Blue Origin partners w/ Boeing & Lockheed Martin to reduce dependence on Russian

[Buster's Uncle]

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin partners with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to reduce dependence on Russian rockets
The Verge
By Adi Robertson on September 17, 2014 01:25 pm



Blue Origin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' commercial space company, has partnered with the United Launch Alliance to develop a new rocket engine called the BE-4, set to make its first flight in 2019. United Launch Alliance, or ULA, is a joint venture by defense contractor Lockheed Martin and aerospace company Boeing, which recently won one of two contracts to develop a spacecraft capable of shuttling astronauts to the ISS. ULA's Atlas and Delta lines of rockets are used by both NASA and the US military, but it's been criticized for using Russian-built rocket engines, especially after sanctions were declared earlier this year. ULA said this summer that it had signed contracts with "multiple American companies" to investigate the feasibility of developing new designs, and Blue Origin may have been one of those companies.

The current contract covers a four-year development period, entering "full-scale testing" in 2016; Blue Origin has apparently already been developing the BE-4 rocket engine for three years and is currently testing components. ULA says it's not a "direct replacement" for the current RD-180 engines, but it will be integrated into future generations of rocket, and the frequent references to "American" components suggest that this is an attempt to move away from Russian products. It will supposedly be cheaper, though the price isn't given, and Blue Origin plans to eventually sell it to manufacturers besides ULA.

Founded in 2000, Blue Origin has been more secretive than competitors like SpaceX. After buying up land in Texas for undisclosed purposes, Bezos revealed in 2005 that he was planning to build a testing range for reusable rockets that could travel to low-Earth orbit. Since then, the company has remained quiet about its progress. It was an early member of NASA's commercial cargo and crew program, receiving a $3.7 million contract in 2010 to develop its New Shepard launch system. According to NASA's site, Blue Origin has received a total of $25.6 million, but while it remains a partner, it wasn't funded in the latest rounds of the program.

The latest major milestone for Blue Origin came in December of 2013, when the company revealed it had successfully test-fired a BE-3 rocket engine at its Texas base. "Blue Origin has made steady progress since the start of our partnership under the first Commercial Crew Development round," said NASA commercial spaceflight development director Phil McAlister at the time. The company, however, failed to convince the US government to give it access to the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A, which was officially leased by SpaceX in April — SpaceX founder Elon Musk had earlier pushed for the decision by saying he would more likely "discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct" than see Blue Origin come out with a workable spacecraft that could take advantage of the pad. Now, partnered with ULA, it's immediately become a lot more influential.


http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/17/6328961/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-partners-with-united-launch-alliance-for-new-rocket

[Buster's Uncle]

Spacefight! Jeff Bezos Declares War on Elon Musk
Bloomberg Businessweek
By Ashlee Vance  September 17, 2014



Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are officially at war. And how.

On Wednesday, Bezos presided over a press conference in which his rocket company Blue Origin formed a partnership with United Launch Alliance, or ULA. The deal between the companies will see Blue Origin develop an engine for use with ULA’s rockets, which currently carry U.S. government and military satellites to space. The deal helps ULA save face because it gives the company—a joint partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin—access to an American-made engine instead of the Russian-made RD-180, on which it currently relies. The tie-up also unites two of the staunchest rivals to SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company.

To date, SpaceX has had far more public success than Blue Origin. It has sent supplies to the International Space Station, taken up satellites for numerous commercial customers, and run public tests of its reusable rockets. Earlier this week, SpaceX also secured a $2.6 billion contract from NASA to take astronauts to the ISS, ending the U.S. dependence on Russian capsules.

Blue Origin, by contrast, has operated in near-total secrecy and only dribbled out information about its engine and rocket development. With Bezos’s fortune behind it, the company has been free to hone its technology without chasing commercial work. Overall, Blue Origin shares SpaceX’s goals of developing reusable spacecraft capable of traveling to other planets.

SpaceX and Blue Origin have sparred now and again. They fought over access to a NASA launchpad; SpaceX won that round. And Musk hasn’t been shy to point out Blue Origin’s lack of a public track record for its missions. They’re also the two commercial spaceflight companies that seem to be placing the most emphasis on advancing reusable rockets. Whichever company perfects that technology first would gain a huge cost edge in the launch business.

