Another Blue Origin Update

In my inbox today:

We broke ground on our orbital vehicle manufacturing site in Florida.

The 750,000 square foot rocket factory is custom-built from the ground up to accommodate manufacturing, processing, integration and testing. Among other things, the facility hosts large scale friction stir welding and automated composite processing equipment. All of the vehicle will be manufactured in this facility except for the engines. Initial BE-4 engine production will occur at our Kent facility while we conduct a site selection process later this year for a larger engine production facility to accommodate higher production rates.

I’ve included some photos that will give you an idea of what the vehicle manufacturing facility will look like in December 2017 when it’s complete.

It’s exciting to see the bulldozers in action--we’re clearing the way for the production of a reusable fleet of orbital vehicles that we will launch and land, again and again.

Gradatim Ferociter!

Jeff Bezos

 

Site preparation is underway in Florida

 

Bird’s-eye view of our new orbital vehicle manufacturing site

 

Here’s an artist’s rendition

 

Let the rockets roll

Note the vehicles poking out in the last picture- looks like 3 engines? If so more powerful than previously thought (rumours I'd seen suggested a single BE-4 in the first stage).

Another successful New Shepard flight

I didn't get a chance to watch the live stream as I was out all day (and when I got back was too tired to post, hence this weeks review is a bit late).  I did managed to see the shorten clip this morning, which includes the main highlights:

I really want to know when they plan to ramp up theri flight and production rates, and am looking forward to the first manned flights. Am going to watch the full webcast now:

Blue Origin launch delayed

Due to needed replacement O-rings. Full details here.

Todays space news

First story- Luxenbourg's investment in Planetary Resources,

Second; Blue Origin to fly Friday. What with SpaceX's next launch scheduled for Wednesday I look forward to the next round in the Bezos/Musk Twitter p*ssing context...

The week in review 5

Busy week for me, the school term ended and with and my contract at the school I'd been at for the last 5 weeks. I did work as a different school for 3 days and was hoping to be booked until the school year ends but it was not to be.

Was a busy week in space too, with a number of events, including;

India's suborbital  RLV test,

Orbital ATK's plans,

an update from Blue Origin,

and more info on XS-1 (and additional details here)


An additional positive story was the Expansion of Bigelow' BEAM module at the ISS (on the second attempt),

I also found another new UK Small launcher, Horizon's Black Arrow 2 (Should really be using High Test Peroxide-HTP-  with that name!),

and an interesting article from Space New's magazine on Red Dragon.

Speaking of SpaceX, one he biggest stories this week was of course was latest launch, making a total of 3 barge landings in a row.

In sadder news it appears XCOR's Lynx space plane is dead (for now, but am not optimistic it will every fly at this date. XCOR has been going pretty much since I first started to follow RLV development so it a real shame.

Also this week Planetary Resources cancelled their Kickstarter funded space selfie telescope (which I had donated to. In more positive news they did raise money for a new Earth observation system.

And fnally, a cool poster showing every vehicle in the US military.

Blue Origin update

Was just about to go to bed (have work tomorrow so not staying up for the launch) when received this email update:

Back in March, we shared with you our efforts on building two new test cells to further support risk reduction testing on the BE-4.  We began the construction of these additional facilities in October last year and we’ve just commissioned the first of these cells last week.  This test cell is pressure fed and supports the development of the preburner start and ignition sequence timing that will be used on the upcoming full scale powerpack test campaign.  As mentioned in a prior email, one of the many benefits of a privately funded engine development is that we can make and implement decisions quickly. We made the decision to build these two new test cells as a team in a 10 minute discussion.  Less than three weeks later we were pouring concrete and now we have an operating pressure fed test cell 7 months later. Private funding and rapid decision making are two of the reasons why the BE-4 is the fastest path to eliminate U.S. dependence on the Russian-made RD-180.

 

Commissioned Preburner Test Facility

This new pressure fed facility is capable of supporting full scale preburner risk reduction.  If you look closely, you’ll see we already have the 14 inch diameter test article integrated into the facility ready for initial testing.  More on that as we have it.
 
We’re also finishing our mission planning for another flight of New Shepard, which will be our fourth flight with this vehicle.  One of the fundamental tenets of Blue Origin is that the safest vehicle is one that is robust and well understood.  Each successive mission affords us the opportunity to learn and improve our vehicles and their modeling.  We have stepwise expanded our flight envelope on the booster and crew capsule on every mission. On our most recent flight, we performed maneuvers on the crew capsule to help characterize its aerodynamics and reduce our model uncertainties. On this next mission, we’ll execute additional maneuvers on both the crew capsule and the booster to increase our vehicle characterization and modeling accuracy.
 
On this upcoming mission we also plan to stress the crew capsule by landing with an intentionally failed parachute, demonstrating our ability to safely handle that failure scenario.  It promises to be an exciting demonstration.  We’ll be sharing more with you about the upcoming mission as we have it.
 
Gradatim Ferociter!
 
Jeff Bezos

(C) Blue Origin

Video of the day 1

Not one...

...but two videos of rocket vertical landings. 

It won't be much longer (hopefully) before these cease to be newsworthy

The week in review 1

Due to various circumstances, I now have a lot more free time and have decided to start a new blog. This is the third time (I think) I have tried this out in the last 15 years, and my main aim with this one is to focus on my interests in space, aviation, military and other advanced technology. It is the 21st century after all, and I'd like this site to be a log of new developments with a bit of commentary and speculation of what may come.

And to so to start what I plan to be a weekly feature, a round-up of the biggest developments of the past week that have caught my eye. In future I'm also planning on linking back to my own posts, but today will just be external links.

Space flight

The biggest news this week has to be SpaceX's announcement that they plan to land a Dragon capsule on Mars in 2018. I have been dwelling on this a lot and have some thoughts I'd like to share soon on a near tern manned mission using this technology.

Additionally we saw a new very small launch vehicle unveiled by Vector Space. I'm not sure how much demand there will be for launchers in this payload range but will be the more competition the better. It will also be interesting to see how far this design can be scaled up. More info here.

Blue Origin posted (by email) some information on the development of their BE-4 engine. Here's a summary.

Finally, a good piece on Buzzfeed on the SLS and its lack of uses, and an Economist article on Billionaire philanthropists that mentions Elon Musk and Jeff Bezo's space projects. 

Aviation:

Saw this week about the Cobalt Valkyrie on Popsci. Is a very pretty plane and will be following its future development with interest.

Also this week Japan's' X-2 5th generation fighter prototype made its first flight, and while slightly older news I saw this article on Lockheed-Martins' return to the civil aviation market with the LM-100.

Military:

Australia orders 12 subs from France. Compared to the problems with the Royal Navy's Astute program seems a good deal.

That's it for this week! Check back for more news and commentary.