Main Engine Cut Off - T+64: BE-4 Fires Up, and Some Thoughts on the Future of Commercial and Military Launch

Episode Date: October 28, 2017

Blue Origin fired up their BE-4 engine for the first time, which is a big moment. And I share some meandering thoughts on the future of commercial and military launch. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 22 executive producers—Kris, Mike, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Robert, and five anonymous—and 95 other supporters on Patreon. Blue Origin on Twitter: “First hotfire of our BE-4 engine is a success #GradatimFerociter” Blue Origin just sent a jolt through the aerospace industry | Ars Technica Tory Bruno on Twitter: “@WeHaveMECO CDR in December. Tooling is the factory. First hardware in fab. pad mods underway” Tory Bruno on Twitter: “@IanPineapple @WeHaveMECO Cape pad will be backwards compatible. VAFB may not need that” Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the MECO Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Welcome to Managing Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo. Let's get into some Blue Origin news. Last week on the show we were talking all about the EELV RFP from the Air Force. We were talking about Centaur V. We heard some updates from ULA on Centaur V. And that was interestingly timed because just about a day after I put that show out, Blue Origin announced that they had successfully fired up the BE-4 for the first time down in Texas at their test site out in West Texas. This is the engine that will most likely be used for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, which Centaur V would be flying on. And we speculated a lot last week about why that choice was made,

what it could possibly involve. And I was talking about the fact that Centaur V and an increased diameter, if that is what it is, points to the fact that the BE-4 is the chosen engine for Vulcan. Whether or not they have said it yet, whether or not they have officially signed off on that yet, they are operating in a mode right now where BE-4 is looking like it's going to be the engine. And what we had heard to this point was that they were waiting on a firing of that engine from Blue Origin for the first time successfully to be able to make that decision.

So last week, Blue Origin fired up the BE-4 for the first time. And from the details we've heard, Eric Berger over at Ars Technica reported that the firing was 50% power for three seconds. So not that long of a burn, not that high powered of a burn, but very important nonetheless that they got this hot fire done successfully and that it was a stable three second burn at that power level. So this is really really big news for Blue Origin. This engine is obviously critically important to their own vehicle, New Glenn, which will be built upon seven BE-4s in the first stage and one upper

stage variant in the second stage. But it's also critically important for ULA's Vulcan, the rocket that they're kind of going all in on for the future. We talked last episode about how they want to transition to that rocket as quickly as possible, get away from the Atlas rocket, get away from the Delta IV, and move to Vulcan only as quick as possible. And what they need for that is a first stage engine that is operating successfully, that is reliable, and that can be ready for them to get into Vulcan. So this is a very important moment for them to have seen their engine of choice fired up for the first time. And I tweeted at Tory Bruno kind of, you know, ribbing him for, you know, do we hear any news about Vulcan today or not,

in the wake of this Blue Origin announcement. And instead of confirming or denying that BE4 is chosen, he tweeted back at me kind of a full status report on Vulcan and where it is today. And he said, CDR, Critical Design Review, is in December, tooling is in the factory, first hardware is in fabrication, and the pad mods are underway. In some follow-up tweets, he stated that the Cape pad, so that's out at Cape Canaveral, that pad will be backwards compatible with Atlas V and Vulcan, but the one out in Vandenberg probably doesn't need that because Vandenberg has fewer launches, so they can probably make a smooth transition from Atlas 5 to Vulcan out at Vandenberg.

But on the Cape, they are going to need to fly those alongside each other for a couple of years as Vulcan ramps up and as the Atlas 5 flights that are already contracted finish out. So they're kind of saying, we are all in on Vulcan. We are pushing ahead as quick as possible. Critical design review coming up in December. That means that the initial configuration and the design and the architecture of the rocket will kind of be locked at that point. They will make an official engine decision in December, so just over a month away. And after that, they will be pushing ahead in all aspects. You know, they'll be building the hardware that they've already got in fabrication. They'll be committed to that, at least for the

initial version of Vulcan. And hopefully we hear more out of that in regards to Centaur V, what that might contain, and kind of, you know, get the finished picture for what Vulcan will look like when it hits the pad in 2019, 2020, whenever it does come about. So this is big news. You know, we don't have too much to go on outside of what we already knew leading into this hot fire. They've done it successfully now. We'll be looking for Blue Origin to ramp up that power level, to ramp up that duration, and see how quickly they can get that engine operating at flight durations, at flight powers, and be very confident in that engine to go ahead with Vulcan and New Glenn standing on top of those engines themselves. From ULA, we'll

