Main Engine Cut Off - T+77: Blue Origin Reconfigures New Glenn

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

Caleb Henry got a great scoop on some changes Blue Origin is making to New Glenn. I think through why these changes may have been made and what these changes could mean for the near future. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 27 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Laszlo, Joel, and six anonymous—and 150 other supporters on Patreon. Main Engine Cut Off Shop Main Engine Cut Off on Twitter: “🚨 New shirts alert! 🚨 Just put up 4 new shirts over in the MECO shop. Really excited about these.” Blue Origin switches engines for New Glenn second stage - SpaceNews.com Blue Origin Switches to BE-3U for New Glenn Second Stage - Main Engine Cut Off Blue Origin ramping up BE-4 engine testing – NASASpaceFlight.com Two Weeks Until “The Stick” Gets Its Name - Main Engine Cut Off FA8811-17-9-0001; Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Launch Service Agreements (LSA) Request for Proposals (RFP) - Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, 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 Main Engine Cutoff, I'm Anthony Colangelo, and we've got some Grade A MECO news to break down today. Blue Origin had some really interesting announcements, or maybe not announcements isn't the right word, but Caleb Henry, friend of the show here, got a great scoop on some Blue Origin changes. And it is exactly the kind of stuff that I love breaking down on the show. So I'm really excited to talk about that today. But before we get into it, I did want to plug the MECO shop here on the show. I don't talk about it much. I'm not sure why. But over at shop.mainenginecutoff.com, I just put up a bunch of new shirt designs.

There's four new shirts over there. So I recommend going to check it out. There's some really fun stuff in the shop. The four I put up are some really cool stuff that I've been digging into lately. First one, and my personal favorite, is a Viking shirt. I found this old retro Viking logo

that was used on material during the time of the missions, and that is on a Mars-colored shirt. It's a great thing to wear around. Then there's one for NASA's BALS-8 plane. That's the B-52 that dropped the X-15, all of the lifting bodies. It launched the first Pegasus rocket to space, so it was the first plane to launch a satellite. Did a ton of other research. An awesome plane with an incredible history, and you can wear its tail paint on a shirt. And then there's two for the space stations.

Skylab, something inspired by the mission paths, and same for Space Station Freedom, the space station that never flew but it did have a really cool program patch so check those out over at shop.managingcutoff.com and there's also some great stuff there that has been there forever uh centaur falcon shirts an rp1 lock shirt which is great and then rocket socks which are better seen than described so go over again uh check out shop.managingcutoff.com, and it's a great way to support the show and keep this thing running if you are digging it.

So I would love for you to check that out. But enough with the plugs. Let's dive into the big news this week. So as I said, Caleb Henry got a great scoop during an interview with Blue Origin, and turns out that they've made some architectural changes to New Glenn over the past couple of months. When New Glenn was first announced, just for some context, the architecture was that it was a two or three stage rocket. The first stage is common in both. It is that big first stage that's going to be reusable. It is a methane and oxygen stage, Methalox, and it will be powered by seven BE-4 engines.

That thing will land on a ship downrange, apparently, with the one center engine. There are six engines around it that provide the thrust for liftoff. The second stage that is also common on both of those variants is, again, another methalox stage, this time flying with one BE-4 vacuum engine, the BE-4U. And then optionally in the future, there would have been a third stage that was a hydrogen and oxygen stage or hydrolox that would be powered by the BE-3U. And that would be for sending, big payloads farther out into space or doing more complicated maneuvers like the direct-to-geo missions and stuff like that. They have now simplified this architecture, and we'll get into why, and that's what we're going to break down, why they made this change. But the New Glenn

architecture is going to be the same first stage, the 7 BE-4s, methalox stage, but the second stage is going to be a hydrogen and oxygen stage powered by two BE3Us. So that single BE4U engine stage that's methalox, that's going out the window. They're switching it with a slightly longer second stage that will be powered by two of their BE3Us. So immediately everyone starts to figure out, why did they make this change why are they going this route what is it about this route or the things that led them to this decision what is it that we can learn from this and i've got a bunch of stuff written down that i've been brainstorming the past couple of days uh so let's run through some of those things first i think this is a really fantastic simplification of their architecture.

And I think there's a lot of aspects to this, like schedule and the usefulness of the payloads that they can deliver, the mission profiles that they might deliver. But overall, this is a great simplification. It takes it from building BE4, BE4U, and BE3U to just BE4 and BE3U. That means they only have to produce two types of engines rather than three. Because the BE4U, while that might sound like the BE4 with a nozzle, there are changes to the vacuum variants of engines. Just look, for example, at SpaceX. They have the Merlin 1D and the vacuum variant of that. And those are drastically different engines.

