Blue Origin, the Aerospace giant, has finally unveiled its BE-4 liquid rocket engine on March 6, 2017. Four years into making, the new engine will be used in the Glenn rocket to ferry humans to moon and back. The announcement was a bolt from the blue and was made without notice on Jeff Bezos personal Twitter account.
One more player in the space hardware launch market
Blue Origin space company is headed by Jeff Bezos and has been in the news lately for his plans for Amazon like transport portal to the moon. His plans now are closer to realization with the development of the BE-4 engine.
It is great to see one more player in the lucrative space hardware launch market which lately has been dominated by SpaceX which is ferrying supplies to the ISS.
Bezos stated to the Washington Post which incidentally is also owned by him that he proposed to establish a colony on the Moon and has delivered a white paper to the NASA and Trump administration.
Will end reliance on Russian engines
Blue Origin plans to make BE-4 perfect to end the dependence of the US for Russian rockets to take hardware to space. It will not drain the taxpayer’s money since the private sector will fund it. The engine is a brute of a rocket and provides 500,000 kg of thrust.
This is the first in a series of rocket engines which are on the anvil for development.
The space company has a test facility in Texas. The “New Glenn” rocket will be featuring seven of these brute engines which will make the rocket indeed massive.
1st BE-4 engine fully assembled. 2nd and 3rd following close behind. #GradatimFerociter pic.twitter.com/duE4Tnzvkx
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) March 6, 2017
The fledgling space company is still in its gestation stage, and its manufacturing facility is coming up in Florida.
When everything is in place, there will not be any shortage of customers. The United Lunch Alliance which is the main contractor for the US Military has opted for the BE-4 for their Vulcan rockets.
Here’s one more shot of BE-4 in its transport cradle. pic.twitter.com/T2HdZ3UtQZ
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) March 6, 2017
The first launch of the Vulcan rocket will happen in 2019. The Congress has passed a bill recently which banned the use of Russian engines for missiles in the US, and this will act favorably for the development of more such rocket engines.
