Blue Origin begins third major expansion of Huntsville facility
Blue Origin has been issued a $8.4 million building permit by local Huntsville authorities as part of the third major expansion of its rocket-manufacturing facility there.
According to the report, of the 377 permits issued so far in October and November, this was the largest. All three expansions have occurred in the past three years.
The article however includes this ridiculous statement:
The aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin has emerged as one of the top commercial spaceflight companies as the country has placed a renewed effort on returning to the moon and eventually to Mars.
How could Blue Origin be “one of the top commercial spaceflight companies” when it has still not launched anything into orbit? Even the tiny rocket startup Astra, now on the verge of bankruptcy, put more mass into orbit than Blue Origin. Everyone has, since the mass Blue Origin has put into orbit so far equals a nice fat zero.
This expansion however does suggest that something positive might finally be happening at the company. With the removal of Bob Smith as CEO and Jeff Bezos now living in Florida and closer to the action it could be that the continuing string of non-accomplishment that has made Blue Origin a bit of a joke in the space industry might possibly be ending.
We shall have to wait and see, however.
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Blue Origin has been issued a $8.4 million building permit by local Huntsville authorities as part of the third major expansion of its rocket-manufacturing facility there.
According to the report, of the 377 permits issued so far in October and November, this was the largest. All three expansions have occurred in the past three years.
The article however includes this ridiculous statement:
The aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin has emerged as one of the top commercial spaceflight companies as the country has placed a renewed effort on returning to the moon and eventually to Mars.
How could Blue Origin be “one of the top commercial spaceflight companies” when it has still not launched anything into orbit? Even the tiny rocket startup Astra, now on the verge of bankruptcy, put more mass into orbit than Blue Origin. Everyone has, since the mass Blue Origin has put into orbit so far equals a nice fat zero.
This expansion however does suggest that something positive might finally be happening at the company. With the removal of Bob Smith as CEO and Jeff Bezos now living in Florida and closer to the action it could be that the continuing string of non-accomplishment that has made Blue Origin a bit of a joke in the space industry might possibly be ending.
We shall have to wait and see, however.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Blue’s Huntsville operation is not a rocket plant. Blue Origin does its rocket manufacturing in two places – Kent. WA for New Shepards and the giant factory it built some years ago just outside the gates of KSC for – it is said, anyway – New Glenn. Thus far, as you and we readers both know well, actual manufacturing of New Glenns has proven merely aspirational, with flight-ready hardware still very much yet to put in an appearance.
What Blue is supposedly doing in Huntsville is manufacturing BE-4 and BE-3U engines. But we have seen none of the latter. And what few BE-4s we have seen to-date have been slowly and painfully turned out at the much smaller Kent, WA factory. The Huntsville “engine factory” has allegedly been supplying parts to Kent but has yet to independently produce a single BE-4 or BE-3U so far as I am aware. That makes the purpose of its previous expansions since its original “completion” as mysterious as this reported new one now in the works.
With the clocks on major time-sensitive launch contracts ticking down both for Blue and for ULA, one hopes this latest expansion of Blue’s Huntsville works soon results in actual engine production. Expansions toward this end are certainly justified as the annual capacity of the original Huntsville factory, given at the time of its alleged “completion” some years ago, was for a combined total of only 48 engines per year, split between BE-4s and BE-3Us. But, thus far, total production for both the original and expanded versions of the Huntsville engine “factory” has been zero.
If 2024 does not bring a radical change to the status quo ante at Blue under its upcoming new management then a year hence Amazon will likely have been forced to go, cap in hand, to SpaceX for Kuiper launches and Blue will be a failed Potemkin village.
I hope this works out better for the area than the rail car building company that – I’m pretty sure – occupied this facility in the beginning. That was a boondoggle from the beginning and cost the taxpayers of the state millions in “investment” dollars.
$8.4 million isn’t much of a building.
I think if you worded it to say ““one of the top commercial spaceflight fancy building complex companies,” it would be quite accurate!
The link in the post is bad, can’t read the source article.
David Eastman: Thank you. Link is fixed.
I’d love to see Blue groveling over at Roscosmos for launches.
James Street,
$8.4 million will actually buy a decent-sized pre-fab steel building. And it will buy a bigger one in AL than the same sum would in WA.
Shallow Minded Reader,
Aside from ITAR and sanction considerations, the Russians don’t have anywhere near the vehicle production and launch capacity to fill in for Blue and ULA. I’m afraid your fantasy of Jeff Bezos going to Roscosmos to borrow a cup of launch will remain very much in the same category as all of your notions about Russia winning its spectacularly ill-advised war with Ukraine.
Musk invested a lot of money in Starbase…getting a real production line.
Bezos is just doing it by fits and starts… begrudging every cent.
@ Dick Eagleson,
Can you link to whatever thread you mentioned with a discussion on the Russia – Ukraine war. I have some “boots on the ground” information on the opinions of the Swedish folks here, and and a few ideas I wouldn’t mind bouncing around the community here. ( Some of which you might find surprising )
Lee–
So… is everyone in Sweden fed up, yet?
Looks like the Irish are finally going to stand up and mow the lawn, all the way.
A bit pro Russian, but information seems very solid:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/
When I review SpaceX documents I think better check this over carefully. It’s gonna happen.
When I review a NASA or ESA document I think, do a good review, it is likely to happen.
When I review a Blue Origin document I thing, I really need to be careful look it over carefully, because otherwise I might get sloppy because this isn’t happening.