Blue Origin’s deal with ULA, though, takes the competition to a new level.

SpaceX has been locked in a nasty fight with ULA and its congressional backers. SpaceX wants to be able to compete for sensitive government launches, and has pointed out that it can undercut ULA massively on launch costs and makes all of its engines and rockets in Los Angeles. ULA, by contrast, relies on the Russian engines to send up the U.S.’s most sensitive military and spy equipment. (When asked to defend its use of the Russian engines, ULA has pointed out that it has translated the blueprints to the engines. Seriously.) SpaceX has urged the government to put its sensitive launches up for bid instead of handing them to a government-created monopoly.

Blue Origin has been working on an engine called BE-4 for three years, and it’s this engine that ULA plans to use with its rockets. During the press conference, ULA’s new CEO, Tory Bruno, said the company hopes to launch with the BE-4 in about four years.

It’s a bit of a shocker to see Blue Origin team up with ULA, which is seen as the major example of old, costly, bureaucratic space companies. Blue Origin and SpaceX have been all about trying to make their flights cheap and efficient enough for companies to conduct dozens of automated launches per week. The whole idea behind the startups was to undermine the existing system and replace it with something modern and better.

Instead of doing that, it looks like Blue Origin is giving the old guard a leg up in its competition with SpaceX. Such an arrangement would make obvious business sense for Blue Origin, since it can sell its engines and will share development costs with ULA. But, as mentioned earlier, the company has never been terribly concerned about finding commercial work to offset its R&D budget.

For ULA, the partnership with Blue Origin could be a huge win. The company gets to avoid embarrassing harangues from Congress over its use of Russian engines. It also gets access to an engine that could be key to a reusable rocket program of its own. ULA goes from looking like a bumbling laggard to a cutting-edge player.

SpaceX has the best recent track record of engine development, having built its rocket systems and capsule thrusters over the past decade while also making major progress with the reusable technology. In an interview, Musk welcomed the new Blue Origin-ULA challenge. “Competitors ganging up against you is the sincerest form of flattery,” he says.


http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-17/jeff-bezos-vs-dot-elon-musk-in-spaaaace?campaign_id=yhoo

[Buster's Uncle]

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to make rocket engine for Boeing, Lockheed Martin
Amazon CEO's aerospace company enters into a partnership with the United Launch Alliance to develop BE-4, a rocket engine to replace Russian-made launch jets.
CNET
by  Nick Statt @nickstatt  /September 17, 2014 11:24 AM PDT



Blue Origin's pusher escape system propelling its Crew Capsule in a test flight.  Blue Origin



Blue Origin, the aerospace outfit owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has entered into a partnership with the United Launch Alliance, the joint spaceflight venture of Boeing and defense contractor Lockheed Martin, to continue development of a new rocket engine for ULA's Atlas and Delta rocket lines.

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.

"This new collaboration will allow ULA to maintain the heritage, success and reliability of its rocket families -- Atlas and Delta -- while addressing the long-term need for a new domestic engine," reads Blue Origins' statement.

The word "domestic" is an important distinction to make, as ULA's rockets have previously relied on Russian-built engines. As conflict in Ukraine continues since Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, the US has heightened Russian sanctions numerous times in an effort to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw troops and ease tensions between Ukrainian and pro-Russia separatists factions.

It's not just engines, either. Since the discontinuation of the NASA shuttle program in 2011, the US has relied solely on Russian Soyuz rockets to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. This dependency, coupled with the increased diplomatic tussles caused by the conflict in Ukraine, has put significant strain on the US's relationship with Russia with regards to international spaceflight.

To that end, just yesterday NASA announced that it has awarded landmark contracts to Boeing and SpaceX, the aerospace company founded and run by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk. With $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion SpaceX, NASA is helping fund the development and launch of manned spacecrafts to take passengers to and from low-Earth orbit, effectively cutting ties with Russian spaceflights even further.

The goal is to end partnerships with Russia by 2017, NASA said. Blue Origin, once an under-the-radar company that kept quiet for years as it developed its rocket technology, now is up onstage alongside aerospace's biggest players to help the US get back into orbit on its own.

