Author Topic: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine  (Read 1149137 times)

Offline baldusi

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #120 on: 10/14/2016 04:00 pm »
I'm really looking forward to seeing this engine tested at full scale. It would be a very big and important milestone for Blue, and it could potentially shift a lot of things in the industry.

A 2,500 kN American ORSC engine! And with a new fuel type to boot! Who would have thought that we would get something like this that fast?
Well, the methalox fuel has already been used on a test stand by Rocketdyne, Masten, Armadillo and SpaceX. So, it has even had operative missions. None orbital, of course.
But after a successful demonstration, it will really be an amazing achievement by Blue. But I want to stress that this is their fourth engine, with BE-2 and BE-3 having a pretty successful (if short) flight history. In fact, they have developed the very first operative tap-off engine, mastered the hydrolox propellant and now are embarked into the big boys club.
If you ask me, NPO Energomash, KBKhA, AerojetRocketdyne and SpaceX are ahead. But I would put them in the second slot with Snemca, MHI, Yuzhnoye, CASC 6th Academy and ISRO.
They are, right now, the rising star. And a successful program should put them right in equal footing with anybody else in the world. So, at least from my perspective, calling their work anything less than amazing progress, is selling them short.

Offline Chasm

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #121 on: 10/29/2016 06:37 pm »
In the wake of a fortune.com article Tory Bruno is commenting a bit about the current BE-4 and Vulcan status on /r/ula.

Quote from: Tory Bruno
However, BE4 remains our primary path and is doing very well, moving from near full scale into full scale testing as I type this. They have also been able to commit to a recurring price that meets our competitiveness needs.
Source

In another comment:
Quote from: Tory Bruno
Full scale firings is the big milestone. That likely happens early in 2017.
Source


So things are looking good for the reveal of a full scale engine in the first quarter of 2017 or so. It also explains why ULA does not seem to be too concerned with the test delay.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #122 on: 10/29/2016 06:59 pm »
Sounds nice. But leading up to full scale firing on test stand everyone must be concerned. Have to be. So critical.

Offline Navier–Stokes

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #123 on: 11/18/2016 01:15 pm »
New email update from Jeff Bezos:

Quote from: Jeff Bezos
For BE-4, not only do we have to design the engine itself, we also have to develop custom tools to make it. One of these tools is an automated electrical discharge machining (EDM) drilling machine. The EDM precisely locates and burns more than 4,000 tightly dimensioned holes into the nozzle and main combustion chamber, providing entry to the regenerative cooling channels.
 
As far as we know, this particular EDM machine is the only one of its kind in the world. It has 11 axes of motion allowing for precise hole location and accuracy within a few thousands of an inch. Its dual-head design results in reduced cycle time for the drilled holes. Brass multichannel electrodes are used to drill the holes. Water can be pumped through the electrode in order to speed up the drilling cycle. The use of water also helps flush the hole and remove the powder-like foreign object debris generated by the process. This eliminates the concern for plugging cooling channels, which can easily occur with conventional drilling methods. A pair of automated electrode-changing stations allows the EDM to continuously operate for long cycle times at an average rate of one hole every 90 seconds.
 
Building and operating custom tools of this magnitude is a big investment, but it’s critical for developing an engine that will power America’s access to space in the future.
 
A pretty wise investment, if you ask me.
 
Gradatim Ferociter!
 
Jeff Bezos
 
PS: Blue Origin is hiring. Check out our Careers page and apply.
« Last Edit: 11/18/2016 01:16 pm by Navier–Stokes »

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #124 on: 11/18/2016 02:35 pm »
Selling these drilling machines could be little side business for Blue.

Offline acsawdey

Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #125 on: 11/18/2016 02:49 pm »
So -- 4000 holes * 90 seconds = 100 hours on this machine to drill the holes for one engine? I suppose that doesn't matter too much if your intention is to reuse things so you don't have to build that many.

Offline notsorandom

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #126 on: 11/18/2016 04:51 pm »
So -- 4000 holes * 90 seconds = 100 hours on this machine to drill the holes for one engine? I suppose that doesn't matter too much if your intention is to reuse things so you don't have to build that many.
The nice thing about these machines is that they don't go home after an eight hour shift. Its a little under four days of constant work. Assuming that there was about 50% downtime one of these machines could do about an engine a week. If this was the bottle neck of production Blue could still make at least 40 a year. I wonder how long it would take to do this the old way with a machine shop.

