While Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine hasn’t had the smoothest development, the current state of the engine looks very promising. For the last few months now, we have seen a combination of increased testing, production, and use during an actual launch. Just a few days ago, Blue Origin revealed that for the first time, they completed a BE-4 hot-fire at Test Stand 4670 in Huntsville.
For a while now the company has been working to refurbish and prepare this historic site. With this now complete, another large asset in the form of an additional test stand has been added to the company’s arsenal. Here I will go more in-depth into the new test, engine production, BE-4s significant demand, and more.
Full article here - thespacebucket.com/blue-origi...
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Credit:
ULA - / unitedlaunchalliance
Blue Origin - / blueoriginchannel
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:35 - New Test Site
3:12 - The BE-4 Engine
Blue Origin needed a win and they got one! Well done
Yeah but it did take 24 years to get to this point. SpaceX is actually two years younger as a company, and they've got three successful reusable rockets, a decent way into getting the fourth one done, they designed a little Hopper to play with, they have both a cargo capsule and a human rated capsule.
Agreed, regardless of the criticism, I’m glad they had such a monumental success with the BE-4. And on one of the highest profile spacecraft companies. I hope every feels very proud of their accomplishment - a successful launch on a new rocket with brand new engines is no joke; and with a payload on the inaugural flight!
I read till 2017 Blue was more like a think tank than a rocket company. They really became more of a rocket company after '17@@lordgarion514
@@lordgarion514 What do you mean by that? Only Merlin and Raptor exist for them as rocket engines, minus the Draco thrusters. If you meant launchers, they only maybe have two: Falcon 9 and Starship Super Heavy. The latter not yet fully developed and tested yet. Blue Origin developed BE-3 PM over ten years ago, has flown it successfully nearly a dozen times, and reused it, and this is not including whatever thrusters are being used on the New Shepard capsules for attitude control and landing retrorockets. BE-4 has flown, but not yet proven reuse after a flight, only on the test stand. That "little hopper" is a fully operational system that carries not only paying customer payloads, but also paying astronauts to space and back. Finally, the myth that Bezos has thrown a billion dollars a year at Blue Origin every year since it was founded needs to die. Blue was funded only to an average of about $35 million for the first 14 years, including just $25 million total from NASA while the company was involved in Commercial Crew. It was not until 2017 that Bezos was able to sell enough Amazon shares and at a value that he could fund Blue to a billion dollars a year, and since then they've tackled some very difficult technical projects: New Shepard, BE-3 PM, BE-3U, BE-7, Blue Moon, Blue Alchemy, New Glenn (3rd largest launcher in the world), etc. SpaceX has gotten lucky by getting $400 million in NASA COTS money and $1.6 billion in CRS money as well as Elon Musk's own money in just the first 10 years which helped accelerate things a great deal for them.
A minor slip up on your part: There are TWO BE-4 test stands at Blue Origin's Corn Ranch facility. If one is damaged or otherwise out of commission for maintenance, etc., the other can take its place. 4670 at Marshall Spaceflight Center adds a third test stand, and it is dedicated almost solely to rate testing (acceptance testing) of production engines, leaving the other two in Texas to be more focused on development and qualification testing of the next block iterations.
Technically third and fourth. Two engines can be one that stand at 4670
@@DroolP It's only one at 4670 for BE-4. The other stand is for rate testing BE-3U.
@@mikedicenso2778oh. Awesome. Thank you for the insight. Still awesome. Walking up the stairs was still nerve racking. Never got to see the plumbing last time I was there.
thanks for not just being a spacex channel like some of the big names clearly are.
You don't have to be a SpaceX channel to do a LOT of SpaceX news. Last year there was about 210 successful launches worldwide, and 96 were from SpaceX. Then you have to consider that blue origin is 24 years old, and SpaceX is only 22. But SpaceX has three successful rockets each bigger than the last, they're working on their fourth, super heavy and the giant starship that sits on top of it. Even trying to shit on SpaceX, a channel that does news about rockets, should be WAY over half SpaceX news. Hell, just going by rocket launches, SpaceX should be almost half the news. The real question I have is what's your beef with SpaceX??? The absolute fact is they have done much more, with much less money, in less time than anybody. Our standard military industrial complex needed just over a decade to create SLS, and it uses more pre-existing parts than any rocket in history, and it uses reusable parts from the space shuttle that can't even be reused. It also cost a decent Penny over 4 billion dollars per launch..... In 13 years, SpaceX gave us a reusable rocket.... For less money. A falcon 9 is about $62 million to launch. Are you one of those people that just has to hate on the ones at the top???
