Watch Blue Origin's BE-7 Rocket Ace Its First Colorful Hot-Fire
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, has hit a new rocket milestone in its plan to make it to the Moon – and the billionaire celebrated with a video of the colorful moment. The company tested the BE-7 lunar landing engine for the first time in a hot-fire situation, and while that doesn't mean it makes it off the ground, it is a vital step in the process toward that happening.
The BE-7 is the special engine that Blue Origin plans to use on its Blue Moon lunar lander. Making it down to the moon, complete with cargo, and then needing to fire up again later is a fairly tough challenge for a rocket, and so Bezos' space company designed its own.
It's certainly powerful. Blue Origin says the BE-7 should deliver 40 kN, or 10,000 lbf, of thrust when it's completed and in operation. First, though, it had to be fired for the inaugural time.
That took place at Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama. It's the site where the US government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center are based, and where space companies like Blue Origin can test out their work-in-progress engines. According to Bezos, everything went like clockwork. "Data looks great and hardware is in perfect condition," he tweeted. "Test went full planned duration – 35 seconds."
First hotfire of our #BE7 lunar landing engine just yesterday at Marshall Space Flight Center. Data looks great and hardware is in perfect condition. Test went full planned duration – 35 seconds. Kudos to the whole @BlueOrigin team and grateful to @NASA_Marshall for all the help! pic.twitter.com/cTjjrngumY
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) June 20, 2019
The rocket burns on hydrogen fuel, and so the flame is transparent under normal conditions. The green tinge to it at the start is likely the ignition fluid burning off, as the BE-7 gets going.
Blue Origin's plans certainly aren't humble. Back in early May, the company revealed Blue Moon for the first time, along with Bezos' vision for starting the process of manufacturing in space. The Moon, the Amazon CEO suggested, is perfect for that, describing our orbiting satellite as "a gift."
To unwrap that gift properly, though, requires a special sort of lander. Blue Moon will be designed to be flexible, capable of taking down different types – along with different sizes and weights – of payloads to the lunar surface. It's also intended to be exceptionally precise in how and where it can land, a must if you're dealing with lunar logistics.
The project began three years ago, Bezos said, and there's already a larger version of the lander on the roadmap. That would be suitable for taking human passengers, and could indeed be ready in time for NASA's Moon 2024 crewed mission. Before that's even a possibility, of course, Blue Origin needs to successfully get the initial lander to the Moon, and while we're still some way out from that, this hot-fire of the BE-7 is an important step toward it.