obviously be watching over the next couple months as they kind of announce all this stuff, as they lock in their plans for Vulcan, as they start to sign the first contracts for Vulcan and do the first test firings or structural tests of Vulcan hardware. There's a lot of work to be done on both of these companies' parts, but really, really good news for both of them. And maybe really bad news for Aerojet Rocketdyne. And I couch that in a maybe because, you know, there's a lot of ways that the Aerojet Rocketdyne AR-1 engine could go from here. That is the other engine that was in competition for Vulcan. That engine is a Keroulox engine, so it would change

the design of Vulcan quite drastically. BE-4 would have a bigger diameter, that five meter diameter. AR-1 would require a smaller diameter because of the difference in fuel types. The fuel is much more expensive, so that might even change the economic impacts of Vulcan. It might even change the lift impacts of Vulcan. They might need more solid rocket boosters for the same payload. So there's a lot of differences between these two engines and between the vehicle that would result in those choices. If AR-1 is not chosen for Vulcan, right now they're looking at something that is built, an engine that is built, and doesn't have a vehicle to fly on. It's not going to be used on anything else right now. I've speculated in the past about

how it could maybe be swapped out as part of Antares, an Antares upgrade, which could be interesting to see if Orbital ATK maybe pitches something like that. But as far as we know, they're going to go all in on their next generation launch vehicle. So AR-1 looks to be in a tough spot if BE-4 really works out like this, if it is chosen in December. They could be looking at another year or two of work on the AR-1 without an actual customer for that engine. So I've been thinking a lot about that and a lot about the EELV RFP from the Air Force and how military and commercial launch kind of are playing against each other right now. And I've got some kind of meandering thoughts on that that I'll get into. But before I do that, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone supporting Main Engine Cutoff

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It means a lot to me, and it keeps this thing going. It keeps this thing independent, and the direct support has just been absolutely incredible. So thank you so much for all of your support. So these meandering kind of thoughts I have on EELV. I've been thinking a lot about it because we had that RFP come out. We'll start to get responses to that soon. We've had this BE4 test firing that puts the AR-1 in a weird spot. And there seems to be some

different ways that this could go in the future. We're getting to a point in the space industry itself when the activity levels are kind of ramping up quite a bit. It's been a couple of decades of space operations, but I think we're really starting to see an uptick in commercial use of space and, you know, the military side of things here in the U.S. We're talking about potentially making a new branch of the military that is focused on space rather than having it be part of the Air Force. There's a lot of pushback, a lot of debate about that right now. The Air Force obviously wants to keep that under the Air Force branch, but there's other, you know, ideas to split it out, kind of like the Marines to the Navy and make a Space Corps. So there's a lot of debate about how the military is handling space.

And there's a significant uptick in activity in both of these and importance in all of these areas. There's a lot of talk about how space needs to transform now that so many people are getting access to it. And we have a lot of problems with how space needs to transform now that so many people are getting access to it. And we have a lot of problems with space situational awareness. You know, how many things are kind of doing these near-miss, almost collisions in space and who's doing the warnings for that. There is so much activity in, you know, the current status quo of space and how it works up there that we kind of seem to be at an inflection point. of space and how it works up there that we kind of seem to be at an inflection point. And I'm starting to wonder more and more if we're going to start to see a divide between military launch and commercial launch.

Now, I'm limiting this conversation to launch vehicles right now, but what I'm talking about can obviously be extended to satellite imagery or weather data, all these different kind of things, communications in space, all these different kinds of things, communications in space, all of these different aspects of space could be talked about in the same way. I'm just going to use launch because we have some recent topics to talk about in this way. And I think it's the most obvious example to something like this. And I'm also talking about this from a U.S. perspective. But what I'm talking about can be extended to Europe with Arianespace, Arian 5, But what I'm talking about can be extended to Europe with Arianespace, Arian5, 6, Vega,

to Russia and their launch capabilities there. So I'm talking about it in terms of U.S. commercial and governmental launch. But I think that can be extended to things other than launch and to areas other than the U.S. So keep that in mind as I use this as a main example. But, you know, don't limit your thinking in this to just this one realm that I'm talking about. But I'm starting to wonder if there is going to be this divide between military launch and commercial launch in the same way as we have some things like, you know, air transport today,

where we have military transport aircraft like C-5 Galaxies and C-17 Globemasters, and we have commercial transports like Boeing 737s and, you know, Airbus A320s and things like that, there is this, or even if you want to include, you know, the cargo planes that FedEx and UPS fly and things like that, and Amazon Prime's flying planes these days. There are these stark differences between what the military needs are, the things that they acquire for their use, and what the commercial needs are. And, you know, there are things like aircraft carriers and submarines and tanks that the military buys, but are not and should not be commercially available in a lot of senses. And for some reason, space launch has been this area where