@@lordgarion514 it might be weird but i like to hear about all the companies involved in space and as much fun as it is to hear about spacex building a door on the high bay it isnt what id call news and thats been reported by at least three of the main channels. if its just launches or some new contract fair enough. also i think im allowed that without you spacex cultists jumping on my back. yeah, falcon 9 was great but come on give us a break and let us learn about what the other companies are doing without automatically gunning for everyone. what is with you guys?
@@geesehoward700 I didn't start the whining, that was you. And I didn't say you shouldn't listen to the other stuff, but the fact of the matter is SpaceX is probably doing 70-80% of all the shit being done right now. And exactly what is so exciting about SLS??? It's a minimum of $6 billion over budget. It's got so many pre-existing parts being used, that those parts have a combined 30-50 years worth of development time. It was supposed to be finished in 2017. In disgustingly enough, even with the massive delays and shocking cost overruns, several other cost estimates expect the costs to go even higher. "The GAO report concludes that the program's current cost trajectory is unsustainable and exceeds what NASA expects to receive in funding. This implies the program might be even further "over budget" than official figures suggest.. What about any of SLS is remotely impressive? The same with blue origin, 24 years they've been at it, what have they done In 24 years? Do you have anything other than blah blah blah SpaceX is bad? Because as someone who looks at the numbers, all I see is Blue Origin and the military industrial complex, pissing away money getting very little accomplished. And the military industrial complex making SLS is so far over budget, so far behind schedule that it is absolutely astounding people haven't been charged with a crime yet. (Oh, and when NASA told the senate, that the cost was unsustainable, their words, the Senate told them to continue to use to cost Plus contracts to send it set up to start with. The Senate launch system is a way for the government to give money to its buddies.
@@geesehoward700 For most it has been a very slow process with B.O., so it is easy to think they are struggling a lot. But the completed engine seems to be a great one, and lets hope B.O. will be able to launch their own Kuipers in a few years time. Regarding SpaceX and reporting, you can watch what you like... No need to get offended by too much spece(x) news. I am looking forward to any video about fully reusable rockets. It makes just the same sense as reusing an airplane. That is the future no matter what company logo is used.
@@geesehoward700 Cultists do what cultists do, they keep on drinking their “Fool-Aid”!
Thanks man...
Go BO, your future is bright.
Just think, in a few years they might not have to sue everyone to get attention.
Why is it only recently that LNG is identified as an ideal fuel since it has been available in large quantities for a long time?
Congratulations to New Glenn for joining the list of launch vehicles which will make their first flight this year!... for the third year in a row.
If someone is looking for a career to get into, they should enhance the automation speed for metal 3D printing, millions and millions of dollars to whichever company can print mass at a high rate
0:06 has that engine been blurred in editing or does it actually just look like that
The advanced gaussian blur casting technique
IP is IP
They might want to keep the Engine internal geometry of the nosil secreta.
Good catch. Definitely blurred. Weird, also at 1:57 but in zooming in, it doesn’t really look like a nozzle. Almost like a jig or a fixture?? Now I’m curious, this will bug me. Grrr, now again at 3:07! What IS that thing?
As a Blue Origin engineer, I can confirm that it is naturally blurry, much like Bigfoot.
For ULA to reuse engines they would have to have have some way of rapidly disconnecting all the plumbing and electrical for separation of the engine section from the rest of the booster during flight. That should be an interesting engineering challenge.
The space shuttle basically did this with the external fuel tank, so this isn't completely unheard of.
@@plainText384 Good point. I hadn't thought of that. The Space Shuttle used explosive bolts to sever the connections in flight. I wonder how many of those bolts ULA would need.
@@59seank At minimum, you'd have 6 per propellant flange, 4 per engine mounts, and 4 for engine bay/tank interface.. so (12+12+8+4) 36.