Offline baldusi

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #127 on: 11/18/2016 05:38 pm »
So -- 4000 holes * 90 seconds = 100 hours on this machine to drill the holes for one engine? I suppose that doesn't matter too much if your intention is to reuse things so you don't have to build that many.
RS-68 has a lead time of 36 months. I think that the ablative MCC/nozzle takes something like 6 months to do. 100hr for an injector plate is really fast.

Offline russianhalo117

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #128 on: 11/18/2016 05:54 pm »
So -- 4000 holes * 90 seconds = 100 hours on this machine to drill the holes for one engine? I suppose that doesn't matter too much if your intention is to reuse things so you don't have to build that many.
RS-68 has a lead time of 36 months. I think that the ablative MCC/nozzle takes something like 6 months to do. 100hr for an injector plate is really fast.
RS-68A is slightly less than 36 months now due to improvements and lessons learned being applied to its manufacturing process.

Theoretically you could install more EDM arms to speed the process up, but the current setup is fine for testing and initial production rate.

Offline Prober

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #129 on: 11/22/2016 03:59 pm »
So -- 4000 holes * 90 seconds = 100 hours on this machine to drill the holes for one engine? I suppose that doesn't matter too much if your intention is to reuse things so you don't have to build that many.
RS-68 has a lead time of 36 months. I think that the ablative MCC/nozzle takes something like 6 months to do. 100hr for an injector plate is really fast.
RS-68A is slightly less than 36 months now due to improvements and lessons learned being applied to its manufacturing process.

Theoretically you could install more EDM arms to speed the process up, but the current setup is fine for testing and initial production rate.


Where's the complexity on the RS-68A thought that was designed to be cheap?

2017 - Everything Old is New Again.
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Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #130 on: 11/22/2016 06:07 pm »
Where's the complexity on the RS-68A thought that was designed to be cheap?
Compared to SSME it was derived from, any rocket engine short of the F1 is designed to be cheaper ...  ::)

Offline baldusi

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #131 on: 11/22/2016 06:19 pm »
Where's the complexity on the RS-68A thought that was designed to be cheap?
Compared to SSME it was derived from, any rocket engine short of the F1 is designed to be cheaper ...  ::)
I think that they used an ablative main combustion chamber and nozzle to "cut costs", and made a very simple gas generator. They also re-used as much of the SSME tooling as possible. Supposedly they would build 30 or more engines per year and thus it would be "dirty cheap".
Then the project had lower performance than expected, DIV was found to have cheated and thus its orders slashed and SSME production was ended. Perfect storm that made it very expensive.
If you look at Merlin's history, you will see that at the time (late 90s early 2000s) it was thought that ablative MCC and nozzle were a great cost trade off. Apparently the reality has been different. Ditto with hydrogen/LOX. I think that too many decades of Rocketdyne/NASA making all decisions made them think that their way of doing things was the only way. Then came NPO Energomash to the international market and you know how it ended.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #132 on: 11/22/2016 07:08 pm »
First a reminder that this is the BE-4 thread and your posts should reflect that.  8)

Where's the complexity on the RS-68A thought that was designed to be cheap?
Compared to SSME it was derived from, any rocket engine short of the F1 is designed to be cheaper ...  ::)
I think that they used an ablative main combustion chamber and nozzle to "cut costs", and made a very simple gas generator.

These were done for speed and not so much for cost. Also, the benefits for a booster engine in translating mass flows into thrust for hydrolox. Otherwise you'd have a significant wait to make the staged combustion work for STBE like application better.

BE-4 does ORSC for a booster engine (with the potential for a US application not unlike J-2X/MVac large nozzle), where combustion efficiency of minimal mass flow is desired. Speed to completion more by tools/simulation/small scale prototypes etc that RS-68 couldn't take the time for as a respin of SSME.

Quote
They also re-used as much of the SSME tooling as possible. Supposedly they would build 30 or more engines per year and thus it would be "dirty cheap".
For speed to completion as the first commercial engine.

The "dirt cheap" was in sharing components and piggybacking all the work for the logistical "wedge" of the SSME and the Shuttle base - it artificially increased the number of engines to make both programs cheaper as long as Shuttle flew, and it was way oversold.

You can't take an expensive logistical structure and expect LRE's alone to make an industry out of it, that will then make it cheap. Best you can do is make it less expensive, if you have enough volume (that was the point).