And they're built for their own specific use case. So it's not as simple as just putting a longer nozzle on a BE-4. So yes, we could glean from this that BE-4 is probably behind the schedule that they envisioned. You know, they did have problems on the test stand when they first got to Texas with that BE-4. They lost a power pack on the test stand, which seems to have delayed them a bit. Recently, we heard about a very long duration burn at 65% power for BE4. So they're ramping up the test program, but it is probably a little slower than they were hoping. One of the things that was impressed upon Caleb and came through in the article was that this change was done to preserve that first launch

in 2020 for New Glenn. So that means, you know, maybe they are behind with BE4 and BE4U is going to take longer, but they had already been working on BE3 and BE3U so they can accelerate that schedule and save some time in development. They previously had a contract with Orbital ATK to develop an extendable nozzle for the BE-3 to turn it into the BE-3U for use on Orbital ATK's next generation launch vehicle. They are no longer going to use that in their next generation launch vehicle, but Blue Origin obviously still has some plans for it. They had originally planned it for that third stage of New Glenn. Now they're pulling it forward into that second stage. that third stage of New Glenn, now they're pulling it forward into that second stage. So, you know, if this does allow them to make that deadline, I think it's a good decision from that alone. But there's also, you know, some big benefits to using a hydrogen second stage

and to using an engine like the BE-3U. So let's get into that. First thing first, the technical aspects of this that I think people had some question marks. You know, BE-4 is a very big engine. That's a space shuttle main engine sized engine in thrust values, you know, 550,000 pounds of thrust or more, more in a vacuum, obviously. BE-3 is a little over 100,000 pounds of thrust, so much smaller. In the vacuum, the last figure that I saw quoted at a conference last year sometime was that the vacuum variant will provide 150,000 pounds of thrust. They will be coupling those on that second stage. There'll be two of them. So that'll be a total thrust of 300,000 pounds. The other factor here is that BE4 would be pushing

methane and oxygen. Liquid natural gas, I guess, for the origin, but methane is easier to say. Methane is a lot heavier than hydrogen. So by switching to the hydrogen stage, they do have to lengthen the stage a little bit, but the fuel weight is going down as a methane to hydrogen comparison. So they do need, or they can get away with lower thrust. But by pairing those engines, they still have sufficiently high thrust to not be in a situation like Centaur is on the Atlas V and like the Delta cryogenic second stages on

Delta IV, where it has a very low thrust engine. So it creates some interesting problems for trajectories. You know, and that's why for crude launches on the Atlas V, they're actually putting two RL-10 engines on Centaur to make up some of that thrust. But for Blue Origin here, with two BE-3Us, they will still have quite a bit of thrust on this second stage. With that, they did mention in this article with Caleb Henry, the fact that with this new configuration, the methane first stage, the hydrogen second stage, they are able to hit all nine of the reference orbits that are outlined by the US Air Force that you need to do to be able to qualify for some missions. This has been something we've been talking about with Falcon Heavy, that they have now opened up all nine of

those reference orbits for SpaceX. Blue Origin, with this single architecture of New Glenn, they have opened up all nine of those reference orbits to New Glenn, which means that they can do at least five to six metric tons directly to geostationary orbit with this two-stage vehicle. That is quite a bit of payload capacity, a really useful range, and that all comes with that reusable first stage. So this is a really great, versatile launch vehicle. And I think when you look at it from that aspect, being able to simplify architecture and still get this much of a useful vehicle out of it is a win all around. So they have one less engine to develop, one less engine to produce, a simpler architecture. Obviously, they have more than one propellant in the ground infrastructure, but maybe that's

not such a big deal in this case. And it still lets them cover all of those ranges of payloads and from day one, be really competitive across the full spectrum of launch services that are offered today. There are some other interesting aspects to this usage of the BE-3U. As I said, Orbital ATK dropped it from their next generation launch vehicle, but there have been some, you know, whisperings lately that Blue Origin is working with Marshall Space Flight Center on a feasibility study about using the BE-3U on that new upper stage of the space launch system. So there's going to be this new upper stage for EM-2 and beyond. Right now, the baseline is to use four RL10 engines. There's been whisperings that Blue Origin has been floating BE3U as an idea for use on that upper stage, that they would like to contribute and, you know, build engines and maybe even the whole stage for SLS.

