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Blue Origin - BE-4 Methalox Engine

Discussion in 'SpaceX' started by Grendal, Mar 6, 2017.

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  1. Grendal

    Grendal SpaceX Moderator

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  2. Nikxice

    Nikxice Active Member

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    Good for BO that they'll make use of the BE-4 on their New Glenn rocket, however ULA's choice of the BE-4 engine for Vulcan rockets is anything but a sure thing. ULA is taking more time than expected to make a decision whether to use the methane burning BE-4 or traditional kerosene fuel (RP-1) used by the Aerojet Rocketdyne AR1. Perhaps not significant, just a couple of days ago Orbital ATK announced they chose Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RL10C engine to power the upper stage of their new OmegA rocket. The losing contender....BO's BE-3 engine, which for some time has been launching and landing those New Shepard demo flights. BO is still full of optimism. I recently read CEO Bob Smith thinks BO will be doing space tourist flights on New Shepard by the end of this year.... Okaaaaaay then.
     
  3. Grendal

    Grendal SpaceX Moderator

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    It's Official. Blue Origin's BE-4 methalox engine will power the ULA next generation Vulcan rocket. As opposed to the New Glenn, these engines will be thrown away with every launch. There is a vague plan to recover the engines, possibly, sometime in the future.

    Congratulations to ULA and to Blue Origin. This will be a fully American rocket. Best of luck.

    Amazon’s Jeff Bezos will now sell rocket engines, too
     
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  4. ecarfan

    ecarfan Well-Known Member

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    And ULA is going to need a lot of luck to find enough customers for a disposable rocket to make the Vulcan program financially sustainable. :rolleyes:
     
  5. bxr140

    bxr140 Active Member

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    While the logic is self-evident with respect to both this particular situation as well as a general need for an all-American launcher [which already exist...with more in development...], it really is a shame that we can't make an international launcher work out.
     
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  6. bxr140

    bxr140 Active Member

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    #26 bxr140, Sep 29, 2018
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2018
    ULA might point you to their Delta 4 and even their Atlas 5 customer base who, by and large, could give a *sugar* what a rocket costs. SpaceX might be a commercial business that will likely turn a profit one day, but when you have government entities more than happy to shell out multiple times a falcon price to ride on something else, you have to accept that the reality of the space industry--at least the defense side of A&D--does not follow classic for-profit business acumen.

    Similar customer bases exists around the world, many of which launch on rockets that are as much about government subsidized jobs as they are getting things to space. They'd rather pay more to get more. Don't forget that a government-purchased falcon 9 costs the better part of $100M--a far cry from the 60-whatever that the commercial industry pays. Certainly spaceX is leading the launcher industry into Space 2.0, but in context, some entities DECADES away from any fundamental shift from "the way we've always done it".

    Delta 4: Why build two when you can build one at twice the price?
     
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  7. RDoc

    RDoc S85D

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    Government launches using Vulcan is something I've wondered about for awhile. This is a totally new rocket with totally new engines from a company with no track record of orbital launches. What's it going to take for ULA to qualify it for high value launches? Given the pricing ULA will no doubt charge, I don't see a lot of commercial launches to build up a history.

    Maybe the launch record of Atlas just gets transferred to Vulcan?
     
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  8. ecarfan

    ecarfan Well-Known Member

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    This too will change. Give it time...
     
  9. Grendal

    Grendal SpaceX Moderator

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    They can't transfer. The rockets are completely different. ULA will lose their large success rating and have to start over. I expect they will get a sweetheart deal of qualification that is a slap in the face to all the hard work that SpaceX has put in. There will be some level of qualification though. I expect to see something along the lines of what we've seen with Boeing's Starliner in comparison to SpaceX's Dragon 2. There's no way it will be a free ride but expect some military or NASA contract that will be handed to ULA to help get qualification happening.
     
