Jeff Bezos makes a prediction on Blue Origin’s BE-7 engine

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced progress in developing the rocket engine for use on the lunar lander his space company Blue Origin is building – but he also offered a preview of his crystal ball for future lunar missions.

“This is the engine that will take the first woman to the surface of the moon,” he wrote in an Instagram post about the BE-7 hydrogen engine.

On one level, the Instagram post – plus parallel updates from Blue Origin via Twitter and the Web – focus on a new series of tests for the BE-7 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

This week, the test program launched a new round of tests.

“So far in this recent campaign the thrust chamber has been tested for 20 seconds,” said Blue Origin. “This brings the cumulative test time on the BE-7 thrust chamber to 1,245 seconds. “

As Bezos notes, the BE-7 is designed to reduce its power to between 2,000 and 10,000 pounds of thrust, which is a key ability to execute a precision landing on the moon. A single BE-7 will power the descent stage of the Blue Moon lander, which is part of the human landing system stack proposed to NASA in its Artemis Moon program.

Blue Origin leads a “national team” of space companies that also includes Lockheed Martin (responsible for the ascension stage), Northrop Grumman (responsible for the transfer element that would maneuver the lander into lunar orbit) and Draper (responsible avionics).

Which brings us to the deeper level of Bezos’ commentary: The National Team is one of three contenders to provide the Human Landing System for the Artemis program. SpaceX and an industry team led by Dynetics, based in Alabama, are also looking.

NASA has not yet selected the team (s) that will move on to the next phase of development. And even if multiple teams are chosen, it may not be instantly clear which team would end up building the lander used for the Artemis Program’s first crewed mission to the moon, scheduled for as early as 2024.

Saying that the BE-7 is “the engine that will take the first woman to the moon,” Bezos puts his mouth where his money is. (NASA describes her as “the first woman and the next man,” in recognition that the crew is likely to be diverse.)

Will Bezos be correct in predicting that the national team will win the NASA competition and that the Blue Moon lander will place the next team of moon walkers on the lunar surface? We’ll probably know more by February, when the space agency decides who gets to the next round.