And when you start thinking that, you know, on their own dime, they're developing a seven meter wide hydrogen upper stage with two high thrust hydrogen engines. That is a pretty amazing comparison to, you know, the exploration upper stage that SLS will fly, which is an 8.4 meter upper stage right now, again, as I said, with four RL-10s, but that number would probably come down if you use the higher thrust BE-3U. So, you know, they could be building basically the exploration upper stage in this stage right now, which is a really interesting consideration, you know, that they'll be flying something that is that big in 2020, 2021, you know, years before the exploration upper stage would be used. So there are some of these outside considerations that when you start bringing in, as I said, the wins are architecture simplification

and schedule concerns that bring along with it the usefulness to hit all nine of those reference orbits for the Air Force. You start bringing in some outside things like how close this is to the Exploration Upper Stage for SLS and some other things that I'll get into in a minute, this really starts to come together as a very focused, useful, and practical route forward for Blue Origin. Now, I want to get into what Blue Origin could do with this engine into the future. But while we're on the topic of, you know, outside considerations for their engine usage, I do want to mention some things about this Air Force round of funding for launch services that is due to be announced in July. In July, the Air Force will down select to a couple of

providers and they will give out contracts to build launch vehicles for phase three of the EELV program, which is what the Air Force calls their program that's getting their satellites to space. Funnily enough, there's a lot of reusable rockets in this expendable rocket program today. So the name might need a little updating. But nonetheless, there's this phase three round of contracts that is coming up. And we've been talking about it a lot in terms of ULA's Vulcan rocket. They have been waiting to pick their engine for that rocket between the BE-4 and the Aerojet rocket dying AR-1. Orbital ATK has been talking about this next generation launch vehicle, which I've mentioned a few times. We're not sure what SpaceX would do for that yet.

And we're pretty sure that Blue Origin is putting New Glenn into the running. So these are the four main competitors in this EELV round of contracts. And we might be able to read some of these tea leaves from Blue Origin to tip the hand towards what we might see in that round of funding. As I said, Orbital ATK dropped the BE-3U for the upper stage. That engine decision is between Aerojet Rocketdyne's RL-10 and Arion Group's Vinci engine. Vinci engine is European, obviously. It's got higher thrust than the RL-10, so it would be a good choice. Just not sure that Orbital ATK is going to want to use a non-American engine after seeing what the Atlas V has been through the past couple of years. And the Vulcan thing is really where this gets weird, you know, because as we see with this Blue Origin announcement, the new Glenn architecture is going to be perfectly suited

for this kind of launch services award and very similar to, you know, Vulcan. If Vulcan were to pick the BE-4 engine, it would be using two BE-4s down below, an upper stage that's hydrogen-based, and then, you know, using right now an RL-10, but maybe in the future, BE-3Us. So really, New Glenn is just like the way better version of what Vulcan could ever hope to be, and partially reusable rather than just reusing the engines, and there's so many benefits to Nucleon itself. I'm starting to get the vibe that ULA is not going to pick BE-4, because I think they would have made that decision months ago at this point.

We've been seeing BE-4 test firings go pretty well. I'm starting to think there's some backdoor conversations that ULA is leaning towards the AR1 again. Maybe it's that if New, if New Glenn comes into this Air Force round of contracting with such a compelling offer, ULA doesn't want to go in with something that is the same, but a lot worse. You know, I don't know that they, they might not think that's the best play for them.

And maybe they think the best play is to extend what Atlas 5 is doing and build upon that for at least the next couple of years, win a couple of launch contracts. But honestly, that's not a good long-term play for them. But they might not have any decision-making power in that because Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the parent companies, might be calling some of these shots. the parent companies, might be calling some of these shots. The way ULA is delaying this decision really makes me think they're leaning towards the AR-1 and what I would consider an absolutely awful, heartbreaking decision for the future of ULA. But, you know, I'm wondering, with Orbital ATK turning their back on Blue Origin, and with ULA seemingly not ready to jump in on the BE-4 train, maybe Blue Origin decided, you know what, we can toast all these old guard space contractors, build an incredible launch vehicle, and completely destroy the

competition in this regard. It's not unforeseeable that that's what blue origin decided was we've got a really strong architecture here these others are not ready to go all in with us let's go our own way and really make the most of this round of contracting so i just wanted to take that little side jack because i was kind of touching on it anyway but uh we should hear more in two weeks the space symposium is going to be out in Colorado Springs, I think it is. And Orbital ATK apparently is going to unveil the name for their next generation launch vehicle. They're going to announce their upper stage engine decision. I wouldn't be surprised if we hear from ULA about the engine selection. And honestly,

I wouldn't be surprised if they pick AR-1. And I just am dreading that decision. But reading these tea leaves it seems like Blue Origin decided it's time to go and uh you know not wait around for anyone else to get on board with them so we'll see what happens out at Space Symposium it should be a very fun week uh coming up in two weeks here so keep your eyes peeled for that all right now I want to dive into future plans for Blue Origin what this New Glenn decision might mean for the future. But before I do that, I need to say a big, big thank you to all the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Miko is where this show is supported.

