Tag: New Glenn

Blue Origin gets its fourth launch contract for New Glenn

8:50 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has signed its fourth launch contract for putting satellites in orbit with its New Glenn rocket, this time with the Japanese company Sky Perfect JSAT.

Blue Origin now has satellite launch agreements with four companies. Last year, the company reported deals with Eutelsat, OneWeb and mu Space. Today Blue Origin said its memorandum of understanding with Thailand-based mu Space has been converted into a firm contract for a geostationary satellite launch.

No launch price was revealed, though I suspect the price is very competitive with SpaceX prices.

I expect that by the mid-2020s, these two companies will be completely dominating the commercial large satellite market. The one threat to that dominance will be whether that large satellite market will be able to compete with the new tiny cubesat and nanosat market that is only now beginning to develop. It could be that by the mid-2020s, almost all unmanned communications satellites will be small, and that the market for these big rockets will have shifted to manned space.

More likely, we will have a very vibrant smallsat market, a vibrant largesat market, and a emerging manned market, all vying for launch contracts from many different rocket companies. Things should be quite exciting.

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Testing of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine continues

7:41 am

Though he released few details, a Blue Origin company official noted at a conference last week that the company has been continuing its tests of the BE-4 engine.

“We’re getting longer duration burn times. We’re going though validating the turbomachinery very closely,” said Jim Centore, group lead for orbital mission operations at Blue Origin, during a panel discussion on launch systems at the conference. Centore didn’t disclose many details about those tests, such as thrust levels or the burn times, either of individual tests or cumulatively. “We’re continuing to make good progress,” he said. “We’ll continue that for the next several months.”

The BE-4 is the linchpin for numerous other future rockets. Blue Origin wants to use it for building its New Glenn rocket. ULA is considering it as the first stage engine for its Vulcan rocket. In both cases, design and construction of the rockets themselves can’t really proceed until the engine is locked down.

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Update on the development of Blue Origin’s orbital rocket New Glenn

9:36 am

Link here. The article provides a lot of interesting details about Blue Origin’s plans and status, including this tidbit about the New Glenn assembly facility, now expected to be finished by February 2018 at the latest:

The facility will largely be used to build the second and third stages for New Glenn, with Blue Origin actually planning to construct very few first stage boosters.

With each first stage booster planned to be reused up to 100 times, the factory will mainly concentrate on – and for large periods of time is only planned to – produce 2nd and 3rd stages. Mr. Henderson noted that once the first stage boosters are retrieved after flight, their storage will be managed across the refurbishment facility at LC-36 (capable of holding three or four boosters), the integration facility at LC-36 (also capable of holding “at least” three or four boosters), and the Merritt Island production facility (which can hold four boosters).

This would seemingly reveal that Blue Origin plans to rely on roughly only 12 first stage boosters at a time (once New Glenn is fully operational and recovery is “routine”), relying almost exclusively on booster recovery and refurbishment to maintain its first stage boosters manifest.

The article also notes the Blue Origin intends to always land its stages on a barge, and is about to finalize the purchase of that barge.

What I am puzzled about is the almost complete disappearance from the news of the company’s suborbital project, New Shepard. The last news story I’ve seen, from mid-September, said they hoped to resume test flights before the end of the year, with manned flights in 2018. Since then, however, there has been no updates, which makes me wonder if Blue Origin has decided to put that suborbital tourism project aside.

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Blue Origin successfully completes first test of BE-4 rocket engine

5:22 pm

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has successfully conducted the first static fire test of its BE-4 rocket engine.

The test was six seconds long. The company has not released any further details, other than to say it was a success. This not only puts them closer to building their New Glenn rocket, it increases the chances that ULA will choose this engine for its Vulcan rocket.

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Blue Origin considering military certification for New Glenn

4:44 pm

Capitlism in space: Blue Origin is in discussions with military and national security officials in order to find out what the company must do to get its New Glenn rocket, presently under development, certified to bid on military launches.

Only a few days ago I speculated that Blue Origin might have a chance to bid on the Air Force’s new request for proposals for launches after 2022. This story confirms that they are thinking the same thing.

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Blue Origin inks deal with satellite company to use New Glenn

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has signed a deal with the satellite company mu Space to use its as yet unbuilt New Glenn rocket to launch a satellite sometime in the next decade.

This isn’t really a contract, since I am sure that mu Space will have the option to switch to a different rocket. Nonetheless, it signals faith in Blue Origin. It also indicates that, though no price was mentioned, Blue Origin is probably providing the satellite company with a significant price break to encourage them to make the deal, thus demonstrating the growing competitiveness of today’s launch industry. This is also the third contract deal for New Glenn.

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Blue Origin to build its rocket engines in Alabama

4:48 pm

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin announced today that it will build its BE-4 rocket engine factory in Alabama.

There is one caveat. They will only commit to the factory once they have won their contract to build the BE-4 engine for ULA’s Vulcan rocket. And that contract is not yet awarded.

Obviously, this decision has political components. By picking Alabama, Blue Origin hopes to blunt the political favoritism in Alabama to Aerojet Rocketdyne’s rocket engine, thus improving their chances of winning the ULA contract.

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Engine test of Blue Origin BE-4 engine goes bad

9:12 am

Capitalism n space: Blue Origin today revealed that an engine test of its BE-4 rocket engine, intended for sale to ULA as well as the basis for their own New Glenn rocket, went wrong.

In a rare update, the Blue Origin space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos reported that it lost a set of powerpack test hardware for its BE-4 rocket engine over the weekend, but added that such a setback is “not unusual” during development. “That’s why we always set up our development programs to be hardware-rich,” the company tweeted today. “Back into testing soon.”

The announcement was via a tweet, and they have released no additional details.

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Bezos sells about $1 billion of his Amazon shares

8:39 am

Capitalism in space: This past week Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos raised about $1 billion in cash by selling 1 million shares of his stock in Amazon.

Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos sold about $1 billion in company stock as part of a planned divestiture, a month after the world’s third-richest man said he spends about that amount annually on his space exploration company Blue Origin LLC.

Bezos sold 1 million shares from Tuesday to Thursday ranging in price from about $935 to $950 per share, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday. He still owns 79.9 million shares, or about 17 percent of the company, down from 83 million shares at the end of 2015.

What this means for Blue Origin is that Bezos has very deep pockets, and will likely be able to finance the development of its very big New Glenn rocket without outside help. That the company will likely also win contracts along the way for the company’s BE-4 rocket engine will also not hurt Bezos’ financial position.

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A look at Blue Origin’s upcoming plans

8:38 am

Two stories today give us a peek at Blue Origin’s future plans.

The first outlines how the company plans to launch its orbital rocket, New Glenn, from Florida. The second provides a photo tour of the company’s suborbital New Shepard capsule, as designed for tourist flights.

I must mention that I have been disappointed at the lack of test flights for New Shepard in recent months. Their last flight was in October, almost six months ago, when their test of the capsule’s launch abort system was supposedly a success. No tests since, even though they have said they planned the first manned test flights this year. I am beginning to wonder if they have decided to shift resources to the orbital system and thus slow the suborbital program down.

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Blue Origin signs second contract for New Glenn

11:33 pm

The competition heats up: One day after announcing its first launch contract, Blue Origin announced today a second contract for its New Glenn rocket.

In a tweet this morning, Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos said OneWeb has reserved five launches using the rocket, bringing to six the number of missions in the New Glenn manifest.

So far I can find no information about the prices being charged by Blue Origin for these launches. I suspect they are giving their customers discounts for being the first, but this is not confirmed yet.

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