Tag: New Glenn

Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine experiences more delays

9:27 am

Capitalism in space: Though Blue Origin appears only a few weeks from delivering its first flightworthy BE-4 rocket engine to ULA for use in that company’s new not-yet-launched Vulcan rocket, the second flightworthy engine is further delayed due to technical problems discovered when static fire testing began.

Sources told Ars that the first engine was put onto the test stand in Texas early in August, but almost as soon as work began to hot-fire the powerful engine, an issue was discovered with the engine build. This necessitated a shipment back to Blue Origin’s factory in mid-August, as the company’s test stands in Texas do not allow for more than minor work.

As a result of this technical issue, ULA now appears likely to get one flight engine this month, but it probably will not receive the other one for installation onto the Vulcan rocket before mid-October, assuming a clean battery of tests in Texas.

This issue almost certainly means that Vulcan will not attempt its first launch this year. The rocket is thus more than three years behind schedule.

The problems outlined here however are far greater than simply the technical issues with this one engine. First, Blue Origin’s pace of operations continues to be far too leisurely. Nothing the company has done since 2017 has proceeded with any sense of urgency, and thus neither ULA nor Blue Origin have been able to launch their rockets.

Second, and far more important, Blue Origin is supposed to be manufacturing the BE-4 for two rockets, both Vulcan and its own New Glenn. Neither rocket will be reusable to begin with, which means the number of needed engines required at first will be high. For example, ULA has contracts to launch Vulcan twice almost immediately, with the need to follow these with several military launches. Each launch will require two BE-4 engines, so Blue Origin at a minimum needs to manufacture four engines, probably more, just to fulfill its obligations to ULA. To supply its own New Glenn rocket, it needs seven BE-4 engines for each launch, with the company having four launches on its manifest for 2023.

All told, Blue Origin thus has to deliver, at a minimum, 32 engines in 2023 alone, to meet its contractual obligations. And since the rockets and engines will be untested, expect at least one or two launch failures that will further increase the need for more engines.

Yet, there is no sign that Blue Origin has figured out how to manufacture these engines on an assembly line basis. Even if it gets these two engines delivered soon, it is unclear it can produce a lot of flightworthy engines fast enough to meet this launch schedule. Expect therefore that both rockets will continue to experience launch delays that could stretch out years.

Meanwhile, a plethora of new rocket companies have been appearing, all aiming eventually to compete with Blue Origin and ULA. If Blue Origin doesn’t get a move on, these new companies will soon be in a position to replace both it and ULA, entirely.

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August 29, 2022 Quick space links

2:19 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay:

As I’ve said numerous times, I’ll believe this engine is a flight engine when I see it in flight.

The link goes to the research paper from the Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics and Electricity, which is in Chinese except for the abstract. This tweet highlights the “leg deploying test and full-scale landing impact experiment” from that paper.

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Blue Origin abandons plans to land New Glenn first stages on purchased cargo ship

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: This week it was revealed that Blue Origin has abandoned its plan to use a purchased and refurbished cargo ship as an ocean landing platform for the first stages of its New Glenn rocket.

The company had bought the ship in 2018, when it thought New Glenn would be flying by 2020, and planned to reconfigure it by covering it with a giant landing pad. It appears the company abandoned that plan because of cost. What it plans to do instead to provide New Glenn first stages a place to land remains unclear.

Some historical details that provide some context and might explain the change in plans. In 2016 Blue Origin was launching test flights of its New Shepard suborbital craft on almost a monthly basis. It appears to have an aggressive attitude towards development, with New Glenn aiming for a 2020 launch.

In 2017 Jeff Bezos hired Bob Smith to take over as Blue Origin’s CEO. At that point development slowed to a crawl. For the next four years New Shepard test flights dropped to about one per year. Also at that time development of the BE-4 rocket engine needed for both New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan rocket also slowed to a crawl, apparently because the company’s management would not commit funds to buy extra engines for testing.

In 2018 Blue Origin signed a deal with the Air Force, thus delaying New Glenn’s first launch by a year. The deal appeared to stem from a desire of Blue Origin management to get government contracts and money first rather than committing any company money to development, the approach used by older big space companies for decades. While it reduces risk, this approach also makes the government a partner in development, which has historically slowed all development while significantly raising costs.

That same year it bought this ship as the rocket’s landing pad, though relatively little work is done on it for years.

In 2021 Jeff Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO to focus more time on Blue Origin. Suddenly, New Shepard ups its launch rate, and finally starts flying passengers. At the same time, the testing of the BE-4 engine appears to accelerate.