This is a fully independently supported show, direct from all you, the listeners. And that's what keeps this thing going. It keeps it independent. all you, the listeners. And that's what keeps this thing going. It keeps it independent. It keeps me being able to speak my mind and talk about how a decision one way or another is going to be heartbreaking for these big contractors. It keeps me free to say really whatever I want. And so if you're enjoying that, I would really appreciate heading over to patreon.com slash Miko and lending a little support. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 27 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Joel, and six anonymous executive producers.

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Thank you all again so much for your support. All right, the fun stuff. What could Blue Origin be up to in the future that would be made possible by this architecture decision? Well, the first really interesting thing, they've talked up in the past this Blue Moon project, the lunar lander project that they have, I guess, ongoing within the halls of Blue Origin, I'm not sure, but they've been talking up about

how they want to build out this architecture to land some humans on the moon or land big cargo on the moon, that sort of thing. They call it Blue Moon, and they had said in the past that it would be a stage that's based on New Shepard in some ways.

So it would be a BE-3U powered stage, a hydrogen-oxygen stage or lander of some sort. I assume it would be a single stage lander because Blue Origin does think reusability is a good idea, so I can't imagine leaving half of your stage behind on the lunar surface would be something they'd be interested in. leaving half of your stage behind on the lunar surface would be something they'd be interested in. So with that in mind, something like a fully, you know, a huge hydrogen-oxygen engine stage that, you know, could launch something like the Blue Moon lander out towards the moon, it becomes really interesting to consider what that architecture looks like. As we've said, this version of New Glenn could do five to six metric tons to geostationary orbit, which means it could probably do about the same to low lunar orbit if that upper stage was able to make that sort of

long coast. So that does put it in the range of some sort of large lander to lunar orbit and then have that lander go down to the surface. And the really interesting thing here is that because both the second stage and the lander would be using the BE-3U, that provides propellant commonality, which means they could have landers refueled by the upper stage or vice versa, and they can build out this architecture of a hydrogen and oxygen-based system that can be refueled, either launching more propellant from Earth. Maybe they launch an upper stage by itself to lunar orbit and they refuel from there. Or maybe they are doing propellant production

on the lunar surface and they bring some back up to lunar orbit to refuel the upper stage. And really, that large upper stage becomes an in-space tug that's refuelable, that's reusable in that way. And they build out this hydrogen-oxygen-based architecture that's refuelable, that's reusable in that way, and they build out this hydrogen-oxygen-based architecture that's refuelable, that can work throughout cislunar space, as they call it. That's a really intriguing thing for a company that has this vision of,

as they always say, millions of people living and working in space. That sort of thing, a refuelable common propellant system operating from Earth to the moon and back, that is the sort of thing that you look at if that is your vision. So I have to imagine that somewhere in the roadmap, that was always the plan, maybe with the third stage. But now they're bringing that forward into this larger in-space tug, very similar to the ideas that ULA has for their ACES stage in the future, but it's larger. And that's really intriguing to consider. So that would be the first thing that comes to mind to me is this propellant commonality in an Earth-Moon system, something

that I think we should watch out for. The other interesting thing that the BE-3U specifically does, is it does lend its hand to some sort of reusable thinking. We've already been seeing a BE-3 base stage do propulsive landings here on Earth in the New Shepard format. It's interesting to consider what they would do with a reusable upper stage. Blue Origin wants to be a reusable company. They're starting from day one with a reusable upper stage. Blue Origin wants to be a reusable company.

They're starting from day one with a reusable first stage. I always thought it was weird that they had these giant fairings, seven meter fairings that they're going to presumably throw away, but I kind of assume that they're going to reuse them somehow, a la SpaceX. And they have this giant throwaway upper stage, which is always, you know, that's the typical thing. But you have to figure somewhere in the roadmap is making those two components reusable, considering how big they are, how much money they're sinking into them, how expensive they are, how useful they are to reuse, because it's not going to be easy to make seven meter fairings. It's not going to be easy to make a seven meter upper stage. It's not going to be easy to throw away two BE3Us every single time. So you have to imagine that in the roadmap, maybe even from very early on in the roadmap, full reusability is something that they're

