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Blue Origin - BE-4 Methalox Engine

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Follow up tweet from Sawyer:

"Bruno says they've already successfully tested 12 engines in addition to the two used during the flight readiness firing, adding it's not the first engine to do that and won't be the last, noting it's happened on other ULA-used engines. "It's not a news story""

Some insight in to the # of engines they have...

That is good news. I love SpaceX and root for everything they do but having a decent back up for critical launches is good thing.
 
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I've never looked up the difference between liquid methane (Raptor) and liquified natural gas (BE-4), and I thought others might be interested in the answer.

Typically, LNG is 85 to 95-plus percent methane, along with a few percent ethane, even less propane and butane, and trace amounts of nitrogen.

So, assuming that liquid methane is pure, there's a few percent difference.

But then I found the following on Reddit:

Interestingly SpaceX is now [March, 2023] using a methane grade that is as little as 95.5% methane with most of the rest being ethane and propane so basically just a high grade LNG. The critical feature is low sulphur since that can react with the copper liners of the combustion chamber and bell.

According to the final EA for Boca Chica SpaceX analysed emissions for a case with up to 0.5% nitrogen in both the liquid methane and LOX. The liquid methane comes with liquid nitrogen specified to be below 0.1% but it can pick up additional nitrogen from purge gas in the tanks especially with multiple tanking cycles after scrubs or static fires.

At a guess, they're using essentially the same stuff because they each use copper liners.
 
I've never looked up the difference between liquid methane (Raptor) and liquified natural gas (BE-4), and I thought others might be interested in the answer.



So, assuming that liquid methane is pure, there's a few percent difference.

But then I found the following on Reddit:



At a guess, they're using essentially the same stuff because they each use copper liners.
Tory has stated Vulcan is really LCH4, but they say LNG for convenience.
 
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  • Informative
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