ULA and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Announce Rocket Engine Partnership

An anonymous reader writes During an event at the National Press Club, Bezos announced an agreement with Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to continue development of a new rocket engine for ULA's Atlas and Delta rocket lines. From the article: "Called BE-4, the engine has been in the works at Blue Origin for three years and is currently in testing at the company's West Texas facilities. ULA, founded in 2006, has supplied rockets to the US Department of Defense and NASA and will now co-fund the BE-4 project to accelerate its completion. The agreement is for a four-year development process with testing slated for 2016 and flight in 2019."

Comments

Re:Hey Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who modded informative is just so awesome.

So hypersonic package delivery next?

[the eric conspiracy]

Coming from a warehouse near you at Mach 8.

Blastoff From the Past

[Baldrson]

Back in 1981-1983 when I was local support team leader for Space Studies Institute in Miami, FL promoting the idea of space colonies among the locals, one of the slides we showed was of this artist's conception of a Single Stage to Orbit Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing system proposed by Boeing to loft solar power satellites into LEO. This vehicle also appeared in Gerard O'Neill's original edition of "The High Frontier" that Jeff Bezos probably read while he was becoming the valedictorian of his high school class.

Looking at Bezos's New Shepherd Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing vehicle you might think that somewhere along the line Jeff caught a glimpse of Boeing's old design.

Re:Blastoff From the Past

[DerekLyons]

Looking at Bezos's New Shepherd Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing vehicle you might think that somewhere along the line Jeff caught a glimpse of Boeing's old design.

Maybe, maybe not. The same basic design was proposed as a reusable first stage for the Space Shuttle (in it's first incarnation as a crew taxi) by (IIRC) McDonnell Douglas back in the early/mid 1960's.

Re:Blastoff From the Past

[AJWM]

The basic aerospike SSTO design goes back to the mid to late 1960s with Phil Bono's work (and a couple of his patents), and designs by the Douglas (later McDonnell-Douglas) corporation (SASSTO, ROMBUS, Pegasus, Hyperion and Ithacus). Chrysler Aerospace (IIRC) had a similar proposal for the initial Space Shuttle studies. Boeing's "Big Onion" came a bit later, after O'Neill's 1974 "Physics Today" paper kicked off the whole L5/space colony/solar powersat thing.

The designs were revived in the 1980s by Gary Hudson and Pacific-American Launch Systems (Phoenix) and later by General Dynamics (Millennium Express --disclaimer, I helped name it) as their proposal for the DC-X competition.

Yes, New Shepherd was clearly influenced by all that (as have several others, including a Japanese suborbital test vehicle). The design makes sense for a number of reasons:

• structure weight is critical for SSTO, and the closer you get to a sphere, the better your structure-weight to propellant-volume gets, hence the relatively squat shape
• the rounded-cone shape makes a great reentry vehicle, with some maneuverability (assuming asymmetric mass distribution)
• the heat-shield on the base serves to protect against engine exhaust on launch as well as reentry heating
• aerospike nozzles are inherently altitude-compensating, so potentially more efficient

Of course there are downsides to the design too, particularly in terms of integrating the design so that it's light enough for SSTO, and starting and controlling the large number of thrust chambers (usually at least 16, some designs with 24 or 32).

Re:Blastoff From the Past

[N22YF]

Looking at Bezos's New Shepherd Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing vehicle you might think that somewhere along the line Jeff caught a glimpse of Boeing's old design.

I assume you're talking about the right image in the Encyclopedia Astronautica link - that is an educated (and ultimately incorrect) guess by Encyclopedia Astronautica of what the vehicle would look like, from years before actual images were released (see http://www.blueorigin.com/upda...).

Re:Blastoff From the Past

[Baldrson]

Interesting. Is the geometry of that so-called "development vehicle" representative of the production vehicle's?

BE-4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, oh why would you name your prototype BE-4?

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/B-4

Bezos-4? Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezos-4 will anihilate you all in 3....2....1... blue screen!

Bezos will patent the following and troll with it

[Anonymous Coward]

A method of vertical liftoff
A method of vertical landing
Use of a rocket motor for powered flight

Which is worse: Russia or Bezos

[Required Snark]

So Jeff Bezos, aspiring monopolist, holder of the infamous one click patent, wants to replace Russia as the engine manufacturer for the ULA. Somehow that is so appropriate.

ULA has been a major player in trying to keep US heavy launch platforms dependent on Russian RD-180 engines by any means possible. Their employees in Congress, Representatives Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) have sent a letter to NASA "demanding that the agency investigate what they call 'an epidemic of anomalies' with SpaceX missions".

These three red, white and blue Republicans, defenders of American Freedom, critics of government interference in the market place, gung-ho capitalists, have ULA facilities in their districts. So what would be more natural then their trying to squash competition, make the US vulnerable to foreign pressure, and degrade US excellence in aerospace technology. They would never place campaign contributions and the narrow interests of their constituents ahead of the interests of the USA, would they?

So if Blue Origin and ULA prevail, do you think that Bezos would threaten to deny access to orbit if there were legislation that would negatively impact Amazon's business model or tax breaks? He already seems so in tune with the current ULA congressional caucus.

Re:Which is worse: Russia or Bezos

[Anonymous Coward]

I made some comments over here, that might help them: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5680575&cid=47946489
As my karma, user sillybilly, is modded terrible, http://imgur.com/9DX8mI8, I have to post it as Anonymous Coward. It's kinda like, because of Disney, I can't legally download and save copyrighted science books from 1925, because they made the government extend copyright another 20 years in 2000, to protect Mickey Mouse as their intellectual property. (Fuck Mickey Mouse, they should have obtained a special legislation called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act for Disney and Co, not a broad spectrum copyright extension, I could have lived with that.) If I do download such books, I get labeled as a pirate. Who likes labels like pirate, or Anonymous Coward? Oh well....

Re:Bezos will patent the following and troll with

[Anonymous Coward]

A single click method of vertical liftoff

A single click method of vertical landing

Use of a rocket motor for powered flight

TFIFY

Good and bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good that the US is re-establishing the ability to build engines.
    Especially in what appears to be the lively, competitive environment that Mr. Musk has provided.
    It's healthy to see see the traditional US supply chain squirm.

The idea that the goal here is to end the partnership with Russia by 2017 is short-sighted even for NASA.
    We still share the ISS (and for that matter, the planet) with these folks.
    Having them on the team still seems a good idea.
    We just need to do it as partners, not under the gun of no access to space without them.
    It also provides a carrot to go with our stick for use in the Ukraine.