6 thoughts on “BE-4”

  1. “Blue Origin has also had to deal with stringent requirements from United Launch Alliance for aspects such as combustion instability. This potential problem has plagued US rocket engines since the massive F1 engine built for the Saturn V rocket in the 1960s. Combustion instability involves rapid, unexpected pressure changes inside the thrust chamber during ignition of fuel and oxidizer. If this instability propagates, it can destroy an engine.”

    Not blowing up seems like an ordinary requirement rather than a stringent one. The next paragraph talks about how hard it is to meet government standards but since that is the customer for BO, that isn’t asking BO to go above and beyond but rather just do what is required to compete in the industry they want to compete in. Like, they aren’t engineering to higher standards, just normal standards, if that makes sense.

    Berger says BO wanted to raise the price to ULA because of their development difficulties but why would ULA be expected to pay that off when BO should be pricing based off their production costs going forward? Development costs are sunk, were bankrolled by Bezos, and wouldn’t New Glenn be expected to contribute to recouping those investments over time? But then again, BO is trying to be a government contractor.

    BO said they would do a job at a certain price. They should live up to that deal as long as they can turn a profit off price vs current production costs. If ULA is competitive, BO will make a lot of money over the coming years. If ULA isn’t competitive, how will New Glenn fair?

    1. When I am emperor all transactions will be cost-plus. The cost of the gas I burned en route to the liquor store will be refunded along with my fifth of Jack.

  2. I don’t always agree with Eric Berger, but he’s a better writer than most so-called space journalists. I just wish he could find a better employer. A couple of Ars headlines alongside this article…

    GOP congressman gets COVID-19 after suing Pelosi over mask rule (subhead: Rep. Ralph Norman is fully vaccinated and has only a mild infection.) Ya think?

    Florida in revolt as COVID cases spike, DeSantis rejects health measures (subhead: At least four school districts have plans to defy the governor’s orders.) So that would be “at least four” out of the 83 Florida school districts? Not exactly four, mind you, but somewhere in between 4 and 83?

  3. Has the universe suffered one of those dislocations you read about in SF? Since when is schedule slippage and cost overruns in a government space program even worth commenting about? I’m sure that ULA’s attitude is that if there’s going to be slippages and overruns their going to “ours” not yours.

    The only reason they seem to have hired BO (really poor acronym) is because it was certain that if they hired any of the regular players it would take forever and cost ??? Hope springs eternal and Bezos has deep pockets.

    We started using Russian engines in the first place because nobody wanted to go through the pain of developing a new engine. Same for the SME on SLS.

  4. Blue Origin has way less engine design experience. Plus they likely lack the in-house tools SpaceX has to design engines. Even then you can see Raptor isn’t 100% up to spec yet either.

    Blue Origin has loads of issues and I think it was a mistake to cancel the Aerojet engine for Vulcan.

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