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  10. bxr140

    bxr140 Active Member

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    #30 bxr140, Sep 30, 2018
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2018
    In so far as it has never flown, yes, it is totally new. Going down one level, Vulcan's 'totally new' is closer to how SLS or Ariane 6 will be 'totally new. Of note:
    --The solid boosters will be flown on Atlas 5
    --The fairing is basically an Atlas 5 fairing (which, BTW, also has a lot of commonality with the Ariane 5 fairing)
    --The tanks have a lot commonality with Delta 4
    --The upper stage is a centaur, which traces its roots back sometime close to when dirt was invented
    --The main engine (which is suborbital) has a lot of technical roots in a flying engine (that is also suborbital, and is getting modified for orbital flight), and is well along the way of a pretty conservative and very high profile qualification campaign.

    $200M development funding from the Air Force is a good start for flying super-duper secret payloads...not to mention Vulcan is the defacto solution after retirement of Delta 4.

    The overall launch record won't transfer, but when it comes to technical discussions the legacy space industry and especially the launcher industry works best on similarity, heritage, and evolution. As such, the success record of all of the elements will transfer, at least to one degree or another. Exchanges on Vulcan fairings, for instance, will absolutely reference the impressive record of Atlas 5 (5m) and Ariane 5. The powerpoint on Centaur will absolutely have a timeline representing heritage for 50-whatever years.

    IMHO, the real bummer about Vulcan (and SLS, and Ariane 6) is specifically the significant amount of commonality it has with previous launchers. Yeah, from one perspective you can understand why using Delta 4 tooling to build Vulcan tanks makes a lot of sense, but from the other side of that coin you just locked out certain parameters of your vehicle that might have a better white page optimization. For better or worse, that's what you get in a quasi-government solution; that's why from a pure bench racing perspective its going to be a long time before anyone can match SpaceX (and eventually BO).
     
  11. bxr140

    bxr140 Active Member

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    Agree, everything changes.

    Unfortunately, in context the timeline of change [that I optimistically pegged as 'decades'] explicitly parallels change in the way the US conducts its defense spending. And that timeline, by and large, is linked to congress transforming into a dynamic decision making entity that isn't made up of constituents worrying about their next election or the size of the nondescript sack dropped off by the next lobbyist to walk into their office.

    In other words, Vulcan will be long retired before "change" happens.
     
  12. RDoc

    RDoc S85D

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    OK, so all the flights of Atlas probably won't transfer, only partially, and with significant financial support.

    Kind of like a college transfer with a scholarship for major donors' children.
     
  13. Lozza12

    Lozza12 Member

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    This.

    Look you guys know a bazillion times more than I do about rockets but it strikes me that ULA and others haven’t invented much for decades.

    You list all the “reused” rocket parts above and I recall that the recently cancelled Russian Proton first flew in 1965. I mean honestly - that’s half a century ago! What do they invest their revenue in - clearly not R&D?!
     
  14. ecarfan

    ecarfan Well-Known Member

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    Russia lacks the necessary resources to invest in the needed R&D for new hardware.

    Because ULA exists on cost-plus government contracts, until SpaceX came along ULA had no incentive to invest in innovation that would reduce launch costs.
     
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  15. Lozza12

    Lozza12 Member

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    Indeed - Musk’s “downward trajectory” comment comes to mind.
     
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  16. bxr140

    bxr140 Active Member

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    So...I think there's a few things that make the conversation so complicated. In no particular order:

    Innovation isn't always easy to see. Make no mistake, there's plenty of R&D that goes into rockets. Historically, at least on the American and European fronts, virtually every rocket ever has been a snowflake. They're constantly improving this or that, adding performance or reliability or whatever. These are almost exclusively incremental improvements, but they're moving the needle nevertheless.

    Innovation historically is the last thing customers want to see in rockets. Despite SpaceX leading everyone into a new public era of "Space is Cool", behind closed doors the space industry views rockets as little more than an expensive taxi. Because innovation typically makes things are more expensive and come with higher risk (until that improvement is proven), there hasn't been much business incentive to do anything drastically new or different. "Give me the thing that works" is far more important than "Give me the thing that's better".

