ULA and Blue Origin To Team Up for RD-180 Replacement


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http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/41884ula-and-blue-origin-to-team-up-for-rd-180-replacement

ULA and Blue Origin To Team Up for RD-180 Replacement

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. ? United Launch Alliance, which launches nearly all U.S. government satellites, and secretive rocket-making startup Blue Origin will announce a strategic partnership in rocket engine development at a Sept. 17 event in Washington, a source said Sept. 16.

The announcement will be made at the National Press Club by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and Blue Origin, and ULA Chief Executive Tony Bruno, the source said.

The companies announced late in the afternoon of Sept. 16 that Bezos and Bruno would be making an unspecified joint announcement at 12:30 p.m. local time.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the announcement would position ULA to develop an engine with Blue Origin to potentially replace the Russian-made RD-180, which currently powers ULA's workhorse Atlas 5 rocket but faces an uncertain future as tensions with Russia rise.

The move would automatically insert a second dynamic personality from the dot-com world into the national security launch debate. Bezos would effectively join ULA's side in a fierce battle against Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which has been fighting for a share of Pentagon business with a rocket dubbed the Falcon 9.

News of a ULA-Blue Origin propulsion partnership follows a report in the Wall Street Journal that Blue Origin is part of Boeing?s bid to launch crew to the international space station. NASA is expected to announce the winners of its commercial crew competition the afternoon of Sept. 16. Boeing, one of at least three companies bidding for NASA?s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contracts, has proposed launching its CST-100 capsule atop a ULA Atlas 5 rocket.

ULA has been searching for a new engine after increased pressure from lawmakers and Air Force officials about the RD-180 engine, built by NPO Energomash of Russia and sold to ULA by RD-Amross, a joint venture between Energomash and United Technologies Corp.

Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister of Russia, who oversees the country?s space sector, has threatened to ban the sale of the engines to the United States for military use, although Air Force and ULA officials have seen no signs of a ban.

Blue Origin, the Kent, Washington, firm bankrolled by Bezos, has told industry and government officials privately that the Air Force should consider a liquid-oxygen/methane engine.

In June, Michael Gass, the former ULA chief executive, announced it had signed ?multiple? contracts with unidentified companies to study potential replacements for the RD-180, and hopes to select a single concept for development this year. Among those companies, sources have said, is Aerojet Rocketdyne. The Sacramento, California-based company is the dominant U.S. supplier of large liquid-fueled rocket engines.

The selected companies were asked to study technical feasibility of hydrocarbon-fueled engine concepts, and lay out schedules along with cost estimates and technical risks, Gass said.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has been pushing a kerosene-fueled, 500,000-pound-thrust concept dubbed AR-1, which the company says could be fully developed in four years for less than $1 billion.

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USAF Gen. Shelton also pushed for methane, largely because of the very high cost of the hydrogen infrastructure and metallurgy with Delta IV.

Not as high a specific impulse (Isp) as hydrogen, but good enough and great for reusable launchers.

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So ULA are committing to a (mostly- first stage at least) new launch vehicle - the BE-4 engine is methane fueled so it's not just a matter of switching out engines. Atlas (for some value of "Atlas") in name only really. Is this a serious initiative or something else? I don't know what the "something else" might be, but my feelers are twitching.

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Best we can tell its for real. This is by NO means an Atlas V even though they may keep the name for marketing purposes (Atlas V-M? Atlas V v1.1?)

Let's not forget that ULA has also worked XCOR on a hydrogen upper stage engine with a very inexpensive reciprocal piston pumping system.

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Posters on NSF are saying they may use the 5 meter diameter Delta IV core to increase propellant tank volume vs Atlas V's 3.81 meter core. This both makes up for methane/LNG's lower bulk density, and it already has cryogenic insulation for liquid hydrogen.

This makes even more interesting ULA working with XCOR on an inexpensive hydrogen upper stage to replace Centaur. They may not need the XCOR hydrogen engine, but XCOR also has tested a methane engine and a VERY inexpensive and small piston cryogenic propellant pump suitable to the task. Just sayin'.

SpaceFlightNow article,

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1409/17ulablueorigin/#.VBr5-HrD_qA

ULA taps Blue Origin for powerful new rocket engine

United Launch Alliance announced Wednesday it is teaming with Blue Origin, a secretive space company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, to develop a new U.S.-made rocket engine that could replace the Russian engine used to power Atlas 5 first stage boosters.

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The arrangement comes after building concerns over ULA's reliance on Russian propulsion to loft U.S. national security satellites into space, and ULA's chief executive said Wednesday the choice of Blue Origin as a new engine provider is part of a potential overhaul of the company's Atlas and Delta rocket fleet used to send up spacecraft for the Pentagon, NASA and commercial customers.

"I think it's pretty clear it's time for a 21st century booster engine," Bezos told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. "The great engines of the past were truly remarkable machines in their own right. The engines that you remember built in the '50s, '60s and '70s were remarkable pieces of hardware, but we have tools and capabilities, software simulations, computational horsepower that the builders of those great engines could have only dreamed about."

Formed in 2006 as a 50-50 joint venture by Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., United Launch Alliance announced a review of new rocket engine concepts in June.

ULA's selection of Blue Origin's Blue Engine-4, or BE-4, left out the company's primary engine vendor, Aerojet Rocketdyne, which builds powerplants for the Atlas and Delta upper stages, plus the hydrogen-fueled RS-68 engine at the bottom of ULA's Delta 4 rocket.

"We selected Blue for a couple of reasons," said Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO. "First, they are way ahead ... Also, they have this really innovative technology that's going to allow us to modernize, increase performance and lower our recurring costs."

Blue Origin has already completed three years of development on the BE-4 engine.

