When Will Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket Fly?

[brockrwood]

As a space exploration enthusiast, the idea of a partially reusable rocket that is almost the size of a Saturn V blasting off is super exciting. The Blue Origin New Glenn rocket is that rocket IF it ever flies.

Come on, Bezos! What is taking so long? I will sign up for another year of Amazon Prime if you will hurry along the launch schedule!

https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn/

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

If no news is good news, then GOOD NEWS!

I haven’t heard anything about New Glenn for a long, long time. Earlier in the year, Amazon supposedly selected New Glenn for launch services for a satellite constellation of some kind. So one Bezos company, selected another Bezos company with a non-existent product, to provide services for another non-existent product. I think it’s probably going to be awhile…

 

[Cape Byron]

If it takes another few years, will it become Old Glenn?

 

[kuririn]

First launch of both the ULA Vulcan Centaur and New Glenn, which both use the BE-4 engine, is scheduled for sometime in 2023. (The Angry Astronaut says the first launch window for Vulcan is Feb. 15).
The second BE-4 for the Vulcan booster was just delivered last month.
The first flight is ambitious: a moon shot with the Peregrine lander.
Delayed, but so was the SLS, and look at it now.
Keep the faith, baby.

 

[Antares JS]

The thing I found irksome about the New Glenn a few years ago was after losing the big national security launch contract to Vulcan and Falcon 9/Heavy, they said they were going to have to delay development since they didn't get the air/space force funding.

This is rather eyebrow-raising, as Blue Origin is owned and funded by Jeff Bezos. If he really wanted New Glenn to happen on that faster time scale, he could have easily dumped money of his own into it.

That said, they have a massive facility set up near the KSC visitor's center now where they are building flight hardware, and they have been testing their pad GSE with mass simulators. They will really need to ramp up engine production though to support themselves and ULA.

 

[brockrwood]

The thing I found irksome about the New Glenn a few years ago was after losing the big national security launch contract to Vulcan and Falcon 9/Heavy, they said they were going to have to delay development since they didn't get the air/space force funding.

This is rather eyebrow-raising, as Blue Origin is owned and funded by Jeff Bezos. If he really wanted New Glenn to happen on that faster time scale, he could have easily dumped money of his own into it.

That said, they have a massive facility set up near the KSC visitor's center now where they are building flight hardware, and they have been testing their pad GSE with mass simulators. They will really need to ramp up engine production though to support themselves and ULA.

Informative! Thanks! I read on Blue Origin’s website that the BE-4 engine is the most powerful liquified natural gas (LNG) engine ever developed. Blue Origin, on their website, makes some assertions about LNG/Lox engines being superior to RP-1/Lox engines.

I guess they make valid points but it has taken a very long time to get the BE-4 engine to market. Good old RP-1/Lox engines are proven technology with a lot of thrust that are fairly cheap because the technology is very mature I suppose. I hope the wait for the BE-4 is worth it.

There are other, existing LNG/Lox engines, no?

 

[Antares JS]

Informative! Thanks! I read on Blue Origin’s website that the BE-4 engine is the most powerful liquified natural gas (LNG) engine ever developed. Blue Origin, on their website, makes some assertions about LNG/Lox engines being superior to RP-1/Lox engines.

I guess they make valid points but it has taken a very long time to get the BE-4 engine to market. Good old RP-1/Lox engines are proven technology with a lot of thrust that are fairly cheap because the technology is very mature I suppose. I hope the wait for the BE-4 is worth it.

There are other, existing LNG/Lox engines, no?

Methalox has more specific impulse than RP-1 but isn't as much of a pain to handle as hydrogen. It's sort of a happy medium, and I'm interested to see where it goes. Methalox engines are a pretty new thing. I think the only other orbital-class one being built is the SpaceX Raptor, but I could be wrong about that.

 

[BEC]

There are other, existing LNG/Lox engines, no?

SpaceX Raptor, as used on Starship and Super Heavy boosters are liquid methane/lox engines.

