BE-3 Undergoing Testing / Image Credit Blue Origin Long silent Blue Origin announced today that it has completed acceptance testing of its BE-3 cryogenic rocket engine. The complete press release is included below. Comments follow the release. KENT, Wash. – Blue Origin recently completed acceptance testing of its BE‑3 rocket engine, the first new hydrogen […]
SpaceX has received what appears to be good news in its challenge of Blue Origin’s patent for a landing a launch vehicle first stage on a barge. The challenge came in the form of an Inter Partes review, a proceeding in which a petitioner can ask for all or parts of a patent to be […]
Hydrogen Piston Pump: Image Credit XCOR Aerospace XCOR has announced a new milestone in its upper stage engine program being supported by United Launch Alliance. The complete press release is below. From a big picture standpoint, ULA appears to be in an interesting state of transition, with stories coming out in a bad cop/good cop […]
A NASA press release issued on Friday outlines ongoing progress in the Commercial Crew program. Of particular note, Blue Origin and NASA agreed to a further three unfunded milestones as part of its CCDev-2 contract. While it is still almost impossible to write anything about the Jeff Bezos venture without falling back on the word […]
Image Credit: Interstellar In what has at times appeared to be a headlong rush to write off the future of space tourism as a response to the Virgin Galactic accident, a surprising (or perhaps not so) number of media sources have completely overlooked the fact that there are two other U.S. based companies, XCOR Aerospace […]
On Friday, October 24th, SpaceX founder and CTO Elon Musk sat down for a one on one interview as part of MIT’s AeroAstro Centenial Symposium celebrating 100 years of that institution’s contribution to aero and astronautics. The entire wide ranging interview (here) covers SpaceX, Tesla, Hyperloop and even electric supersonic aircraft, as well as Elon’s […]
Vostochny Under Construction. Image Credit The Moscow Times One question which defines the NewSpace movement, is which individuals, companies, or governments are investing in technologies or systems which have the capacity to significantly reduce the cost of access to space. In the case of the latter, governments, all too often it is just as easy […]
On September 26, NASA released its Commercial Resupply Services 2 Request for Proposal in solicitation for continued cargo delivery to and from the International Space Station from 2017 through 2020, with possible extensions to 2024. Seeking to build on the unqualified success of the COTS and CRS-1 programs which have give rise to the LEO […]
The Times They Are A Changin Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance held a news conference at the National Press Club today entitled “Igniting the Future.” The purpose was announce the joint development of a new main engine to replace the Russian built RD-180 which powers the Atlas V booster. Called the BE-4, the new […]
The Wall Street Journal set off a firestorm Monday evening with an article by Andy Pasztor suggesting that Boeing is about to be named the walk off winner in NASA’s next phase of the Commercial Crew Competition, CCtCap, with an award made in conjunction with Blue Origin. Anything could happen. As long time observers will […]
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