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?

[Anonymous Coward]

A better article explains it betterer:

"SpaceX has also invested significant amounts of its own funds into its new Raptor engine, which has a sea-level thrust of 380,000 pounds. But this engine has yet to undergo full-scale testing.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin's BE-4 engine is more powerful, at 550,000 pounds of thrust—it is in fact the most powerful US rocket engine developed since Rocketdyne built the RS-68 engine two decades ago."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/blue-origin-has-successfully-tested-its-powerful-be-4-rocket-engine/

Re: Game changing?

[D.McG.]

Disingenuous. The raptor has a higher efficiency by using full flow staged combustion. The current lower output is for two reasons. The first is for optimizing the thrust to weight ratio. Higher thrust engines disproportionately weigh more. The second is multi engine out support. If you have one big engine and it goes down, you crash. If instead you have 3 smaller engines in the same space and 1 goes down, the mission continues on the remaining 2. When landing becomes imperative with lives at stake, I'll take multiple engines over bragging rights.

Re:Game changing?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Paraphrasing Edison, NASA merely found *one* way how not to make a reusable launcher.

Re:Game changing?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I didn't notice anyone, much less the US Congress, forcing ULA to buy their engines from the Russians. If anything, AJ/Rocketdyne and ULA on their own decidednot to fork out the money to manufacture the engines domestically about a decade ago.

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.

Re:Natural gas as fuel?

[physburn]

Methane has almost double the hydrogen of Kerosene, so this is in fact a great improvement in weight and CO2 production, on kerosene based rockets. Liquid Hydrogen is hard as a big volume, and needs cryogenics so methance is a good compramise

Re: Natural gas as fuel?

[fubarrr]

Hydrokarbons are for hipsters, real men fly on pentaborane + chlorine pentafluoride

Game changing because

[Kogun]

it will allow Bezos to put Amazon women on the moon.