interested in. So with that in mind, it makes a lot of sense to move towards a BE3U based upper stage rather than a single BE4UU upper stage. BE-4 is something around 600,000 pounds of thrust for a very light stage when it's empty of fuel. So that's basically a no-go for propulsive landing here on the earth. And I'm not sure how they would pull it off otherwise with such a large upper stage, a heavy engine, big tanks, that sort of thing. Moving to BE-3U brings some interesting advantages here. It's lower thrust. As I said earlier, it's 150,000 pounds of thrust in a vacuum closer to 100,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. They have two of those. They can deep throttle. We've seen

that with New Shepard. They have a very deep throttle limit on BE-3, so they can bring that thrust all the way down for a very gentle landing, even of a stage of this sort. So with that, you know, raw technical side, it kind of makes sense as an architecture for a reusable upper stage to move to the BE3U and move to, you know, it's not a cluster of them, just this pair of BE3Us, but that is pretty interesting. The other thing is that in the past, when they've been working with Orbital ATK on the BE3Us, but that is pretty interesting. The other thing is that in the past when they've been working with Orbital ATK on the BE-3U, that wasn't contract for an extendable nozzle for the BE-3. So if that's the case, maybe they can build a nozzle that's extendable and

retractable. This was something we saw of concept art in the early days of SpaceX, is having a single engine on an upper stage that can extend its nozzle for use in the vacuum and retract it again for use here on Earth. Maybe that's what they have in mind so that they can actually put a BE-3 on there, and maybe there's not as much difference between a BE-3U and a BE-3, and by retracting that nozzle, they can fire it in the atmosphere for a successful landing of that upper stage. So I think this does set them up for some sort of reusability thinking.

There's still a lot of problems to solve, some heat shielding, some aerodynamic surfaces, that kind of thing. But engine-wise, this does set them up better for that than a BE-4U does. So I wouldn't count it out entirely. I wouldn't expect it to be something that's very early on. I think they would probably lean towards nailing down first stage landings, fairings, and maybe some of that in-space tug stuff that I was talking about, you know, refueling, that kind of thing. Cryogenic propellant transfer, that's going to be an important topic as well. And there's some other interesting things that they could do with an upper stage this big. Wet workshops come to mind. This is a very large tank.

Hydrogen, oxygen tanks, they lend themselves towards wet workshops pretty easily. The majority of wet workshop ideas we've seen in the past have been with a hydrogen upper stage. So that possibility is there, and I think that might be something they're interested in. Because if they want millions living and working in space, they're going to need a lot of real estate for that so that would be a good way to build out uh some habitable habitable volumes in space um the other thing that is interesting to consider so we've got propellant commonality uh with refueling reusable tug reusable upper stage with uh you know thrust, deep throttling engines that can fire in the atmosphere, and what I just said of wet workshops. The other thing is that maybe they are making

better progress on their next launch vehicle, New Armstrong, and maybe that's sooner than they might have planned otherwise. They are working to find a launch site down in Florida. I've heard some rumblings about where they might be launching from. They're working on the early plans for New Armstrong, which is the class of vehicle that they would use for human landings on the lunar surface. And, you know, with that in mind, do they need to take the high end of New Glenn payload all the way up to what they were imagining before? Do they need to build that three-stage version of New Glenn? I wouldn't be surprised if that three-stage version was totally off the table in an effort to simplify the New Glenn architecture, get it flying sooner, get it flying all of the useful orbits they need it to, and moving on to

New Armstrong for any of that higher end payload stuff that they would have used a three stage new Glenn for. This is my oddball theory that I think may just be what they're thinking about. But if they're making better progress on this kind of two stage new Glenn architecture, if it does all the things that they need it to in the next decade, decade, maybe they can accelerate the plans for new Armstrong and pull that forward into the 2020s rather than the later late 2020s or early 30s or whatever their plan was before. Maybe they can get new Glenn flying, doing all the things they needed to do for the next decade and move on with new Armstrong to pursue whatever their grander plans are with that as of yet unseen launch vehicle. That is all I've got for our Blue Origin theorizing today. It's been a lot of fun to consider this stuff. I'm really excited for this next couple of years

that we're going to see out of Blue Origin. Really hopeful for stuff like this. And I think this is a great decision by them. So really interesting times. And if any of you out there just randomly commuting to an office in Kent, Washington, and you want to email me just a single number percentage of how much I got right today, I would very much enjoy that. So if you want to send me any feedback about this episode, Anthony at ManagingCutoff.com is the email or on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. Thanks again for all of your support at Patreon.com slash Miko. And I will talk to you next week.