The "cheap" of BE-4 likely will be in the manner of production, the business model, and the cost sharing with ULA. like first stage reuse economics remain to be seen.

Quote
Then the project had lower performance than expected, DIV was found to have cheated and thus its orders slashed and SSME production was ended. Perfect storm that made it very expensive.
Because everything was in the margins, the rush to win the deal that wasn't, and there was no "Block 2" redux to recapture. All or nothing then something but not enough to matter.

Which is why I am critical of the Raptor/BE4/AR1 "new big engine". Billionaires/lobbyists can temporarily suspend the "laws of economics", but sooner or later they reassert.

Quote
If you look at Merlin's history, you will see that at the time (late 90s early 2000s) it was thought that ablative MCC and nozzle were a great cost trade off. Apparently the reality has been different. Ditto with hydrogen/LOX.
Think of this differently. Too tiny a sample set with too much riding off of it for the speculative examples to resolve in time to tell.

So need drives design thrash, and broad industry (kerosene/methane/regenerative) drives scalable propulsion success. If Henry Ford had successfully built hydrogen powered cars (impossible),  perhaps a different future.

As for ablative nozzles, they are a "cusp" technology ... still. You might be able to make them work, but in the same sense that Jim makes for subcooled LOX with F9, it may be of marginal advantage for indeterminate risk.

Quote
I think that too many decades of Rocketdyne/NASA making all decisions made them think that their way of doing things was the only way. Then came NPO Energomash to the international market and you know how it ended.
Both are examples of different kinds of pragmatism/politics.

Why "commercial" worked better for Merlin than RS68 was the thumb on the scales.

Watching BE4 closely for thumbs on the scales like AR1 already has. Raptor has no thumb on the scale.

add: missed some things.
« Last Edit: 11/22/2016 07:43 pm by Space Ghost 1962 »

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #133 on: 11/22/2016 07:35 pm »
The BE4 production rate should be >30 a year. 10-20 for ULA (5-10 x Vulcan). 1 per NG flight for expendable US. 7 x NG Booster, even though it is reusable they will need to build a small fleet of boosters plus replace engines after so many flights.

By time Vulcan is reusing BE4 in 2023-25, NG should have high flight rate assuming Blues vision for HSF pans out.
« Last Edit: 11/22/2016 07:36 pm by TrevorMonty »

Offline baldusi

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #134 on: 11/22/2016 08:02 pm »
The BE4 production rate should be >30 a year. 10-20 for ULA (5-10 x Vulcan). 1 per NG flight for expendable US. 7 x NG Booster, even though it is reusable they will need to build a small fleet of boosters plus replace engines after so many flights.

By time Vulcan is reusing BE4 in 2023-25, NG should have high flight rate assuming Blues vision for HSF pans out.
BE-4 has some important advantages in cost wrt the RS-68A.
One is that since SLI in the 1990s, the US has gone through a lot of engine development efforts through many companies. While some don't even exist anymore, many of the Blue engineers have worked previously on many engine projects and they have a huge stack of lessons learned.
The other is that a lot of companies have proven that engines can be done relatively cheap. Blue can just leverage the best practices and then innovate on cost.
But more importantly, is that Blue has a very knowledgeable leader that let's engineers make the best technical choice since he is not married to any supplier. It is not surprising that KBKhA, NPO Energomash, SpaceX and Blue Origin went with CH4/LOX when they had to do a highly reusable engine. Rocketdyne/Aerojet have always proposed hydrolox, because that was NASA's heritage.
The last is the financing source. They have an extremely predictable cashflow and only care about long term cost. No worries about keeping the program, maintaining the appropriations or keeping big contracts.

Offline RedLineTrain

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #135 on: 11/22/2016 08:11 pm »
Why "commercial" worked better for Merlin than RS68 was the thumb on the scales.

Watching BE4 closely for thumbs on the scales like AR1 already has. Raptor has no thumb on the scale.

Can you please talk a little about what you mean by "thumb on the scale"?  Government development money?  Ill-advised government requirements?

Thanks.
« Last Edit: 11/22/2016 08:14 pm by RedLineTrain »

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #136 on: 11/22/2016 08:32 pm »
BE-4 has some important advantages in cost wrt the RS-68A.
Nope. SSME giveth/taketh. RS68 "could'a should'a would'a" been a follow-on to SSME with better performance/cost ... but there wasn't budget/time for that. The point was to win EELV program, then gradually redress all else.

