Blue Origin Successfully Test Fires Game-Changing BE-4 Rocket Engine (geekwire.com)

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture has successfully test-fired its BE-4 rocket engine, marking a key step in the development of its own New Glenn rocket as well as United Launch Alliance's next-generation rocket. GeekWire reports: ULA has been waiting for months to get good news about the BE-4 tests in West Texas. The company wanted to see a successful full-scale test before going ahead with plans to use the BE-4 engine on its Vulcan rocket, which is due to have its first flight in 2019. A Blue Origin competitor, Aerojet Rocketdyne, has been waiting in the wings with its AR1 engine, which ULA saw as a "Plan B" for the Vulcan in case the BE-4 faltered. Wednesday's initial hot-firing didn't reach full power or full duration, but the test's success nevertheless reduces the likelihood that ULA would turn to the AR1. The BE-4 engine, which uses liquefied natural gas as fuel, is built at Blue Origin's production facility in Kent, Wash., and shipped down to Texas for testing. Assuming that it's accepted for ULA's use, engine production will eventually shift to a factory in Huntsville, Ala. Engines for the orbital-class New Glenn rocket will go to Blue Origin's rocket factory in Florida, which is due to be completed by the end of this year.

Comments

Game changing?

[wisebabo]

I read the linked article and maybe I'm old (Ok I am old) but I couldn't see how this was "Game changing".

Landing 11 story boosters and re-launching them? Yes

Making a new liquid fueled rocket engine (that wasn't even using LH2 which I hear is harder). Not so sure

I realize that of all the parts of a rocket, the engine is the hardest. Like an air-force general said "A new plane doesn't make a new engine possible, a new engine makes a new plane possible" you get the idea. Still, considering the number and variety of liquid fueled engines out there (from the Russian RS-180 to NASA's RS-25 to Space-X's Merlin and even to Aerojet's AR1 which they refer to in the article), I'm not sure how this qualifies as game changing. An improvement? Maybe but I didn't see where in my (brief) reading of the article. And does even a less than order of magnitude improvement merit being a game changer?

Is the term being overused here or am I missing something?

Re:Game changing?

[esperto]

Completely disagree, reusing the first stage reduces the cost so much that it left the other rocket companies running like headless chickens, they are really afraid to simply loose all lunches covered by F9 lifting capacity simply because spacex can potentially charge tens of million dollars less and still have a lot of profit.

Re:Game changing?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The three actual benefits of methane fuel at the moment for SpaceX are 1) the enabling of the FFSC cycle which is impossible with RP-1, 2) improved prevention of fouling up the internal fuel lines in the engine necessitating extra maintenance, and later, 3) easy synthesizability on Mars. Lower price gets only important in the long run, perhaps around the time when 3) comes into play as well. For now, it's still two orders of magnitude cheaper than the flight hardware. So it only gets reasonably important when you get to the point of having >50 flights per vehicle lifetime or so.

Who shortens state names like that?

[oobayly]

If you want to abbreviate surely use WA, TX, AL, or write the actual name. It's just bizarre reading Wash, Ala, etc. Capitals were used so they might as well have finished off the word.