When someone asked how hard is it to make a rocket engine, it is logical to tell them about Jeff Bezos Blue Origin, it is really a long story with many ups and downs, but in the end the Blue Origin engine was a complete failure. Let’s talk about Jeff’s Soul Engine first, which gets the rocket off the ground.
It took Blue Origin 10 years to develop the B3 engine, the B3 was big enough to go into orbit but Blue Origin didn’t design it as one. A low cost orbital engine and not put into a rocket with the intention of getting it into orbit. The Blue Origin V-3 engine began development in early 2010 and completed acceptance testing in early 2015.
The engine is being used on the new Shepherd sub. An orbital rocket for which test flights begin in 2015 and the first crewed flight in 2021, the BE3 has 160 000 pounds of thrust 80 tons of thrust Blue Origin will be allowed to build and test several BE3-class engines and operate in 2012 or It is required to reach orbit by 2014. , The SpaceX Merlin 1D engine for C was developed by SpaceX between 2011 and 2012, with its first flight in 2013.
Design goals for the new engine included increased reliability, improved performance and improved manufacturability. In 2011, the performance target for the engine was 690 kilonewtons of vacuum thrust. or 155 000 foot-pounds of vacuum-specific impulse ISP 310 seconds or 3.0 kilometers per second16 as opposed to the Merlin 1C’s previous 14.5 and a chamber pressure in the sweet spot of 9.7 MPa or 1410 psi as of August.
As of 2011 SpaceX was producing Merlin engines at a rate of 8 per month and plans to eventually increase production to approximately 33 engines per month, by 2015 they were making 250 Merlin engines per week, the largest difference between B3 and Merlin. This is the performance so far. While the Merlin helped the Falcon 9 become a regular flight sweep, the Falcon 9’s success became commonplace but the B3 did not even reach orbit, and a New Shepard rocket T was recently launched on its 23rd launch attempt.
A catastrophic engine failure was suffered during. The third failure ended a 7-year streak of 21 successes, measuring approximately 15 meters or 49 feet long and 3.7 meters or 12.1 feet wide and capable of producing approximately 50 tons or 110 thousand pounds. New Shepherd hits it at about half the thrust with its B3 alone.
Its nominally powered ascent before the catastrophe showed the first signs of trouble about 62 seconds after liftoff in the form of flickers and flashes, and as New Shepherd’s exhaust normally transpires less than two seconds later, the first The seemingly harmless flash of flame spontaneously erupted from New Shepherd’s engine section and quickly engulfed the be3pm engine in less than a second, after which the aft part of the rocket began to disintegrate and explode from its deployable capsule.
Even if everything is not so intense, but be4 and enters the story will certainly be more dramatic planned to fly in early 2019, the first flight test of the new engine now on the Vulcan rocket before the end of 2023 While not expected, delivery is a long time coming and United Launch Alliance or ULA previously agreed to purchase these engines from Blue Origin in 2014. It was a bold bet on the part of ula a blue blood and spac.
E was launched on a new entrant to the market, but the B4 engine was promised by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos at the time of their initial agreement, a relatively low-cost high-performance engine with power output comparable to the Space Shuttle main engine. be4 will be ready for flight by 2017. The delayed development of the be 4 has been of great interest partly because ula has been working on the new vulcan rocket for many years and this rocket is important for the future the company military is also looking forward to this delivery because ula is a primary provider of launch services to SpaceX as well as the Department of Defense.
They expect Vulcan to be sold to the U.S. Provides low cost launch services with in-built engines. Because of the delay, the question now is why such a large company can’t be successful with such a huge investment, it’s not just challenging engineering. When Myth arrived in the fall of 2017, some employees struggled with his leadership style and complained. that it operates more like a traditional aerospace company than an agile new space startup pushing blue origins very slowly, but from Smith’s point of view he is trying to implement a culture change.
A hobby shop environment for a major aerospace contractor that could go out and win major NASA and Defense Department contracts, many engineers escaped Jeff Bezos and joined other companies, who announced that they would replace the blue core Leaving, he didn’t specify why as cited in the employee review on job site Glass Door and the fact that many employees are frustrated with executive management and slow bureaucratic structure.
Company had employees who only gave one star reviews One employee said I was really happy working there but I am totally disappointed Culture Terrible management and lack of direction So many people are leaving I understand that many opinions Why ns that managers are unaware that there is some passion for the space but no follow through.
If so, there’s no reason why engineers who are passionate about space can’t devote themselves to Blue Origin. Some of the engineers who left were part of the Blue Origin Astronaut Lunar Lander Program run by Bezos’ company. NASA lost its bid for a valuable development contract in April when SpaceX was announced as the sole awardee under the space agency’s Human Landing System program and won the $2.9 billion contract.
But the company has continued its fight to be part of the deal despite the Government Accountability Office dismissing Blue Origin’s opposition to NASA’s decision last month. Blue Origin, the HLS program, first launched a public relations campaign against SpaceX’s Starship rocket and then sued NASA in federal court on Monday, prompting resistance and frustration from most of the company’s employees about what they really want.
Meanwhile the company is spending money hiring lawyers for crazy lawsuits instead of actually doing space research. Luckily, United Launch Alliance CEO Torrey Bruno showed off the B4 engine process needed for the Vulcan’s first flight, according to a recent update. The two flight engines will soon be delivered and the Vulcan should now be ready to fly before the end of the year See this is a photo of the freshly completed B4 engine in the stands at Blue Origin’s factory, exclusively share this other photo It also houses the first flight engine for the first flight of the Vulcan.
We can see two flying B4 engines side by side, the first of which is a fully assembled engine. Yours was on the left and the second almost complete engine on your right was also accelerating in a series of tweets that day, Bruno revealed that the first flight fe1 engines left for Texas for quick acceptance test firings, then ULA’s rockets The factory in Decatur ULA Engineers Alabama will test and integrate these engines into a Vulcan rocket and launch. This could be a new beginning for Blue Origin but it could also be the end for RocketCom.