Blue Origin Inaugurates Rocket Engine Plant in Huntsville, Alabama

Amazon Origin CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket company has officially started building an engine production facility for its partially re-usable New Glenn, two-stage launch system, as well as Vulcan Centaur from United Launch Alliance (ULA), Engadget reported.

According to AL.com, the $ 200 million facility and 46 acres in Huntsville …
sometimes referred to as "Rocket City" because of its long history of spaceflight projects – it will employ between 300 and 400 workers for the construction of BE-3 and BE-4 engines, and should be "highly automated". Part of the manufacturing process will be additive, that is, printed in 3D.

"The engine contains a lot of additive parts," Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin told AL.com. "It has a unique coating and different ways of producing this engine. One of the things that is not always obvious is that at Blue Origin we are a "branded" home. We are not an integrator. We literally do everything we have. We do not have a lot of "build to specification". "

"All of our stuff is designed to be printed," added Smith. "Everything you see on this engine will actually be built from powder or powder stocks that we put in this facility."

Smith added that the plant should be able to produce "dozens" of rocket engines each year.

Blue Origin plans to launch the first crew test of its existing New Shepard suborbital vehicle in 2019, while hoping that the first New Glenn flight to space will take place by 2021. ULA, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, predicts The Vulcan Centaur will replace its current line of Atlas and Delta rockets, the former of which uses Russian rocket engines, AL.com reported. ULA's choice of BE-4 for this system in September 2018 was a determining factor in Blue Origin's decision to build the plant in Alabama.

According to SpaceNews, the BE-3 variant to be made on the site (the BE-3U) is to be used for the second stage of New Glenn. Smith also announced that Blue Origin was working on an agreement with NASA for the resumption of building 4670 at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville for acceptance testing.

The Seattle Times reported that the New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur systems had been selected by the US Air Force for future national security missions, which could "put an end to the current dependence of the United States on the use of Russian RD-180 engines for critical launches of national security ".