Quote
One is that since SLI in the 1990s, the US has gone through a lot of engine development efforts through many companies. While some don't even exist anymore, many of the Blue engineers have worked previously on many engine projects and they have a huge stack of lessons learned.
The other is that a lot of companies have proven that engines can be done relatively cheap. Blue can just leverage the best practices and then innovate on cost.
Like Aerojet Rocketdyne has also done. We'll see.

Quote
But more importantly, is that Blue has a very knowledgeable leader that let's engineers make the best technical choice since he is not married to any supplier.
On that I can agree for SX/BO.


Quote
It is not surprising that KBKhA, NPO Energomash, SpaceX and Blue Origin went with CH4/LOX when they had to do a highly reusable engine. Rocketdyne/Aerojet have always proposed hydrolox, because that was NASA's heritage.
Hydrolox also fits desired political aerospace model, where launch costs are never intended to get cheap.

Quote
The last is the financing source. They have an extremely predictable cashflow and only care about long term cost. No worries about keeping the program, maintaining the appropriations or keeping big contracts.
Yes but. When you scale a program to BE4/NG levels, your program risk footprint has a power function increase i.e. not linear as cash flow. So either you cost leverage (ULA), or increase funding, or slow down.

Can you please talk a little about what you mean by "thumb on the scale"?
For RS68 it was to please the Shuttle industrial base at the long term cost to the program.

SX has none of this because since they fully absorb the cost of engines, there isn't anyone along the "food chain" to feed.

Is the same true for BO? It should be. However, they cut deals, like with ULA and others. They clearly don't fully absorb the costs of engines. What if there are more deals with terms significant enough to matter?

In the case of AR1, to get those fine government contracts you bet they have a lot of outside mouths to feed.

Offline Navier–Stokes

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #137 on: 01/19/2017 04:43 pm »
Quote from: Underappreciated Engine Components - The Ox Boost Pump
Robert Goddard’s first rockets used compressed gas to force the liquid propellants into the engine thrust chambers. While simple in design and a logical starting point, he quickly realized the limitations with this approach: it requires thick-walled heavy propellant tanks and limits the engine’s chamber pressure and performance, both of which limit payload capacity. The answer was turbopumps. Store the propellants in low-pressure light tanks, and then pump the propellants up to high pressure just ahead of injection into the main chamber.

For even more performance, you can add one or more boost pumps ahead of the main pumps. We’ve done that on the oxidizer side of our BE-4 engine. Our Ox Boost Pump (OBP) design leverages 3-D additive manufacturing to make many of the key components. The housing is a single printed aluminum part and all of the stages of the hydraulic turbine are printed from Monel, a nickel alloy. This manufacturing approach allows the integration of complex internal flow passages in the housing that would be much more difficult to make using conventional methods. The turbine nozzles and rotors are also 3-D printed and require minimum machining to achieve the required fits.

The OBP was first demonstrated last year in testing, where we validated its interaction with a main pump. The second iteration of the OBP for BE-4 is now in test. We’ve also just finished assembly of the unit that we’ll install for the first all-up BE-4 engine test.

We’ll keep you posted on how our BE-4 powerpack and engine testing progresses.

Gradatim Ferociter!

Jeff Bezos
« Last Edit: 01/19/2017 04:53 pm by Navier–Stokes »

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #138 on: 01/19/2017 11:36 pm »
Note the discrete mention of powerpack testing apart from engine testing.

Many times development doesn't get further than the powerpack. Many examples.

With LNG, combustion stability is a definite issue post powerpack. And you can get past powerpack test w/o dealing with ORSC materials issues. However ...

So this one is a touchy one to evaluate just where they are in the development cycle. For ULA to sign-off on BE-4 as primary engine source, one might expect a fair portion of a full burn of a prototype full-scale engine.

Powerpack test to that in less than 6 months would be quite an accomplishment.

Offline meberbs

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Re: Blue Origin's BE-4 Engine
« Reply #139 on: 01/20/2017 12:31 am »
Powerpack test to that in less than 6 months would be quite an accomplishment.
Powerpack  testing for BE-4 goes back to fall 2014 (see here.)

The current testing seems like it is just a final validation, or for determining some control parameters, since they stated they have already built some of the hardware for the full up test.

 

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