would respond regarding issues he thought Tim Dodd understood. This Blue Origin interview was what I thought it would b. Tim appeared giddy and seemed to giggle a lot, and Jeff Bezos did most of the talking. Pretty much what I thought it would be. Very attractive factory, though.
I found the comment Bezos made wrt the flight control computers that “everything is 1 fault operative” somewhat surprising if not alarming. It is probably unfair to judge from just an off hand comment like that, but 1 fault operative is the bare minimum for safe flight I would think, and seems quite inadequate for a vehicle intending to be Man Rated.
I read a detailed article about the architecture of the Space Shuttle flight control computer in Aviation Week and Space Technology back in the day, and that system while a computational knat by comparison to modern CPUs was a master class in high reliability operation. It used 5 computers running in parallel wired together with a real time voting architecture that would isolate units that diverted from unanimous agreement and defined fail over scenarios down to choosing the most likely reliable between just 2 operative processors that then disagree.
When it comes time to enter the atmosphere, navigate to your landing destination (with no or minimal external assistance as is the case of Luna or Mars), and then stick your landing or Chopstick Catch, your flight control system simply HAS to work flawlessly. Including if one or more power buses go off line, sensors fail, or computers glitch for whatever reason.
One would think Blue Origin knows better because spacecraft operate in a high radiation and most extreme environment far beyond that of an Amazon data center. At least I hope so. : )
I watched half at lunch and the other half at home. I noticed that Jeff can now talk the talk on technical issues.
So I did not enjoy the segment that was all blurred. Why show the segment it if it is all blurred? I did enjoy looking at the BE-3U and listening to the discussion about the dual-inline turbine system.
I know I rag on Bezos about the same six BE-4 engines being displayed, but I only saw one, the test article. It was hard to tell but did the first stage actually have all seven BE-4 engines? We saw the tanks, but no engines. Are all the BE-4 engines going to ULA’s Vulcan?
One other question I had was Bezos’ comment was about the BE-4 being a copy of the RD-180. I do not have all the specs about the BE-4, there are some performance numbers that are close to the RD-180, but the chamber pressure is different, besides using a different fuel.
Bezos mentioned that the engines were in a different building, and the booster bottom section was clearly too early in the process to have engines installed on it, that will presumably happen after the booster itself is assembled, based on how everyone else does it.
I took the “everything is single fault tolerant” as to mean everything is “at least” single fault tolerant. Presumably some parts are at higher levels. It doesn’t make sense to assume the company owner is speaking with exact engineering precision in a free-flowing discussion like that.
All: Blue Origin’s engine factory is in Alabama. This tour was in Florida, where the rocket is built and assembled. Thus, we saw very little about the BE-4.
It is however a concern that first stage did not appear to have any BE-4 engines, considering it is intended to launch in late September. The tour was at the end of May, so it is quite possible the engines were installed afterward. We shall see.
Cost vs. performance tradeoff. Bezos understands what the goal is. Before Blue Origin and SpaceX, engineers focused on performance, but this often was costly. They thought more mass to orbit was the way to go, but the price tag kept out many possible companies and their ideas for using space. Early on, Bezos and Musk decided that lowering the price tag to orbit was preferable to putting the most mass in orbit.
A BE-4 engine every three days gives us over 100 engines a year. This will allow both Vulcan and New Glenn to fly several times a year without reuse, but reusability has been proved to be desirable, as a fleet of rockets has to be built only once, then each one is available for many launches. If you build ten rockets a year and fly each one ten times, you can sustain a launch cadence of 100 launches per year. Without reusability, you have to build 100 rockets each year to sustain that rate.
That was a good tour, even the blurred part. Just because it was blurry does not mean we cannot make out the general idea of the design. We miss out on the picky details that make a tour most interesting but could leak out proprietary information. I am impressed that Bezos is that well versed in his rockets. We heard a lot about rockets in general and New Glenn in particular.
Bezos practically invited Dodd to tour the engine factory, and I look forward to that tour. Dodd did not start out as a rocket scientist, but he quickly learned a whole lot about rockets and their engines. He undoubtedly is even more eager for that tour.
Having Bezos interviewed by Tim offers an interesting contrast to Musk (Lex Luthor vs Tony Stark? OK, Bezos is friendlier here than I’d expect Lex to be).
Bezos is enthusiastic, smart and knows his stuff.
But I get the feeling watching the interview, that Bezos is a student trying to impress the professor with his knowledge.
Bezos runs around pointing to and explaining different things his engineers did.
Musk is different. He doesn’t strive to prove he understands what is there, he doesn’t have to – he was involved in it’s creation.
When Musk walks around and points things out he seems to be constantly mulling over the designs, thinking about whether it’s being done in the optimum way.
And Blue Origin is following the classic NASA/ULA/Boeing/Ariannespace model of spending a lot of time to build a complete rocket and hoping it all works out of the box.
It helps that Bezos and Musk can fund things out of their own pockets of course.
BTW, anyone know why tour was recorded in May but is only being posted this week?
My theory would be because that’s how long it took for the edited video to get approved by BO’s legal and tech teams (hence the blurring).
Bezos has a much better grasp of his outfit than many other CEOs
Blue Origin is what Boeing should be.
OT..nice model kits here;
https://www.cozmicscalemodels.com/