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It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

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Blue Origin expands its rocket engine factory in Alabama

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin yesterday revealed that it is hiring 300 more engineers and expanding the rocket engine factory in Alabama in order to produce flight worthy BE-3 and BE-4 engines.

Blue Origin in Huntsville spent the pandemic supporting the company’s main engine plant in Kent Washington with parts for the company’s BE-3 and larger BE-4 engines, [site lead Nathan] Harris said. “We are now actually in the process of building our first set of complete engines through our facility,” he said. Those first engines will be produced this year.

…“We’re getting very close,” Harris said. “They’re still doing quite a bit of retrofitting. As you learn, anytime you retrofit something that’s over 60 years old, it takes a little bit more and there’s a little bit more that you unearth that was undiscovered.”

Harris said he expects to be testing the BE-3 “in the next couple of months followed shortly by the BE-4.” [emphasis mine]

This may be good news for both ULA’s Vulcan rocket as well as Blue Origin’s own New Glenn rocket. Both need the BE-4 engine, and both have been delayed years because it has not been ready on time. While the engine problems appear to have been resolved, Blue Origin had not put any thought into developing a practical and affordable manufacturing process that would allow it to build enough engines to serve both itself and ULA.

This expansion at the engine factory suggests the company is finally moving into its production phase. The highlighted sentence above however also tells us that the first flight worthy BE-4 engines are still months away, which will further delay launch of Vulcan and New Glenn. It is now certain that neither will launch this year, putting both rockets more than three years behind schedule.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • V-Man

    Elon did say that the factory was the hard part… But then again his engines worked. ;)

  • Doubting Thomas

    I wonder why they need to expand BE-3 production. BE-3 is for the New Shepard. Didn’t think that demand was high enough to warrant expanded production the New Shepard booster.

  • David M. Cook

    So Mr. Bezos has allowed his competition a 3-year head start? That seems like a very bad move in the business world!

  • John hare

    That three years behind can be an advantage in some cases. That being that one is diligently following all the moves of the competition and avoiding revealed mistakes and blind alleys. Of course that also requires one to be able to perform on that information.

  • Jeff Wright

    I don’t want anything Bezos related in my state actually. I wanted Dynetics to be better funded. I want Elon to come here.

  • Jay

    Doubting Thomas, New Glenn uses the BE-3 for the second stage as well.

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