Blue Origin Announces New Glenn Third Stage, New Booster Engine (space.com) 21
Blue Origin has unveiled a third stage called GS3 for its New Glenn rocket, designed to deliver satellite constellations directly to geostationary orbit and support heavy-lift missions to the Moon and deep space. The company also announced Northstar, a new methalox booster engine that it says produces 715,000 pounds of thrust while cutting mass by 30% and parts by 50% compared with the BE-4. Space.com reports: The new stage will be powered by one BE-7 engine, which the company developed for use on its Blue Moon spacecraft, one of the two private vehicles that NASA selected to be crewed lunar landers for its Artemis program. (The other is SpaceX's Starship.) Blue Moon landing missions won't need to launch on GS3-equipped New Glenn rockets, according to Blue Origin. But the third stage "can support sustained operations around the moon," the company wrote in today's blog post. "By delivering significant payload mass directly to trans-lunar injection (TLI), GS3 enables faster transit times while preserving propellant for on-orbit operations." And there's already demand for such services: Blue Origin also announced today that a government customer (which it did not name) has booked a GS3 mission to cislunar (Earth-moon) space, with launch targeted for 2028.
And the company dropped yet more news today -- that it's working on a new first-stage engine, called Northstar. Like Blue Origin's other booster engine, the BE-4, Northstar burns liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellant, a combination known as methalox. But the new engine is more powerful and less complex. "Compared to the BE-4 engine, Northstar reduces mass by 30% and parts count by 50%, while increasing thrust from 640,000 to 715,000 pounds-force," Blue Origin said in a second blog post today. "Manufacturing advancements have also significantly shortened production timelines, enabling assembly in less than a day." Northstar went from program approval to development testing in just 11 months, according to the company. But today's update did not say when the new engine will fly for the first time.
And the company dropped yet more news today -- that it's working on a new first-stage engine, called Northstar. Like Blue Origin's other booster engine, the BE-4, Northstar burns liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellant, a combination known as methalox. But the new engine is more powerful and less complex. "Compared to the BE-4 engine, Northstar reduces mass by 30% and parts count by 50%, while increasing thrust from 640,000 to 715,000 pounds-force," Blue Origin said in a second blog post today. "Manufacturing advancements have also significantly shortened production timelines, enabling assembly in less than a day." Northstar went from program approval to development testing in just 11 months, according to the company. But today's update did not say when the new engine will fly for the first time.
Great ! (Score:3, Informative)
Go BO, Go Spacex, Go Relativity, Rocket Lab, Axiom, etc. etc. !
(*) reading News for Nerds
Re: Great ! (Score:1)
million year long sigh at /. and formatting
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But if NASA management in the 70s had had the balls to reject the idiotic demands to make the Shuttle manned-only, lives would have been saved and development would never have halted ( even with Old Space making stuff, slowly ) because unmanned, cutting-edge, prototypes could have been tested without killing people.
Re: Great ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Rockets are fickle, including ones shaped like airplanes. What differentiates success from disaster ultimately comes down to whether the brass decides to ignore safety concerns raised by its engineers. NASA has done that at least twice.
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Not to mention the people who would still be alive.
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No, that wouldn't have done anything. We even have the benefit of hindsight to tell us exactly that. For Challenger, the engineers had already known that the o-rings were prone to shrinkage in cold weather, and had already seen the scorch marks on the sides of the boosters from previous flights to be aware of the concern. How many more unmanned flights did you need for this when the problem was already well known and well understood?
That particular morning, there were literal icicles forming on everything a
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Good news ! Who(*) doesn't love a space race ?!
(glances at objects in rear view mirror warning label)
https://youtu.be/ErR5Uz0axOI [youtu.be]
Technically, the race is..well..ah, let’s just say some are still struggling to get it up.
(*) Micheal Bay fans, are quite fired up about it.
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BO recovered from that at amazing speed.
They did, and that's a good sign. And we cannot forget that some of the cult forgot their leader's rockets have rapidly disassembled on the launch pad. This shit happens.
Having been involved in a few very large energy systems for some time in the past, this is not abnormal. A lot of mechanical learning, a hella lot of learning curve. We always noted "This shit happens"
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Good news ! Who(*) doesn't love a space race ?! Go BO, Go Spacex, Go Relativity, Rocket Lab, Axiom, etc. etc. ! (*) reading News for Nerds
Absolutely! While some here seem to want one particular company to have a monopoly on all rocketry and associated space stuff, I just love the competition. And aside from competition, there is the use case. Balls to the wall rockets like SLS and its Artemis mission or Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 heavy in interim payloads, and smaller payloads on smaller rockets is an excellent distribution of payloads. I'm going to have to look at BO's direct to GeoStationary orbit - gotta be careful there.
This is all good.
Re:Great ! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a proper race now too. NASA will use whoever is ready first for the next moon landing, be it Blue Origin or SpaceX or someone else. Both of them have a fair way to go, and will need to test their landers on an uncrewed mission first.
Blue Origin seems to be getting there with the BE-7 engine they need, but still has to demonstrate a really big rocket to Earth orbit, and then an uncrewed flight to the moon, landing, and return to lunar orbit. SpaceX has got Starship to orbit, but needs probably 20 launches just to get enough fuel up there for the lunar landing mission, and has yet to do much with the planning in-orbit fuel transfer system which is no small thing by itself. For that reason BO seems closer now.
Meanwhile the CNSA has announced "before 2030" for a crewed landing, and a credible roadmap to get there. They are going to forego a crewed circumlunar mission and just land the first one, after a robotic demonstrator mission. Their mission is fairly conservative in terms of developing new technologies and not aiming for high mass to the lunar surface on the first landing, and all the parts seem to be in late stages of development and looking good.
At this point it's anybody's game.
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I believe they are planning one lunar ascent.
Blue Moon appears a bit safer, but I believe they are also going with a complex lunar ascent engine. I wish they would go with foolproof hypergolics, a la LEM.
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I think Starship will probably get stuck in orbit trying to refuel, before it gets to the moon.
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But then again, if they are really launching one per week by 2027H2, they can have plenty of attempts.
Great, but (Score:2)
Actually building and launching is quite a different thing.
The article seems to say that they've got a preliminary design and they've tested one subcomponent, a composite hydrogen tank. Great, that's step 1 though 4. What about steps 5 through 1000?
I'm rooting for Blue Origin. I really am. Bu, I'd like to see
Protip on your new engine (Score:2)
Make sure that you thoroughly review and test the design of the cylinder head bolts.
Prove it. (Score:2)
"announces" "unveiled" "designed to"
These words are doing some (pardon the pun) heavy lifting here. I will hold my applause until you demonstrate that it does what you say it will.
The competition (who's name we shall not speak) has a record breaking history of putting things in orbit successfully -almost daily.
I will cheer for BO when they send the first one of these new rockets around the moon, or into GEO. Until then, it's just a marketing promise.
Bart! No! (Score:2)
Ooops, force of habit, nevermind....