Blue Origin’s powerful BE-4 engine is more than four years late—here’s why

[Elderberry]

Where are my engines, Jeff? —
ARS Technica by Eric Berger - 8/5/2021

"This is a success oriented approach, but it could definitely backfire."

After more than four years of frustrating delays, Blue Origin is finally making significant progress toward completing development of its powerful BE-4 rocket engine. At present, engineers and technicians with the company are assembling the first two flight engines at Blue Origin's main factory in Kent, Washington.

The company aspires to deliver these two flight engines to United Launch Alliance before the end of this year, although that increasingly appears to be a "stretch" goal. Delivery may slip into early 2022. And in order to make this deadline, Blue Origin plans to take the somewhat risky step of shipping the engines to its customer before completing full qualification testing.

This delivery has been a long time coming. United Launch Alliance, or ULA, first agreed to buy the engines from Blue Origin back in 2014. It was a bold bet by ULA, a blueblood in space launch, on a new entrant to the market. But with the BE-4 engine, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos was promising a relatively low-cost, high performing engine with a power output comparable to a Space Shuttle main engine. At the time of this initial agreement, Blue Origin said the BE-4 would be "ready for flight" by 2017.

The BE-4's delayed development has, increasingly, been the subject of keen interest. This is partly because ULA has been working on its new Vulcan rocket for a number of years, and that rocket is important to the future of the company. The military is also eager for this delivery, as ULA is a primary provider of launch services to the Department of Defense alongside SpaceX. They hope Vulcan provides lower cost launch services with engines manufactured in the United States. Finally, many in the space community are genuinely curious about the cause of the delay.

Despite this widespread interest, however, Blue Origin has said almost nothing publicly about the engine development. Therefore, this story attempts to provide some context for why the BE-4 engines are late. It is based on anonymous sources at the company's headquarters as well as industry officials, some of whom would likely be fired if they were named.

More: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/blue-origins-powerful-be-4-engine-is-more-than-four-years-late-heres-why/

[Elderberry]

Blue Origin to miss engine delivery date to ULA, pushing back key Vulcan rocket debut, CEO says

Denver Business Journal by  Greg Avery 8/23/2021

https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2021/08/23/ula-blue-origin-be-4-vulcan-rocket-bezos-bruno.html

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will be later than expected delivering the first set of flight rocket engines to United Launch Alliance, pushing the company’s debut of its Vulcan rocket well into 2022.

The engine delivery is weeks later than the late 2021 timeline that Centennial-based ULA had publicly predicted as recently as the start of August.

“I will not get them before the end of the year,” said Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, in an exclusive Denver Business Journal interview ahead of this week's Space Symposium industry gathering in Colorado Springs. “It will be shortly into the beginning of the 2022 calendar year, and anywhere in there will support me being able to build up a rocket and have that Vulcan waiting on my customer, Astrobotic.”

The first flight of ULA’s methane-fueled Vulcan rocket is scheduled to launch Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology Inc.’s Peregrine moon lander. That NASA-backed mission had been targeting a late 2021 liftoff, but slowness in Astrobotic’s spacecraft development made it seem more likely to slip into 2022.

Now that's a given, and the later launch adds pressure to ULA's schedule for other missions for the U.S. military.

ULA is awaiting Blue Origin to deliver BE-4 engines nearly two years behind the timeline laid out when ULA and Blue Origin finalized their engine supply contract in 2018.

[Elderberry]

ULA is still waiting Jeff.

[Elderberry]

The manager of Blue Origin’s rocket engine program has left the company

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/03/the-manager-of-blue-origins-rocket-engine-program-has-left-the-company/

As Blue Origin nears the critical point of delivering flight-ready BE-4 rocket engines to United Launch Alliance, the engineer in charge of the company's rocket engine program has decided to leave.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith recently informed employees of the departure of John Vilja, the senior vice president of Blue Engines. In Smith's email to employees, obtained by Ars, Vilja is said to be leaving Blue to pursue his "many" interests and hobbies outside of work.

"During his time at Blue, John led the team to support eight New Shepard missions powered by BE-3PM engines, countless hot fire tests, and made progress on multiple engines' development programs," Smith wrote. "He also built a world-class Engines team, recruiting some of the best talent in the business."

More at link.

[Elderberry]

Disaster! Blue Origin's Manufacture 2022 is completely FAILURE & got humiliated by SpaceX

 ALPHA TECH 4/25/2022

Welcome back to Alpha Tech! Blue Origin's manufacture is completely a disaster and got humiliated by SpaceX & Elon Musk! WHY? Stay with us till the end of this video, all will be revealed.

Surely you are no stranger to the nicknames "The ugly stepchild", "the tortoise". That's what people refer to as Blue Origin. So how is the production a disaster?

Let's talk about BE-4 manufacturing first.

Disaster! Blue Origin's Manufacture 2022 is completely FAILURE & got humiliated by SpaceX.

With the BE-4 engine, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos was promising a relatively low-cost, high-performing engine but that was just an empty promise. Production started in 2014, Jeff Bezos promises it will be ready to fly in 2017, but so far production has been unbelievably stalled and shows no signs of stopping. Blue Origin is unlikely to deliver two flight-ready versions of the BE-4 rocket engine to ULA before at least the second quarter of 2022. This increases the possibility that the debut flight of ULA's much-anticipated new rocket, Vulcan, could slip into 2023. What a spectacular troll from Bezos! The delayed development of the BE-4 has become an increasingly popular topic. In a previous video, we covered the reasons for this delay. You can visit the link in the description below for the most detailed information.

Disaster! Blue Origin's Manufacture 2022 is completely FAILURE & got humiliated by SpaceX.

Now, look at Elon Musk. What exactly did he do to humiliate Bezos?

In May last year, CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX is building a Raptor rocket engine every 48 hours, disputing claims of a 'bottleneck' for the Artemis moon mission boosters.

Disaster! Blue Origin's Manufacture 2022 is completely FAILURE & got humiliated by SpaceX.

As of last July, within just 2 years of production, SpaceX achieved production of 100 raptor engines for the starship launch vehicle. To celebrate the achievement, SpaceX shared a photograph of its employees posing with the 100th Raptor at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, in front of the display of the first Falcon 9 rocket that ever landed.
Disaster! Blue Origin's Manufacture 2022 is completely FAILURE & got humiliated by SpaceX...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ8iJVvqxvs