Now Blue Origin is abandoning this ship that was purchased after Bob Smith took over.

Does one get the feeling that Bezos might have finally realized that the management under Smith was not very effective? Smith is still Blue Origin’s CEO, but one wonders how long this will last.

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Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine set for “commissioning” tests

1:29 pm

Capitalism in space: According to a tweet from Blue Origin on June 21, 2022, engineers have finally installed a flight-worthy engine on the test stand in Huntsville for static fire “commissioning” tests.

This is an engine that was supposed to be delivered to ULA for its new Vulcan rocket more than two years ago. With final engine tests only beginning now, it likely means the engine will not be delivered for at least several more months.

ULA will then have to install it in the rocket, and do its own fueling and static fire tests. All this suggests that a Vulcan launch before the end of this year is almost impossible.

When Blue Origin’s own New Glenn rocket will fly using the BE-4 is utterly unknown. ULA at least has built a full-scale test version of Vulcan and done launch countdown rehearsals in order to iron out issues with its launchpad and ground systems. Blue Origin has done none of this.

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Blue Origin rethinking plans for landing its first stage?

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: Though the company has said little, according to this local Florida newspaper Blue Origin is rethinking its plans to use the cargo ship Jacklyn as a platform for landing its New Glenn first stages in the ocean.

The 600-foot former cargo ship has been docked at the Port of Pensacola since 2018 and undergoing a retrofit by the Pensacola company Offshore Inland to enable the ship to serve as a landing platform for the first stage of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

When contacted by the News Journal to ask if the retrofit project had been canceled, a Blue Origin spokesperson responded that no final decision had been made yet.

The company is looking at “different options” for recovery vessels that give the best chance for mission success while also being safe and cost-effective, the spokesperson said.

This could be good news or bad news. Either it means Blue Origin is now getting close to finally launching New Glenn, which is three years behind schedule, or it has suddenly realized that using this cargo ship never made sense, and it is scrambling to find a solution at this late date.

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Amazon announces launch agreements with Blue Origin, Arianespace, and ULA

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: Amazon today announced major multi-launch agreements with Blue Origin, Arianespace, and ULA to launch its 3,000+ Kuiper satellite constellation.

According to the press release, ULA won 38 launches using its new Vulcan-Centaur rocket (not yet flown), Arianespace won 18 launches using its new Ariane-6 rocket (not yet flown), and Blue Origin won 12 launches using its new New Glenn rocket (not yet flown), with an option for 15 more. The ULA deal is in addition to a previous launch contract of nine launches using the Atlas-5 rocket.

In addition, Amazon hopes to launch two prototype satellites later this year using ABL’s smallsat RS1 rocket (not yet flown).

Overall, this Amazon launch announcement might be the largest launch contract deal ever. However, the company’s reliance on unproven rockets means it will also likely face some delays and failures in its early stages. That the press release makes no mention of any schedule for launches illustrates this fact starkly. All four rockets have already seen major delays. with the three biggest (Vulcan-Centaur, New Glenn, Ariane 6) now more than two years behind schedule, and the likelihood of their first launch occurring in 2022 increasingly unlikely.

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Blue Origin delays 1st New Glenn launch again

9:10 am

Capitalism in space: At a conference earlier this week Blue Origin officials confirmed that the first test flight of its orbital New Glenn rocket will not occur in ’22, but will be delayed again, into ’23.

New Glenn was originally supposed to launch in 2020, and has been delayed repeatedly since then, first because of new requirements imposed by the military and then because of delays in getting Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine operational.

Though ULA is still aiming to launch its Vulcan rocket using the BE-4 in 2022, expect it to eventually recognize reality and delay also to ’23. That rocket was also supposed to make its first launch in ’20, and has been delayed for the same reasons.

These delays have cost both companies dearly. For example, had each been operational as planned, they might have won some or all of the launch contracts that OneWeb lost from the Russians. Instead, that business went to SpaceX.

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Blue Origin’s engine division manager leaves company; first BE-4 engines arriving in May

9:48 am

Capitalism in space: The head of Blue Origin’s rocket engine division has decided to leave the company, even as it was revealed that the first flight worthy BE-4 engines will not be delivered to ULA until May at the earliest.

