Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time

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

by kanamekun • 9 years ago

160 58 9 years ago

I'm curious which one will launch first, BFR or New Glenn. My money is on the BFR, so far with 1200 s Raptor engine fire and full size cryo tank they seem to be making progress. It's good to have Blue Origin breathing down SpaceX's neck though, hopefully it will provide them with sustained motivation.

mabbo• 9 years ago

Just imagine what things would look like if SpaceX has a serious failure again. It could drop them back six months, and Blue Origin would get that much closer.

Must be a really good motivator for SpaceX.

nickik3• 9 years ago

Why would a Falcon 9 failure set the BFR back six months? The teams working the BFR parts are probably not strongly involved and could just continue working.

It would set them back somewhat, but I don't see why it would be that long.

golfer• 9 years ago

Maybe it's a good motivator for SpaceX, but let's look at the macro picture. Blue Origin has zero commercial flights in its history. It is far behind SpaceX. But if BO displays operational expertise and can execute on its plans, it will be an exciting competitor.

Then again, if BO has some setbacks like SpaceX has had (delays, launch failures, etc) then it might not shake up the industry as much as we hope.

nickik3• 9 years ago

The Raptor has fired more but it is also not finalised in terms of design. The BE-4 is full sized and they don't seem to intend any more changes in the design.

Really the New Glenn competes more with Falcon Heavy then BFR. They are designing a New Armstrong rocket that will be more in the BFR class.

It will be very interesting, in 2020 we have planned New Glenn, Ariane 6, Vulcan and BFR. Falcon Heavy of course will have been flying for a while by then.

DuskStar2• 9 years ago

Raptor test fires have been at ~1,000kN, with a planned thrust of 1700kN, and for 100s burns. I don't think it's fair to say that BE-4 is further along in the development/testing process just from the fact that it has fired at half thrust, since it sure looks like Raptor has too.

shasheene• 9 years ago

Anyone know the price to low-earth orbit using New Glenn? (perhaps can be inferred from Eutelsat or OneWeb's financial disclosures to regulators?)

With Jeff Bezos selling $1 billion worth of Amazon shares a year to fund Blue Origin, will he choose to sell below cost for significant periods of time to stay competitive with the Falcon 9 and Heavy?

Nokinside• 9 years ago

It would be interesting to see how the market share affects the profits and how these two companies plan to compete in long term.

If Blue Origin and SpaceX compete in the same segment and divide the market, development and manufacturing costs per launch will increase for both. Assuming each will price the launch price so low that they get roughly 50 percent of the market they would get without the other, both lose half of the volume to the competition.

SpaceX aims for moderate 3% ($55 million) operating profit margin. Bezos has deeper pockets, so if he perceives financial weakness in Musk/SpaceX, he can decide to absorb the losses for a decade and steal launches and drain profits from SpaceX driving it to the ground.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/05/how-profitable-is-...

Retric• 9 years ago

Several buyers are uninstered in a launch monopoly developing which is likely to prevent such a strategy from working. A more likely scenario is for a major player to gain a process advantage and leverage that into higher profits for decades like Intel vs AMD etc.

valuearb3• 9 years ago

A 3% profit margin isn’t modest, it’s catastrophic. With a their heavy capital requirements and massive technology lead they should be banking 30%. 3% says please shut us down first time we have a bad year.

faitswulff• 9 years ago

A few frames of the video caught my eye: https://screenshots.firefox.com/eOm06NUSg0CSkb1a/arstechnica...

It looks like there's some sort of harmonic wave in the blast. Does anyone have any insights on why the design would result in that?

paulyg• 9 years ago

Its supersonic shock waves. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond

trothamel• 9 years ago

I believe those are Mach/Shock diamonds, which are common in rocket engine exhaust. It wouldn't surprise me if the propellant and the time of the test made them more visible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond

tim333• 9 years ago

As also seen on page 2 of "Ignition" with page 3 showing some other interesting rocket effects. http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

fkfk• 9 years ago

They are called shock diamonds and are caused by standing shock waves in the exhaust plume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond

netsharc• 9 years ago

Off-Topic: But it's not exactly brain surgery, is it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

joejerryronnie• 9 years ago

HN is for very serious discussion, there is no room for humor or irreverence here. And to those seeking enlightening discourse on highly complex technical topics, I say to you . . . it's not exactly brain surgery, is it?

return0• 9 years ago

In a few years, amazon may also be dominating the defense industry.

