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Blue Origin thread.


Vanamonde

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, that's the thing with staged combustion - as the Soviets discovered ages ago :wink: It can work just fine, but it takes more effort to get right than open cycle gas generators, and failures are usually more spectacular.

I assume that, since they're testing full scale components right now, that they already successfully tested subscale components many times before. So this will probably mandate a slight tweak, and not a complete redesign.

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1 hour ago, Streetwind said:

Yeah, that's the thing with staged combustion - as the Soviets discovered ages ago :wink: It can work just fine, but it takes more effort to get right than open cycle gas generators, and failures are usually more spectacular.

I assume that, since they're testing full scale components right now, that they already successfully tested subscale components many times before. So this will probably mandate a slight tweak, and not a complete redesign.

Probably, this is full scale testing and much of the purpose is to break it. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

The image is of their Kent facility, clearly, as they have announced they WILL build in AL, not that they are already building there (it's kind of hard to hide a rocket factory with 350 employees). The 3 BE4 engines pictured left Kent a while ago for TX, where they all are right now.

To be clear, this move has political benefit (that's not outside of forum rules to acknowledge, as long as we don't dive down the rabbit hole) both nationally in Congress, I'll leave the why as an excise for the reader, and within NASA, because of Marshall SFC. It also works well with ULA using BE4 for Vulcan, since it's a short trip to their plant, and close enough to FL for BO's NG facility. All around a smart decision on BO's part.

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24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Why the color / steel finish difference?

Front has an huge flange halfway down

The darker looking metal has not been machined, yet. Looks like there's a weld joint about halfway down the bell, that's why the ring of shiny on the second engine. Maybe the flange is some sort of strengthener? Looks like engines at 3 different points in production. 

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5 hours ago, tater said:

The image is of their Kent facility, clearly, as they have announced they WILL build in AL, not that they are already building there (it's kind of hard to hide a rocket factory with 350 employees). The 3 BE4 engines pictured left Kent a while ago for TX, where they all are right now.

To be clear, this move has political benefit (that's not outside of forum rules to acknowledge, as long as we don't dive down the rabbit hole) both nationally in Congress, I'll leave the why as an excise for the reader, and within NASA, because of Marshall SFC. It also works well with ULA using BE4 for Vulcan, since it's a short trip to their plant, and close enough to FL for BO's NG facility. All around a smart decision on BO's part.

I like to claim that BO is the only space program that is free of politics, but even that isn't quite true.  Still Bezos's independence from congress and NASA is impressive.  Having spare billions will do that (I remember John Carmack saying he had budgeted a portion of his "mad money" for space.  It was a *lot* of money, but it really wasn't enough to go far in space).

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4 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

The darker looking metal has not been machined, yet. Looks like there's a weld joint about halfway down the bell, that's why the ring of shiny on the second engine. Maybe the flange is some sort of strengthener? Looks like engines at 3 different points in production. 

Yeah. It looks like those are cast parts compared to the shiny one which looks like it has been machined.

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6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Yeah. It looks like those are cast parts compared to the shiny one which looks like it has been machined.

Assumed that too, however also assumed they would be machined before assembly, the second is not yet and still has added piped on top, 

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