ULA and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Announce Rocket Engine Partnership 19
An anonymous reader writes During an event at the National Press Club, Bezos announced an agreement with Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to continue development of a new rocket engine for ULA's Atlas and Delta rocket lines. From the article: "Called BE-4, the engine has been in the works at Blue Origin for three years and is currently in testing at the company's West Texas facilities. ULA, founded in 2006, has supplied rockets to the US Department of Defense and NASA and will now co-fund the BE-4 project to accelerate its completion. The agreement is for a four-year development process with testing slated for 2016 and flight in 2019."
So hypersonic package delivery next? (Score:4, Funny)
Coming from a warehouse near you at Mach 8.
Blastoff From the Past (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in 1981-1983 when I was local support team leader for Space Studies Institute in Miami, FL promoting the idea of space colonies among the locals, one of the slides we showed was of this artist's conception of a Single Stage to Orbit Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing system proposed by Boeing to loft solar power satellites into LEO [pmview.com]. This vehicle also appeared in Gerard O'Neill's original edition of "The High Frontier [amazon.com]" that Jeff Bezos probably read while he was becoming the valedictorian of his high school class [miamiherald.com].
Looking at Bezos's New Shepherd Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing vehicle [astronautix.com] you might think that somewhere along the line Jeff caught a glimpse of Boeing's old design.
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe, maybe not. The same basic design was proposed as a reusable first stage for the Space Shuttle (in it's first incarnation as a crew taxi) by (IIRC) McDonnell Douglas back in the early/mid 1960's.
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The designs were revived in the 1980s by Gary H
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Looking at Bezos's New Shepherd Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing vehicle [astronautix.com] you might think that somewhere along the line Jeff caught a glimpse of Boeing's old design.
I assume you're talking about the right image in the Encyclopedia Astronautica link - that is an educated (and ultimately incorrect) guess by Encyclopedia Astronautica of what the vehicle would look like, from years before actual images were released (see http://www.blueorigin.com/upda... [blueorigin.com]).
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Interesting. Is the geometry of that so-called "development vehicle" representative of the production vehicle's?
Bezos will patent the following and troll with it (Score:1)
A method of vertical liftoff
A method of vertical landing
Use of a rocket motor for powered flight
Which is worse: Russia or Bezos (Score:5, Insightful)
ULA has been a major player in trying to keep US heavy launch platforms dependent on Russian RD-180 [wikipedia.org] engines by any means possible. Their employees in Congress, Representatives Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) have sent a letter to NASA "demanding that the agency investigate what they call 'an epidemic of anomalies' with SpaceX missions" [slate.com].
These three red, white and blue Republicans, defenders of American Freedom, critics of government interference in the market place, gung-ho capitalists, have ULA facilities in their districts. So what would be more natural then their trying to squash competition, make the US vulnerable to foreign pressure, and degrade US excellence in aerospace technology. They would never place campaign contributions and the narrow interests of their constituents ahead of the interests of the USA, would they?
So if Blue Origin and ULA prevail, do you think that Bezos would threaten to deny access to orbit if there were legislation that would negatively impact Amazon's business model or tax breaks? He already seems so in tune with the current ULA congressional caucus.