Though that may not stop Musk from taking stabs at his fellow billionaire. Though Bezos has long dreamed of building an elaborate industry around space tourism, Blue Origin hasn't had quite the success as SpaceX, which now has a storied history of successful contracts with NASA and an ambitious reusable rocket testing program.

When Bezos' outfit lost out to Musk's earlier this year to lease a freed up launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Musk said he was more likely to "discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct" than Blue Origin was likely to successfully scrap together a workable spacecraft that could dock with the ISS.


http://www.cnet.com/news/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-to-develop-rocket-engine-for-boeing-and-lockheed-martin/#ftag=YHF65cbda0

[Buster's Uncle]

A Bezos Company Will Make Engines for Rockets
The New York Times
By JAD MOUAWAD  SEPT. 17, 2014



The space race is shaping up as a matchup of billionaires, with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, facing off against Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, over the future of human spaceflight.

Blue Origin, a private space company owned by Mr. Bezos, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to work with a joint venture run by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build new engines for their Atlas 5 rockets.

That venture, called United Launch Alliance, has sent nearly all United States spy and military satellites into space in the last decade, but a rise in tensions with Russia this year after its annexation of Crimea has forced the venture to look for a replacement. In May, Russia threatened to stop delivering the engines, known as RD-180s, in response to American sanctions against top Russian officials, though there has been no evidence yet that it will follow through.

News that Blue Origin would assume a bigger role in space launches came as NASA on Tuesday announced it had picked Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and replace the retired space shuttle program. Boeing plans to use Atlas 5 rockets for its manned spacecraft, while SpaceX will use its existing rocket, the Falcon 9, to propel its new capsule. The first flights could take place as early as 2017.


 
Jeff Bezos, right, the founder of Blue Origin, and Tory Bruno, chief of United Launch Alliance, with a model rocket engine. Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images
 

By working with Blue Origin to build new American-made engines, Boeing and Lockheed sidestep the politically sensitive issue of the Russian RD-180 engines on the Atlas 5 for NASA and military missions in the future.

It also throws Mr. Bezos directly into the contentious battle that Mr. Musk has been waging to force SpaceX into the business of launching military satellites. In April, Mr. Musk sued the Air Force to reverse an $11 billion contract awarded to U.L.A. to launch about 35 satellites over five years, citing the hazard of using Russian engines.

The move angered Air Force officials who have been working to certify SpaceX for future launches and are eager to introduce competition into the business to reduce launch costs.

News that the Atlas 5 rocket will eventually be using American engines made by Mr. Bezos’s company is likely to be welcomed by the Air Force and congressional leaders.

U.L.A. started using the Russian RD-180 engines for the Atlas 5 rockets since the 1990s as part of a deal reached after the end of the Cold War to improve technological cooperation with Russia. The engines have proved to be extraordinarily reliable as well as cheaper than anything available in the United States.

U.L.A. also uses another rocket, the Delta 4, whose engines are made in the United States. It has launched more than 80 satellites for defense and spy agencies with perfect success record in the last decade. U.L.A. has said it had enough RD-180 engines on hand to last for two years.

“The team at Blue Origin is methodically developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability,” Mr. Bezos said in a statement.

Blue Origin and U.L.A. said they planned to build the new engine in four years and begin full-scale testing in 2016 with first flights in 2019.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/business/18rocket.html?partner=yahoofinance&_r=0

[Buster's Uncle]

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to Build New Rocket Engine for US Launch Provider
SPACE.com
by Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer  5 hours ago



Jeff Bezos looks on as a new model of Blue Origin's BE-4 liquid rocket engine is revealed during a press event on Sept. 17, 2014.



Blue Origin, the secretive private spaceflight company led by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has teamed up with a veteran space launch provider to build a new rocket engine designed to reduce U.S. dependence on Russian hardware.

In an announcement today (Sept. 17), Bezos and the launch provider United Launch Alliance unveiled plans to develop Blue Origin's new BE-4 liquid rocket engine. The new partnership will allow ULA's next-generation rockets to come equipped with engines that are built in America. At the moment, ULA uses Russian-made RD-180 engines to power its Atlas 5 rockets.