    There's not a whole lot of bang/buck in innovation on rockets. Because success is SO important with every mission, everything needs ultimate scrutiny...which of course comes at a very high price. Couple that concept wit the fact that there's not a whole lot of innovation space still to go with chemical rockets, which are pretty close to the top of the S-curve as far as technology goes. Of course there's plenty of great ideas still left to be implemented, but none of them are anywhere near the "low cost, high impact" corner of the maxtrix. Reusability really is kind of the final frontier for chemical propulsion.

    There really isn't a lot of margin in space products. The material cost is a significant portion of total price, and because volumes are so low, labor hours even on recurring units (like rockets and rocket parts) is astronomical. This is primarily the differentiator for SpaceX--their efforts in reusability are specifically targeting recurring M&L costs.

    Innovation costs money. A lot of money. You're SO far ahead of the game if you start with existing technology, like a motor or a fairing or a tank (...like Vulcan is doing). The designs are there, the analysis is complete, the tooling and production capability already exist. Even if those elements need some development to be compatible with the new system, having that baseline makes the cost and schedule of the program much easier to bound.

    There really isn't a lot of margin in space products. The material cost is a significant portion of total price, and because volumes are so low, labor hours even on recurring units (like rockets and rocket parts) is astronomical. Even the $400M delta heavy is simply operating on some typical government rate. It just starts life as a super-expensive machine, and then you layer on all the typical government oversight and regulations, because The Man would much rather pay twice the price for confidence in a product (not to mention paying for more jobs...).

    The space industry players historically do not fund their own R&D, at least to any significant degree. Because program durations are so long, ROI is such a high risk, and funding is so hit or miss, development historically either comes from state subsidies (obvious or not) or customers (obvious or not). Less a game of chicken and the egg, significant technological advancement in the space industry is almost always a direct result of direct need.

    To be clear, these are simply the realities of the space industry, not an endorsement for 'the way things are'. Many people and companies--with SpaceX in the lead--are trying to advance the industry beyond this relative stagnation.


    With that said, there's still the most influential point in this conversation: SpaceX's technical success carries with it an implied financial success. While we don't have actual insight into SpaceX's financials, its generally agreed in the industry that they're not successful [yet], at least in the way that we'd apply 'success' to a publicly traded company. Corroborating evidence is the way Elon runs Tesla, a company where he's at least supposed to pretend to care about shareholders and ROI. So, its not completely fair to expect a state sponsored rocket entity like ULA/BA/LM (or ESA/Airbus) to produce the same results as a private one like SpaceX (or RL, or FF, etc.).
     
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  17. Bobfitz1

    Bobfitz1 Active Member

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    Hmm.. Glad Tom Mueller and Elon didn't believe the Merlin engine was too close to the top of the S-curve when they considered funding the Raptor program.
     
  18. Grendal

    Grendal SpaceX Moderator

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    Apparently BE-4 is having problems. The rumor is that they've lost a few engines in testing.
    Eric Berger on Twitter
     
  19. HVM

    HVM Savolainen

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    Not good, both Commercial American Staged Combustion Methane Burners seem to be "work in progress". It's hard to believe that neither one would be ready to flight less than two years.
     
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  20. ecarfan

    ecarfan Well-Known Member

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    Eric Berger gets to the core of the issue: it is indeed “damn hard to scale from New Shepard to New Glenn” (my paraphrasing).

    SpaceX started out with a small orbital class rocket and and it was an agonizing process to get to where they are today, routinely flying reusable boosters. But they did it in incremental steps while evolving their engine design.

    BO started out with a small sub-orbital rocket and then decided to go to an enormous orbital class reusable rocket with a completely different engine. Who knows when it will actually fly.
     
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