"It's 550,000 pounds of thrust, it has a very low recurring cost and low life cycle cost," Bezos said. "Cost to space is a very important factor, so basically cost and reliability are the two driving factors. It's (fueled by) liquefied natural gas, it's reusable and it's built, tested, designed and engineered 100 percent in the United States."

Bruno said the engine could be integrated on a ULA launcher within about four years, in half the time other experts projected.

"There is no way to rush a rocket development process," Bezos said. "You can't cut corners. It needs to be methodical and deliberate, so the reason we can accelerate the timeframe of the BE-4 is because we're already three years into the process."

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Bezos said ULA has committed a "very significant dollar amount investment" to complete development of the BE-4 engine, which Blue Origin has so far funded internally and intends to use on its own space launcher.

"There's a second thing which is very unusual -- probably the rarest of things that you can ever find in a rocket engine -- and that is that the BE-4 rocket engine is fully funded," Bezos said.

Budget legislation under consideration in Congress would give the Air Force funding to devote to a new rocket engine project managed in a public-private partnership between government and industry. While the BE-4 engine program announced Wednesday is a purely commercial effort, Bruno said ULA's stakeholders -- presumably including the Air Force, the company's biggest customer -- were kept informed of the private engine initiative.

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Blue Origin's BE-4 engine uses an oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle, employs a single nozzle, and burns liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas, a fuel that makes the engine cheaper, less complex, and easier to reuse, according to a fact sheet released by Blue Origin.

"It is a single turbopump, one shaft," Bezos said. "It's as simple as it can be while still being high-performing and highly reliable."

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[NOTE: so it's NOT a full flow staged combustion cycle, a missed opportunity to max out efficiency, output and re-use]

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Blue Origin's engineering team, based in Kent, Wash., and at a test facility in West Texas, has tested sub-scale components of the BE-4 engine, including elements of its oxygen-rich preburner and staged combustion testing of the preburner and main injector assembly, according to a fact sheet.

Next up will be tests of the engine's turbopump and main valves.

Blue Origin also completed construction of an engine test stand in West Texas to accommodate up to a million pounds of thrust.

Full-scale engine testing should begin in 2016, with a first flight of the BE-4 engine in 2019, ULA said in a press release.

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BE-4 mockup

be4engine_400378.jpg

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Yes, I think my cynicism got the better of me. Hey look at this! -meanwhile business as usual. Except more so.

Looks like they have some options at least and if they play it right they may end up with something pretty good. Maybe VERY good.

But with SpaceX pushing ahead on so many fronts ...interesting times.

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Yes, very interesting indeed.

This may push SpaceX into doing 2 things people have been speculating about,

1) a methane upper stage. It would help with large GTO and beyond Earth orbit F9/FH launches.

2) a Raptor powered mini-BFR, essentially a 6-7 meter cored reusable super-EELV launcher with SuperDraco landing thruster packs. Essentially, a single core Falcon Heavy follow-on.

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  • 3 months later...

Blue Origin's.hunting for a launch site at Space Florida's proposed Shiloh site,

@LaunchFLsFuture

Scott Henderson, Blue Origin: Shiloh commercial launch site "best of both worlds" by being at NASA KSC but outside the gate. Easy access.

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Scott Henderson, Blue Origin: Shiloh could be commercial orbital launch site. Other sites "almost as good." Will announce within 3 months.

They're already working with ULA on the methane fueled Atlas V replacement.presumably for ULA's for LC-41, sometimes called Blue Atlas or Atlas VI, but they'd need a pad for their own methane launcher.
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Blue Origin's.hunting for a launch site at Space Florida's proposed Shiloh site,

They're already working with ULA on the methane fueled Atlas V replacement.presumably for ULA's for LC-41, sometimes called Blue Atlas or Atlas VI, but they'd need a pad for their own methane launcher.

funny news: Russia has dev'ed orbital tug w/ nuclear reactor -- even if RD-180's replacement will be made, it cannot beat price fall because of OT. trying to replace RD-180 has been just chasing the past :) methane engines are yet another waste of Time.

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Thrust: 2,400 kilonewtons (550,000 lbf) at full power

 

ULA expects the first flight of the new launch vehicle no earlier than 2019.[2]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-4

 

Thrust (SL)     860,568 lbf (3.83 MN)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180

is it really gonna be RD-180's replacement???? :woot::|:huh::D:whistle:  seems even two BE-4 cannot provide comparable to RD-180 thrust :)

 

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Two engines at 550,000 lbf beats one at 860,568... 

a little remark: 550 000 lbf is maximal thrust for BE4, 860 568 lbf is minimal for RD180. detailed specs of BE4 has no been published so far: i only can guess that engine has had just test variant w/ damn heap of TODOs ahead + frankly, methane is long-lasting fetish in Rocketry :) however, some good analyses on that fetish was performed:

The aim of this study was to compare and assess the

merits of methane and kerosene as propellants for a

reusable booster stage. Some initial findings confirmed

already frequently cited statements, e.g. that the

specific impulse of a LOX / methane motor is about

10 s higher than for a LOX / kerosene engine with the

same cycle. The comparison of the performance of

both propellant combinations for a complete vehicle

revealed however interesting new results. The study

showed that the advantage of the higher energetic

content of methane was counterbalanced by an

increased motor mass and an increased booster size,

hence higher aerodynamic drag and increased mass.

The payload performances of the reusable kerosene and

methane booster are therefore almost identical with

some edge for kerosene. In view of the increased size

and dry mass of a reusable methane booster stage, one

can expect a cost disadvantage for CH4 from a launch

vehicle system level point of view.

http://www.dlr.de/Portaldata/55/Resources/dokumente/sart/0095-0212prop.pdf

Actually, all troubles come mainly due to these numbers:

 

Volume specific

energy (liquid)

MJ/m

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