 

[brockrwood]

I am so ignorant. Please be kind to me when I ask this question. A lot of booster first stages use solid rocket boosters to give lots of thrust on liftoff. As we discussed in another post, the majority of the liftoff thrust of the SLS booster rocket is the two big SRB’s attached to the sides.

Why not just make the entire first stage of a booster rocket out of solid propellant rocket engines? Why bother with liquid fuel rocket engines, at least in the first stage, at all?

Here is an article at Popular Mechanics which debates the pros and cons of solid fuel versus liquid fuel.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/sp...d-rocket-fuel-spacex-orbital-atk-blue-origin/
An interesting point made is that liquid fuel rocket engines have more specific impulse than solid fuel rocket engines. That means that pound for pound (weight) a liquid fuel rocket engine gives you more thrust than a solid rocket engine.

BUT, a solid fuel rocket gives you more thrust per unit of VOLUME. Solid rocket fuels are very dense, so you get a lot of thrust VERY QUICKLY when you light a solid rocket engine. I guess that explains why sold rocket engines are usually used as strap-on boosters to get a LOT of thrust, regardless of weight, going right away, at the moment of ignition.

So, there must be some sort of "optimum thrust curve" the rocket engineers have worked out that uses a combination of liquid fuel core engines that keep on burning and some strap on SRB's that give you a big kick at lift off and then fall off.

 

[Antares JS]

Having a higher specific impulse does not mean more thrust per unit of propellant, it means more impulse, i.e. more total energy extracted from the propellant. This means liquids are much more efficient than solids. Thrust is overrated as a rocket prestige statistic. The extremely basic way I explained it to my family is that while the SLS has more liftoff thrust than the Saturn V, it burns itself out quicker and therefore has less payload capacity.

Another reason not to use solids is vibration. Many national security payloads have to fly on the Delta 4 Heavy partly because it's an all liquid system and the satellite is too delicate to handle the violent vibration produced by solids. Some astronauts who rode both even say they prefer launching in the Soyuz to the Shuttle because the all-liquid Soyuz gave a smoother ride.

 

[brockrwood]

Having a higher specific impulse does not mean more thrust per unit of propellant, it means more impulse, i.e. more total energy extracted from the propellant. This means liquids are much more efficient than solids. Thrust is overrated as a rocket prestige statistic. The extremely basic way I explained it to my family is that while the SLS has more liftoff thrust than the Saturn V, it burns itself out quicker and therefore has less payload capacity.

Another reason not to use solids is vibration. Many national security payloads have to fly on the Delta 4 Heavy partly because it's an all liquid system and the satellite is too delicate to handle the violent vibration produced by solids. Some astronauts who rode both even say they prefer launching in the Soyuz to the Shuttle because the all-liquid Soyuz gave a smoother ride.

So a cluster of a fairly high specific impulse liquid fuel rocket engines, with enough initial oomph to get the rocket off the pad, would be ideal, no? Hence the New Glenn idea of making a super heavy lift vehicle by clusterng 7 BE-4’s together for massive thrust on liftoff.

As you said, methane or LNG seems to have a pretty high specific impulse but without the difficult handling characteristics of Liquid hydrogen. Hence the BE-4 is an LNG/Lox engine. If it just weren’t so delayed in getting to market!

Hmm. How in the world do the engineers who designed the SLS keep the liquid hydrogen feeding the RS-25’s super cool with all that fun fire coming out of the SRB’s? There must be some serious insulation.

I must admit that, as a model rocketeer, I still have a romantic fondness for solid rocket engines. Just light that Roman candle and watch ‘er go!

 

[Antares JS]

Hmm. How in the world do the engineers who designed the SLS keep the liquid hydrogen feeding the RS-25’s super cool with all that fun fire coming out of the SRB’s? There must be some serious insulation.

Think about where that fire actually is - under the rocket and in the cores of the boosters. There is unburnt propellant (which does insulate pretty well), a motor case, foam insulation, and the tank wall between the cryogenic liquids and the burning solid propellant.

 

[kuririn]

Is the ability to throttle the engines a factor in liquid vs solid propellant choice?