The original 3 engine Atlas decades ago dropped 2 of its booster engines during flight so this has already been done. The umbilical plate on the space shuttle seemed to be free of problems after the early flights and that was with hydrogen vs methane. Also it appears that few if any explosive bolts were used directly on the umbilical plate area as this was directly in the tile area with a door that had to close. The explosive bolts were used in the load transfer structure and a venting valve. Besides what is the difference between this on Vulcan near the engines vs at the lower and upper stage interface? And in addition falcon heavy seems to be successful. So probably just some straight forward engineering involved, absolutely nothing that hasn’t been done before other than the inflatable heat shield which has been successfully tested in a very slightly different situation. It will be interesting to see which type of systems work better as rockets scale in size. Considering that Vulcan doesn’t stage as early as falcon and has two engines it seems to be a logical and safe approach. The truly interesting comparison will be between BO vs chopsticks.
ULA's engine reuse plans sound like something they could eventually abandon, similar to their ACES upper stage.
They didn't abandon ACES, it just transmogrified into Centaur V. Over the years, more and more of ACES will be incorporated into CV. They have a really good business case reason to do SMART recovery since the launch of so many Kuiper satellites will require a high cadence and not having to depend on building and rate testing new engines every time.
@@mikedicenso2778 I think having secured so many Kuiper launches is the opposite: They don't have a strong incentive to speed up reuse plans, as ULA has more than enough income from contracted Amazon launches to stay afloat comfortably. A stronger incentive would be if they faced the near prospect of losing out to cheaper competitors. Bruno suggested SMART is still years away. That doesn't sound like an ambitious plan when you compare it to competitors like New Glenn, Neutron and Terran R. Or Falcon 9, for that matter.
@@cube2fox Not at all. If they didn't have so many launches, they'd have pushed off SMART indefinitely, but now they have to increase their flight rate to 25 flights per year by 2025-2026 to meet their obligations and so SMART means less work once the system is implemented and the condition of the engines can be evaluated. Not ambitious? The concept still allows ULA to fly Vulcan to near depletion of booster stage propellants, so they can that extra oomph of delta-V for the CV stage and it can save more prop for high-energy missions.
@@mikedicenso2778 They don't have to make the engines themselves, they just buy them from BO. With SMART they have to buy less. It seems likely to me that New Glenn, Neutron, and perhaps even Terran R will all have first stage reusability before ULA implements first stage engine reuse.
"All return-eligible items, weighing under 50 lbs and sold by BO, have at least one free return option. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition for up to 30 days after purchase." Does a RUD qualify?
I think it does if you can get all the pieces to return. 🤪
Good1
I want to support BO, but they make it so difficult. This engine is much worse than the SX Raptor 2 & 3. The R2 is almost the same thrust but half the size and weight. R3 has more thrust than the B4 with the same size as the R2. The BE4 looks like a bunch of cables and tubes going everywhere. A huge mess. The Raptors are a clean and uncluttered design, which is very manufacturable. BE4's are hand made. Good luck with mass production. I hope Bezos taking over will improve BO's performance. We need more competition in large launch vehicles.
Can Blue Origin Handle The BE-4 Engine Demand? In that BO is production next to totally opaque the answer to the question is we have no idea. I might add, 3:52 is BO propaganda. One of the reported reasons it took so long to develop and produce BE-4 engines was their "hardware poor" approach resulted that when a problem occurred, there was not enough parts on hand to continue testing. I do hope that BO has got the kinks out of producing BE-4 engines and New Glenn rockets. However, watching BO progress, up to this point, has been very much like watching grass grow but only more tedious.
I feel your frustration. Trust me. I think it will work out in the end. SX will launch a successful Starship (I cannot wait). New Glenn will launch successfully (I can’t wait to hear the 7- BE-4s). I hope all works out for all companies. It is for the betterment of the world.
Crazy cool times we’re fortunate enough to live in - we’re watching history being made! It seems all these companies just sprang up from nowhere! Well, I guess they did.
Go watch the Titans of CNC Machining video tour of the Huntsville factory for a lot of those answers. Also, it didn't take nearly as long as you think. It took NASA and Rocketdyne 11 years to develop and fly SSME/RS-25 and with billions in U.S. government funding. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have produced more of Raptor and BE-4 than NASA and Rocketdyne did of SSME in the same amount of time.