"ULA has put a satellite into orbit almost every month for the past eight years – they're the most reliable launch provider in history and their record of success is astonishing," Bezos, founder of Blue Origin and Amazon.com, said in a statement. "The team at Blue Origin is methodically developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability, and the BE-4 is a big step forward. With the new ULA partnership, we're accelerating commercial development of the next great US-made rocket engine."

The United Launch Alliance is currently launches most U.S. government and military satellites using its Atlas 5 rockets, as well as Delta 4 booster variants. The company is a cooperative venture by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Blue Origin's partnership with ULA states that full-scale BE-4 engine testing should begin in 2016, with the first flight due for launch in 2019, according to representatives. Although ULA and Blue Origin did not release the cost of development for the BE-4 engine, it will be privately funded. Blue Origin and ULA have committed to funding it 100 percent for the next five years. Blue Origin began testing its BE-3 rocket engine in 2013.

"This agreement ensures ULA will remain the most cost-efficient, innovative and reliable company launching the nation's most important national security, civil, human and commercial missions," Tory Bruno, president and CEO of ULA, said in today's statement. "Blue Origin has demonstrated its ability to develop high-performance rocket engines and we are excited to bring together the best minds in engineering, supply chain management and commercial business practices to create an all-new affordable, reliable, American rocket engine that will create endless possibilities for the future of space launch."



A model of Blue Origin's BE-4 rocket engine on display on Sept. 17, 2014.


Tensions between the United States and Russia have been heightened due to Russia's involvement with the conflict in the Ukraine. Because of that political situation, ULA has come under fire for its use of the Russian rocket engines.

Today's Blue Origin-ULA rocket engine news is the second time in two days that a commercial spaceflight vernture including Boeing has made headlines.

On Tuesday (Sept. 16), NASA announced that Boeing's manned CST-100 spacecraft, which is slated to launch on Atlas 5 rockets, was one of two vehicles picked to fly American astronauts as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program. Blue Origin's BE-4 engine won't serve as a direct replacement for RD-180s that power Atlas 5 rockets. Instead, Blue Origin's new engine will outfit ULA's next generation of rockets, according to Blue origin representatives.

NASA also picked the Dragon spacecraft developed by California-based SpaceX, led by billionaire Elon Musk, as its second commercial space taxi for astronauts. The announcement Tuesday came after a four-year competition of aerospace companies that included Blue Origin's Space Vehicle and the Dream Chaser space plane developed by Sierra Nevada among the spacecraft contenders.


http://news.yahoo.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-build-rocket-engine-us-210019896.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Boeing-Lockheed venture picks Bezos engine for future rockets
Reuters
3 hours ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - United Launch Alliance (ULA), a Boeing Co (BA.N) and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) joint venture, said on Wednesday it would invest heavily in a new rocket engine being developed by Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin.

The new engine, called the BE-4, could be ready for use in four years, and would cost substantially less than the Russian-built RD-180 engine now used to power ULA's heavy-lift Atlas 5 rockets, officials from both companies told reporters.

The U.S. government is grappling with how to reduce its reliance on the Russian-built engines, a matter of growing concern this year after Russia' actions in Ukraine.

The announcement showed mounting pressure on ULA, the sole rocket launch provider for most U.S. military and spy satellites, to lower costs as it faces growing competition from another entrepreneur, Elon Musk, and his firm Space Exploration Technologies.

SpaceX is seeking Air Force certification of its Falcon 9 rocket, and plans to release its own heavy-lift rocket to compete with ULA's Atlas 5 next year.

"It's really time for our country to move toward an all-American launch vehicle, and I can't think of a better way to get on that path," said Tory Bruno, chief executive of ULA.

Bruno told reporters ULA had a two-year supply of Russian engines, with 11 more to be delivered later this year and next. He said he did not expect problems with those deliveries, despite the company's decision to develop a U.S. alternative.

Bezos, a well-known technology entrepreneur, said he was excited to work on the project with ULA, which just carried out its 88th consecutive, successful launch.

He said the engine could pave the way toward a future in which "millions of people" lived and worked in space.

Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall said he had not been fully briefed on the initiative, but called it an example of the innovative and creative ideas the military was seeking on how to end dependence on Russian-built engines.

