Blue Origin to Build New BE-4 liquid rocket engine for US Launch Provider

Jeff Bezos looks on as a new model of Blue Origin's BE-4 liquid rocket engine is revealed during a press event on Sept. 17, 2014.

Credit: United Launch Alliance Instagram

Blue Origin, the secretive private spaceflight company led by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has teamed up with a veteran space launch provider to build a new rocket engine designed to reduce U.S. dependence on Russian hardware.

In an announcement today (Sept. 17), Bezos and the launch provider United Launch Alliance unveiled plans to develop Blue Origin's new BE-4 liquid rocket engine.

The new partnership will allow ULA's next-generation rockets to come equipped with engines that are built in America. At the moment, ULA uses Russian-made RD-180 engines to power its Atlas 5 rockets.

"ULA has put a satellite into orbit almost every month for the past eight years – they're the most reliable launch provider in history and their record of success is astonishing," Bezos, founder of Blue Origin and Amazon.com, said in a statement.

"The team at Blue Origin is methodically developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability, and the BE-4 is a big step forward. With the new ULA partnership, we're accelerating commercial development of the next great US-made rocket engine."

A model of Blue Origin's BE-4 rocket engine on display on Sept. 17, 2014.

Credit: United Launch Alliance Instagram

The United Launch Alliance is currently launches most U.S. government and military satellites using its Atlas 5 rockets, as well as Delta 4 booster variants.

The company is a cooperative venture by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Blue Origin's partnership with ULA states that full-scale BE-4 engine testing should begin in 2016, with the first flight due for launch in 2019, according to representatives.

Although ULA and Blue Origin did not release the cost of development for the BE-4 engine, it will be privately funded.

Blue Origin and ULA have committed to funding it 100 percent for the next five years. Blue Origin began testing its BE-3 rocket engine in 2013.

"This agreement ensures ULA will remain the most cost-efficient, innovative and reliable company launching the nation's most important national security, civil, human and commercial missions," Tory Bruno, president and CEO of ULA, said in today's statement.

"Blue Origin has demonstrated its ability to develop high-performance rocket engines and we are excited to bring together the best minds in engineering, supply chain management and commercial business practices to create an all-new affordable, reliable, American rocket engine that will create endless possibilities for the future of space launch."



Tensions between the United States and Russia have been heightened due to Russia's involvement with the conflict in the Ukraine. Because of that political situation, ULA has come under fire for its use of the Russian rocket engines.

Today's Blue Origin-ULA rocket engine news is the second time in two days that a commercial spaceflight vernture including Boeing has made headlines.

On Tuesday (Sept. 16), NASA announced that Boeing's manned CST-100 spacecraft, which is slated to launch on Atlas 5 rockets, was one of two vehicles picked to fly American astronauts as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program.

Blue Origin's BE-4 engine won't serve as a direct replacement for RD-180s that power Atlas 5 rockets.

Instead, Blue Origin's new engine will outfit ULA's next generation of rockets, according to Blue origin representatives.

NASA also picked the Dragon spacecraft developed by California-based SpaceX, led by billionaire Elon Musk, as its second commercial space taxi for astronauts.

The announcement Tuesday came after a four-year competition of aerospace companies that included Blue Origin's Space Vehicle and the Dream Chaser space plane developed by Sierra Nevada among the spacecraft contenders.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Secretive Blue Origin Test-Fires Rocket Engine - Video

The secretive private spaceflight company Blue Origin founded by billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has successfully test-fired a new engine for commercial rockets that may one day help launch astronauts and cargo into orbit, NASA officials said today (Dec. 3).

A video of the recent rocket firing provides a rare peek at the company's work in progress. Little is publicly known about the space vehicles being developed by Blue Origin, which is based in Kent, Wash., and was founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000.

The Nov. 20 rocket engine test at Blue Origin's facility in Van Horn, Texas, was aimed at simulating a mission on the company's suborbital New Shepard vehicle, NASA officials said.

The spaceship — which is named in honour of Alan Shepard, the first American in space — consists of two reusable modules, one for the crew and one for the propulsion systems.

During the test, Blue Origin's so-called BE-3 engine was fired at full power for two and a half minutes to mimic a launch, producing 110,000 pounds of thrust.

After the initial burn, the hydrogen- and oxygen-fueled engine stopped for about four minutes to simulate a coast through space before a short final burn.

This last firing tested the systems intended to bring the booster back for a controlled vertical landing.

Guiding the rocket back to the ground safely would allow it to be refurbished and used again for another mission.

The BE-3 engine will also be incorporated into Blue Origin's planned Orbital Launch Vehicle, a rocket that will loft the company's cone-shaped Space Vehicle into orbit.

That spacecraft could eventually carry astronauts to the International Space Station, NASA officials said.


Blue Origin is a partner in NASA's Commercial Crew Program, along with other private companies like SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp.

The program aims to help the aerospace industry develop systems to ferry astronauts to the space station.

With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, the United States currently relies on Russian Soyuz vehicles to bring astronauts to the orbiting outpost.

"Working with NASA accelerated our BE-3 development by over a year in preparation for flight testing on our New Shepard suborbital system and ultimately on vehicles carrying humans to low-Earth orbit," Rob Meyerson, president and program manager of Blue Origin, said in a statement.

Rob Meyerson

"The BE-3 is a versatile, low-cost hydrogen engine applicable to NASA and commercial missions."

Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development, added that Blue Origin has made steady progress since the start of its partnership with the space agency.

Apollo 11 engines Recovered by Amazon's Founder Jeff Bezos

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos claimed success Wednesday in his mission to recover Apollo 11 moon mission engines that plunged into the ocean decades ago.

"We found so much," Bezos said in a blog posting e route to land after three weeks at sea for his Bezos Expeditions project.

"We've seen an underwater wonderland -- an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program."

Bezos said many of the original serial numbers from the engines have been eroded, making identification difficult, but that his team would conduct a restoration.

"The objects themselves are gorgeous," he said.

"We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible."

Bezos said his team would have enough major components to create displays of two flown F-1 engines, and that a restoration would stabilize the hardware and prevent further corrosion.

"We want the hardware to tell its true story, including its 5,000 mile per hour re-entry and subsequent impact with the ocean surface," he said. "We're excited to get this hardware on display where just maybe it will inspire something amazing."

It was not immediately clear when or where the objects might be displayed, but Bezos said when he launched the project last year that he hoped they could be viewed at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

The engines that rocketed astronaut Neil Armstrong and his crew toward the moon in 1969 were located deep in the Atlantic Ocean using sophisticated sonar equipment.

Bezos used private funds to raise the F-1 engines from their resting places 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) below the surface of the ocean, even though he has maintained that they remain the property of NASA.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden welcomed the news.

"This is a historic find and I congratulate the team for its determination and perseverance in the recovery of these important artifacts of our first efforts to send humans beyond Earth orbit," Bolden said in a statement.

"We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff's desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display."

See more pictures of the recovery at Wired.com