@@mikedicenso2778 that is a really cool video. Huntsville is awesome and so many good companies are there.
Good luck building those spaghetti monsters at any speed.
They've actually built quite a number of them. Go watch Titans of CNC Machining's tour of the Huntsville factory. You get to see the final assembly area with up to five engines in it, and hundreds of parts for dozens of BE-4s as well as BE-3U and BE-7s.
@@mikedicenso2778 Well I doubt they can keep up with the Raptor 3, unless the BE-7 is much simplified. with simplified engines SpaceX will be able to build ships faster and gobble up market share at less cost of production and man hours spent. I suspect once prooven out Raptor 3's and beyond will cause a paradigm shift, and over complicated engines will become collector's items.
@@garylester3976 SX doesn’t have similar engines. The opposite actually. The difference is manufacturing hardware. SX had the same slow pace at the beginning as well. Once things (like design and efficiency) were dialed in, they made their infrastructure around that. BO will do the same but they will start slower. The two companies have two wildly different approaches to success and test iteration. One is more cautious and doesn’t want to have iterate more than 10% from initial design and the other tests full tilt and learns from their failures (which are also celebrated). Neither one is wrong. Both get to speed. SX needs a lot more engines per vehicle 33 for primary stage vs NG needs 7 for primary stage per flight. It is all relative in the end.
Bald man rocket Sks
They should try reuse those, re-entry back to Earth !
Why does Tory Bruno feel like a used car salesman to me?
Because he wants to sell his Tesla that can't self-drive as promised by your leader?
Boo. Tory Bruno’s a giant in the industry, and extremely popular with the people who work at ULA, the entire space industry, and especially us space fans. ULA wouldn’t be ULA without him.
@@ronjon7942 And your point is......
I’m not a fan of BO… they took so much money, time to produce an engine with thrust that SpaceX is nearly achieving today.
Who’s money? Your money? Government money? Or Jeff’s money?
They don't need fans. This is about, engineering, rocket development and science, not entertainment.
@@mikeomolt4485 absolutely right. Funny how the “fans” are the only ones divisive and those that are building the rockets don’t care who does what. We all cheer for each other’s success. Space is big. There really is no “competition”.
SpaceX Starship in just the last couple of years, with a mix of private funding and subsidies : $2bn spent in 2022 + $2bn spent 2023 + $2bn of the HLS $3bn contract paid by NASA in 2023. Total: $6bn. And probably more than $10bn since 2018. And around $18bn or more, until an hypothetical 2018 Artemis 3 landing. They took and will take a lot of money...
@@DroolP All of the above and as a taxpayer, yes even my money.
Amazon can't even get a package to me. Not too confident in them. Chinese vendors always fulfill my orders no problem
Amazon is Not Blue Origin. Maybe the same founder but there are a lot more scientists at Blue than Amazon.
BO has turned out to be a "cosmic" joke...
Just you wait
Why, because it doesn’t have an x in its name?
Poop post is poop.
at least they know they need a water deluge and flame diverter and arent planing to make a "rapidly reusable" rocket covered in tiles that all need checking after each flight making it not rapid in the slightest.
SpaceX also knew they needed a deluge system, you don't think they built something like that from scratch that fast do you? That thing took many months just to design, never mind actually build. It doesn't take a damn genius to understand that it was being built, while they were launching. Musk didn't care simply because they were going to have to bust it out anyway. So why wait to test the rocket? And the reason for the tiles, is the sheer size of starship. I doubt they tossed a coin to decide whether or not they were going to slow it's descent on reentry using rockets like their others, or belly flop it. They chose the belly flop for a reason. I doubt anyone except damn knows why they decided to do that, but you can't belly flop something coming in that fast without tiles on it, it's going to melt. Oh, and let's keep in mind that blue origin is literally two years older than SpaceX.... Blue origin 24 years to get something pretty close to ready. SpaceX, well I'm not going to list all the shit they've done in the past 22 years. It would be a very long list.. 🤷♂️ I know, some folks just got to hate those on top. You're one of those people. It's nice to root for the underdog, but seriously, get your head out of your ass. SpaceX is absolutely amazing.