General John Hyten, head of Air Force Space Command, welcomed news that the effort was privately funded, but stressed that any new engine would have to pass a rigorous certification process, like the one SpaceX is undergoing, before it could be used to launch expensive and critical satellites into space.

"I’m not sure which way we're (ultimately) going to go," he said. "But...the more competition and the more ideas we have, the better off we are."

Musk told Fox Business Network he viewed the ULA-Bezos agreement as a compliment. "If all your competitors are banding together to attack you, that's like a good compliment."

Bezos said ULA was making a significant investment in the development of the BE-4 engine, which would help accelerate the programme, but gave no details. Bezos said only that it was possible to develop an engine for less than the standard estimate of seven years and $1 billion.

He said his company had been working for three years on the new liquid oxygen engine, which will deliver 550,000 pounds of thrust at sea level, and testing of various components was already under way at the company's new facility in West Texas.

Bezos said the engine could eventually be reusable, although ULA did not plan to recover them initially. Blue Origin was continuing to work on plans for its own orbital vehicle, which would re-use the engines and should be ready later this decade.

ULA said it would use two BE-4 engines on each of its boosters, providing combined thrust of over 1 million pounds, more than the RD-180 engine now used on the Atlas 5 rocket.

The engine will use liquefied natural gas.

Bezos said Blue Origin was also part of the Boeing team that won a $4.2 billion contract from NASA on Tuesday to develop a space taxi. Boeing said its bid uses the Atlas 5 rocket and RD-180 engines, but leaves open the possibility of switching to a different engine or booster.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Andre Grenon and Grant McCool)


http://news.yahoo.com/boeing-lockheed-picks-bezos-engine-205303765.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin partners with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to reduce dependence on Russian rockets
The Verge
By Adi Robertson on September 17, 2014 01:25 pm



Blue Origin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' commercial space company, has partnered with the United Launch Alliance to develop a new rocket engine called the BE-4, set to make its first flight in 2019. United Launch Alliance, or ULA, is a joint venture by defense contractor Lockheed Martin and aerospace company Boeing, which recently won one of two contracts to develop a spacecraft capable of shuttling astronauts to the ISS. ULA's Atlas and Delta lines of rockets are used by both NASA and the US military, but it's been criticized for using Russian-built rocket engines, especially after sanctions were declared earlier this year. ULA said this summer that it had signed contracts with "multiple American companies" to investigate the feasibility of developing new designs, and Blue Origin may have been one of those companies.

The current contract covers a four-year development period, entering "full-scale testing" in 2016; Blue Origin has apparently already been developing the BE-4 rocket engine for three years and is currently testing components. ULA says it's not a "direct replacement" for the current RD-180 engines, but it will be integrated into future generations of rocket, and the frequent references to "American" components suggest that this is an attempt to move away from Russian products. It will supposedly be cheaper, though the price isn't given, and Blue Origin plans to eventually sell it to manufacturers besides ULA.

Founded in 2000, Blue Origin has been more secretive than competitors like SpaceX. After buying up land in Texas for undisclosed purposes, Bezos revealed in 2005 that he was planning to build a testing range for reusable rockets that could travel to low-Earth orbit. Since then, the company has remained quiet about its progress. It was an early member of NASA's commercial cargo and crew program, receiving a $3.7 million contract in 2010 to develop its New Shepard launch system. According to NASA's site, Blue Origin has received a total of $25.6 million, but while it remains a partner, it wasn't funded in the latest rounds of the program.

The latest major milestone for Blue Origin came in December of 2013, when the company revealed it had successfully test-fired a BE-3 rocket engine at its Texas base. "Blue Origin has made steady progress since the start of our partnership under the first Commercial Crew Development round," said NASA commercial spaceflight development director Phil McAlister at the time. The company, however, failed to convince the US government to give it access to the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A, which was officially leased by SpaceX in April — SpaceX founder Elon Musk had earlier pushed for the decision by saying he would more likely "discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct" than see Blue Origin come out with a workable spacecraft that could take advantage of the pad. Now, partnered with ULA, it's immediately become a lot more influential.


http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/17/6328961/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-partners-with-united-launch-alliance-for-new-rocket