there's kind of this conflation between these two things, between military needs and what commercial offers. And I think that comes from the fact that right now, where we are in the industry, the commercially available launch options, because they are so rooted in military launch vehicles from the 60s and onward, the capabilities that commercial offers versus the requirements the military needs are very, very closely aligned. You know, a lot of the commercially available launch vehicles today are based on the Air Force's EELV requirements, both in payload masses and fairing sizes and all these different kind of operations they do and orbits they fly to. The commercial market is positioned based on where the military market was established decades ago. So right now, these things are very, very close. But in these

other areas that I was just talking about, air transport, ships and all that kind of stuff, the difference between what the military and governmental needs are and what commercial companies offer, those are very much different. So in space, we tend to conflate these two things and think that military should always be acquiring launch from the commercial market and that the needs are always going to stay the same. And I don't necessarily think that's true. And there are a lot of areas where you can see this today in the market. I think the most obvious one is vertical integration. United Launch Alliance provides vertical integration as part of the Atlas V and Delta IV families because the Department of Defense here in the U.S. needs to use that so much for, you know, the thoughts are National Reconnaissance

Office spy satellites and things that are very sensitive optics. They need vertical integration to be able to fly. But SpaceX does not offer that yet. There is talk of them adding it to Pad 39A, but, you know, that's always kind of back and forth. We've heard them on and off again about that. But right now, they don't offer that. And Blue Origin, with New Glenn, is not planning on offering vertical integration. It's something that the commercial market does not need, does not have a need for, and tends to do without. But the military does have a need for it.

but the military does have a need for it. So in SpaceX's case up until this point it hasn't made sense for them to add vertical integration for the one or two launches they might win in the course of a five-year period when they just could focus on the things that they can offer the commercial market and really you know focus on that and get their flow working for that case and you know be able to bring about the speed efficiencies of doing horizontal integration and having one single flow that every payload goes through to fly on a Falcon 9 or eventually a Falcon Heavy. But the military needs of that are very specific. So ULA, because they have such history in this department, do provide vertical integration. And yes, now that is available to commercial market because they do supply it, but I don't know that there has been any commercially flown payload on ULA's rockets

that used vertical integration. If I'm wrong, please let me know. That would be very interesting to find out, but I don't think that's in the case yet. So the reason that I'm thinking about all this is that, you know, the government has priorities other than launch cost. And if they, yeah, right now they could go out and acquire launches from the commercial industry for the things that they need, but that might not always be the case because there are trends in the industry as it grows into a commercial market. And as needs shift, as payload sizes change, either smaller or larger, as popular orbits change in and out, the commercial market is going to go its own way once it truly is a commercial market. And I think

we're getting to that point when the commercial market is taking on a personality of its own. And the things that the commercial industry is looking for are starting to diverge from what the military is looking for. And yes, there's a little bit of push and pull between these two sides. You know, government's looking at what the commercial side is doing and taking advantage of that. You know, maybe when New Glenn comes on, they have a seven meter fairing to take advantage of. They're going to start building bigger satellites to be launched on that. Or when SpaceX launches the BFR and the government sees all the things that can do, they might start to, you know, think, well, what could we do to take advantage of that?

And vice versa, when a commercial launch provider sees the things that government is doing, they might build more towards that to kind of garner that market. Or in the satellite imagery space, someone sees what the government is doing and says, we can do that better and cheaper, and they start building something

that could be offered to the government. So there is a bit of push and pull, but you are starting to see this divergence between things that are important to the military and things that are important to commercial. So thinking about this in the realm of EELV, like I was talking about with BE4 and AR1, the government has a vested interest in keeping certain contractors around and keeping certain industrial bases around, most readily seen in the solid rocket industry. You know, they want to keep those solid rocket producers around because that is typically used for missile systems

and for things that are used in ICBMs and things like that. So they want to keep a provider of that around. You know, Aerojet Rocketdyne is pretty big in the industry, both solids and liquid propulsion. They have a vested interest in keeping them around. You know, Aerojet Rocketdyne is pretty big in the industry, both solids and liquid propulsion. They have a vested interest in keeping them around and in the way that they need it because, you know, SpaceX and Blue Origin, as companies focused solely on the commercial market, are going to respond to commercial trends. But government needs, they don't want to be subjected to the trends of an industry necessarily. They need certain things and they will always need certain things like solid rockets because of the way that the arsenal is structured right now that might not be fit to the commercial market and in fact are being very much phased out of the commercial market.

