Blue Origin advances New Glenn upgrades to cut engine costs and expand lunar launch capacity

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New Glenn upgrades for lunar launches

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Blue Origin has begun test firing its new Northstar engine for New Glenn, featuring 30 percent less mass and about 65 percent 3D-printed parts.
Northstar engine production cost is targeted at just 25 percent of the BE-4, with assembly aiming for under one day and thrust increased to 715,000 pounds.
Blue Origin is developing the GS3 third stage for New Glenn to enable direct geostationary orbit injection and Earth-escape, compatible with both 7x2 and 9x4 configurations.

Engine redesign and upper-stage development

As first reported by Ars Technica, Blue Origin says it has already begun test firing a new engine called Northstar, which is set to replace the BE-4 on New Glenn's first stage. Chief executive Dave Limp says the engine is a simplified but more powerful version of the BE-4, with half the number of parts, 30 percent less mass and about 65 percent of the engine able to be produced through 3D printing.

Blue Origin says it believes Northstar can be built at 25 percent of the cost of a BE-4 engine and eventually assembled in less than a day. Limp says the existing BE-4, which generates 640,000 pounds of thrust on New Glenn today, will continue to be produced for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, while Northstar is designed to start at 715,000 pounds of thrust using the same methane and liquid oxygen propellant combination.

The company is also developing a third stage for New Glenn, called GS3, to enable direct injection to geostationary orbit and Earth-escape trajectories. The hydrogen-oxygen stage is designed to fit within an interstage, preserving full fairing volume for customer payloads, and can fly on both the 7x2 and 9x4 versions of the rocket.

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Blue Origin advances New Glenn upgrades to cut engine costs and expand lunar launch capacity

Highlights

Engine redesign and upper-stage development

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