According to company sources, the first two BE-4 flight engines are in final production at Blue Origin’s factory in Kent, Washington. The first of these engines is scheduled to be shipped to a test site in May for “acceptance testing” to ensure its flight readiness. A second should follow in reasonably short order. On this schedule, Blue Origin could conceivably deliver both flight engines to United Launch Alliance in June or July. Sources at Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance say development versions of the BE-4—which are nearly identical to the flight versions—have been performing well in tests.

Upon receiving the engines, United Launch Alliance plans to install two of the BE-4s on the Vulcan rocket for a debut launch as soon as possible. While at the Satellite 2022 conference in the District of Columbia, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno on Tuesday said he still anticipates that Vulcan’s debut launch will occur in 2022. However, a summertime delivery would be a very tight schedule for United Launch Alliance.

ULA was initially promised these engines more than three years ago. The delay not only put its Vulcan rocket three years behind schedule, it has delayed the development of Blue Origin’s own orbital rocket, New Glenn, by more than three years as well.

To supply the needed engines for both rockets Blue Origin will need to establish a production line that can churn them out at a much faster pace than indicated so far. Whether it can remains an unknown, with the exit now of the head of the company’s engine division making that unknown even more worrisome.

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Blue Origin expands its rocket engine factory in Alabama

9:04 am

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.

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Blue Origin’s CEO wants to build more suborbital New Shepard spacecraft

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: Bob Smith, Blue Origin’s CEO, declared yesterday that the company has more space tourist customers than it can fly on its single New Shepard suborbital spacecraft, and wants to build more to handle the potential traffic.

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin flew 14 people to space in 2021, and CEO Bob Smith on Thursday said the firm needs to build more of its New Shepard rockets to meet the demand from the space tourism market. “I think the challenge for Blue at this point is that we’re actually supply limited,” Smith said, speaking at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington.

If true, this is good news, for the suborbital tourist market. It means there might be enough business for both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic to survive and make money, at least for a few years.

At the same time, Smith’s focus seems wildly misplaced, since it is the orbital market, not the suborbital space tourism market, where the future lies, as well as the really big money. Putting tourists on short ten minute hops to space might be exciting right now, but very soon it will seem very passe, as more and more orbital tourist flights take place.

I wonder if anyone asked Smith about the status of Blue Origin’s orbital rocket, New Glenn, which remains untested and years behind schedule, all because.the BE-4 engine that will power it is also years behind schedule. It would be nice to know when the first flightworthy engines will be delivered to ULA, as well as installed on New Glenn. Those engines were promised more than a year ago, and are still not a reality.

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Blue Origin successfully tests fairing for New Glenn rocket

9:45 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has successfully tested the jettison of the two fairing halves that will be used on its orbital New Glenn rocket.

The test took place at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. The company’s video, available at the link, is like all such videos made by all these companies nowadays, filled with dramatic music in order to make it seem like a movie trailer. The jettison itself occurs near the end of the video, and only shows the separation..

This success is encouraging. Moreover, according to Scott Henderson, Blue Origin’s vice president of test and flight operations and Florida site director, they have also completed the launchpad in Florida.

The first launch of New Glenn is presently targeted for late this year, so these successes indicate that launch is getting close. However, everything still hinges on the production of the company’s BE-4 rocket engine, more than two years behind schedule. Until a flightworthy engine is finally available, that first New Glenn launch will remain an ephemeral dream.

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U.S. military adds Blue Origin to its point-to-point space cargo development program

9:50 am

Capitalism in space: The U.S. military on December 17th signed an agreement with Blue Origin to add it to its point-to-point space cargo development program.

The command last year signed similar agreements with SpaceX and with Exploration Architecture Corp. (XArc). Blue Origin is the third company to ink a CRADA [as these development contracts are called] for the rocket cargo program.

Under CRADAs, companies agree to share information about their products and capabilities but the government does not commit to buying anything. U.S. TRANSCOM’s analysis of industry data will inform the newly created “rocket cargo” program led by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Space Force. The Air Force in its budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 is seeking $47.9 million to conduct studies and rocket cargo demonstrations. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the total budget of this program to show that this is a very small government program. The cash it provides these three companies is nice, but it is chicken feed when compared with the total cost of development. It certainly will not result in a faster pace at Blue Origin in developing its New Glenn rocket, which is presently two years behind schedule with further delays almost certain because its BE-4 rocket engine is not yet ready for mass production.

Whether the program itself is a good thing, or merely another example of government crony capitalism, is open to question. The practicality of using either Starship or New Glenn for cargo transport remains very unproven, especially for New Glenn, which was not designed with such a purpose in mind and cannot land its upper stage on Earth as Starship can.

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