So I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if in this EELV process, this second launch services agreement RFP that came out, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see an orbital ATK get picked for a solid rocket based launch vehicle that is compatible with the EELV payloads. Because that solves two needs for the government. They want to keep that solid rocket industry around. They want to have a launch vehicle that they can use per their specifications. They want something that they can be assured will exist that isn't subjected to the trends in the industry as much, but does fit their specifications, does fit the requirements, and does fit their other priorities like having a solid rocket manufacturer around. Or maybe when the AR-1 is not chosen for Vulcan, they'll want to kind of find a way to make sure that that does get used on a launch vehicle that might just be a military launch vehicle. Maybe they kind of find some way to buy the Atlas V intellectual property and create a rocket based on the AR-1, based on the Atlas V, and continue to fly that as a military vehicle as ULA moves on to Vulcan

because they are starting to look more towards the commercial side. Maybe Lockheed Martin takes that Atlas V IP back, as they're the owners of that, and they market their own launch vehicle as an Atlas V outside of the realm of ULA. There's a lot of ways for this to go, but what I'm saying is, as these priorities shift, as the things that commercial finds in their priority list and military finds in their priority list, as the differences grow between those, we might start to see launch vehicles dedicated to military and governmental use. And not everything is going to

be able to be used for commercial and military there might be some things that are just for commercial launch that sometimes the military buys but you know isn't isn't necessarily focused on it like new glenn isn't going to have vertical integration and maybe some other things that the dod is looking for and there's going to be certain launch vehicles that just focus on the military and don't necessarily have the best price for commercial or have the right launch services for commercial or, you know, things that the commercial market would want. Maybe there are certain kinds of satellite dispensers, so many different things that go into it, but the priorities are starting to shift quite a bit. And an area we may see this

play out more readily is small launch. You know, there's a whole debate over using retired ICBM motors to launch small satellites. And we see this with orbital ATKs, minotaur launch vehicle, and certain things like that. But there's this growing section of the industry for small launch, Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit and Vector. Not all of these are going to survive. You know, there's countless other small launch companies out there working on all sorts of different architectures. Not all of them are going to survive. You know, there's countless other small launch companies out there working on all sorts of different architectures. Not all of them are going to survive. Some of them will. But if the U.S. government wants some sort of small launch capability, they right now, with such an industry in flux, can't necessarily rely on any one of those companies making it, especially ones that would fit their needs for these missions.

So they kind of could start to say, you know what, we want to prioritize this issue again, kind of bring it back up from the 90s and from earlier last year, and really consider it in the fact that there is this divergence between commercial and military. So I don't know that I have a hard thesis here, but I've just been thinking a lot about who's going to win this EELV contract, and I could see it going away where, you know, it's not a necessity that every single winner in the EELV contract also has to be commercially viable. That is not a foregone conclusion. It's a benefit in some cases because you get something like a Falcon 9 that its launch rate is so much higher, you can build up some sort of reliability and some sort of cost incentive because of the economies of scale that they're flying at. And there are

obviously benefits to choosing a launch vehicle that can do both, but that is not in any way a done deal. They very well could go with Orbital ATK and their next generation launch vehicle and go all in on a launch vehicle like that. They very much could go with Orbital ATK and their next generation launch vehicle and go all in on a launch vehicle like that. They very much could go all in on something that keeps the AR-1 around in a very governmental and militarily focused launch vehicle system. So I mostly just want to keep our eyes peeled for the fact that these priorities are diverging and it is becoming possible. It's becoming into the realm of possibility that there could be a military-focused launch vehicle that does certain things that the government needs or provides them a level of assurance or just has different capabilities. The C5 Galaxy of the military launch or the Globemaster of the military launch

or the F-18 of military launch or the globe master of the military launch or the F-18 of military launch. Something that has its own capabilities, has its own assurance properties that isn't necessarily guaranteed to always exist in the commercial sector, especially as the commercial sector grows and expands and changes face so much more quickly than the government side of things do. So don't be surprised if that's what we get out of the EELV contracting round. Don't be surprised if we start to see that in the small launch space as well. I think this is becoming something that it's not necessarily a pain point right now to kind of have these two sectors conflated in this way, but I could start to

see some specialization happen here rather than the trend of the last five years to be, you know, let's all focus on commercial launch, commercial launch, commercial launch, because there are some cases when that is going to break down. And from the government's perspective, they can't rely on industry sticking around or certain architecture sticking around and things like that. So I'm interested to hear what you think about that. As I said, this is kind of a half-formed thought process right now, but I wanted to get this out there and see what you all thought of that. So as always, email me anthonyatmainenginecutoff.com if you'd like to discuss that. I always love hearing from anyone out there about all things that we discuss on the show. So that's it for me this week. Thank you again so much to all of you supporting Main Engine

Cutoff on Patreon, patreon.com slash Miko, where you can go to get in on the headline show or the Discord or just support the show in that way. And don't forget the Main Engine Cutoff shop, shop.mainenginecutoff.com has got some t-shirts and some rocket socks up there that are pretty fun. So go check it out if you want to support the show in a different way. That always helps as well. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.