dgudkov• 9 years ago

If this is claimed only because of the engine then I doubt it -- the defense industry uses solid-fuel rocket engines in almost all cases except large missiles like IBCMs. Although, anyone who manages to mass-produce cheap, reliable, high-performance solid-fuel engines may indeed gain a huge defense market.

wbl• 9 years ago

The US uses solid fuel rockets in ICBMs. Russia uses storable liquids which are highly toxic. We switched after some nasty accidents.

olegkikin• 9 years ago

I get

    ReferenceError: dc is not defined[Learn More] 23b3059e-eac6-432f-b59a-9202ea32f7cb:33:11

When I click on "Encrypt"

vermontdevil2• 9 years ago

Biggest thing to me is the use of fuel here. Liquified natural gas has a lot of benefits. Simpler pressurization system, less soot etc

The future is exciting.

nickik3• 9 years ago

One of the price advantages that Blue has over SpaceX is that they will fly with LNG rather then pure methane.

Edit: Will New Glenn also not use a third gas for pressurisation? Like BFR?

vermontdevil2• 9 years ago

That’s my understanding. They are to use LNG as it’s own pressurization. Reduces a lot of complexity. Details are still vague as far as I can read.

jofer• 9 years ago

Wait, I'm confused... LNG is pure methane. Are there rockets that use methane that aren't storing it as a liquid? I would have to guess that any rocket using methane would pressurize it enough to be in liquid form for storage, anyway. Surely they wouldn't use methane in a gas state... It would take up far too much space to be practical.

greglindahl7• 9 years ago

When you liquefy natural gas, ethane and methane liquefy at different times, so it's relatively easy to purify methane. I don't know the price difference, do you?

ape4• 9 years ago

If this new rocket turned out better, I suppose SpaceX could license the tech.

bergie• 9 years ago

BFR (the new rocket SpaceX is designing) also uses methane in its Raptor engine

toomuchtodo• 9 years ago

Musk has mentioned SpaceX doesn't patent its innovations because you're competing against nation-states who don't have to follow the rules.

shmerl2• 9 years ago

The major benefit is that it's possible to synthesize methane from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Which is way easier let's say on Mars, than obtaining kerosene.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

http://www.co2club.it/agenda/abstracts/19_Barbarossa.pdf

rwmj• 9 years ago

How are they planning to reuse the engine? Will they land the first stage like SpaceX? It took SpaceX a lot of attempts to get that right ...

JshWright• 9 years ago

That depends on who you mean by "they". BO is planning on landing the whole first stage, like SpaceX. BO has some experience doing stuff in that arena with their New Glenn rocket (there are a number of factors that make the New Glenn landings a lot easier than the Falcon 9 landings, but it's still very useful experience).

The BE-4 will also be used by ULA, on their Vulcan rocket. ULA has talked about detaching the engines from the first stage of the rocket and having them fall under parachutes (to be caught be a helicopter). It remains to be seen if they ever implement that (it kinda feels like a token nod to reuse to get people to stop asking question).

iamcreasy• 9 years ago

Anybody knows what's special about this engine besides it being able produces more thrust than SpaceX's Raptor engine?

caconym_• 9 years ago

It's a new commercially viable rocket engine (not a pork-barrel jobs program) of a size suitable for serious heavy-lift applications, designed and built in America.

Obviously SpaceX is doing similar things, but Merlin, Raptor, and the BE-4 are all part of a pretty exclusive club. I don't know why SpaceX chose to go with a greater number of smaller engines for their planned heavy lifter; I imagine it might be something to do with the difficulty of building bigger engines scaling non-linearly, and the fact that modern analysis and engineering ought to give us some advantages relative to the last time someone tried to make a really big rocket with a lot of little engines (Soviet N1).

DuskStar2• 9 years ago

That, and it's a lot easier to shut off 90% of your engines and land at 50% thrust than it is to design an engine that will run at 5% thrust.

Oh, and if your engine is small enough, you can also use the same design on your upper stages - otherwise you need to design two engines.

Also, it may be worth pointing out that the current planned thrust for the Raptor is ~1,700kN at sea level, while the BE-4 is ~2,450 kN. They aren't actually that different - it's just BFR is massive.

greglindahl7• 9 years ago

The main special thing is that it runs on methane fuel, which has less sooting than kerosene engines. That makes it easier to reuse them. SpaceX is headed in the same direction with their Raptor engine, intended to power the BFR, and Europe is working on Prometheus, which might ship in the mid to late 2020s.

nbanks2• 9 years ago

Anyone know how the specific impulse compares to other engines? I guess the fuel is similar to spacex--better than anything other then hydrogen.

Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time

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