Blue Origin facilities

The private aerospace company Blue Origin has a number of development, manufacturing, and test facilities in four US states: Washington, Texas, Florida, and Alabama.

Blue Origin began in 2000 with only a development and office facility near Seattle, Washington. By 2003 Blue was buying land in west Texas for a rocket engine test facility and, subsequently, for a suborbital rocket launch site.[1] Blue Origin is currently developing a new orbital launch facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and a nearby rocket assembly facility in Brevard County, Florida.[2]

Development facility and headquarters

The company is headquartered on 11 hectares (26 acres) of industrial land in Kent, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, where its research and development is located. The facility was 24,000 m2 (260,000 sq ft) in size in early 2015,[3] growing to 28,000 m2 (300,000 sq ft) by March 2016 with Blue Origin leasing additional space in adjacent office buildings. As of March 2016, the Kent facility housed engineering, manufacturing and business operations and the majority of the 600-person[4] Blue Origin workforce, which grew from about 350 persons at Kent in May 2015.[3] They added an additional 42,630 m2 (458,900 sq ft) of office, manufacturing and warehouse space to their headquarters facilities in 2016 and 2017.[5][6] In late 2017, Blue purchased an additional 13 hectares (31 acres)—adding to their existing 11 hectares (26 acres)—of land on which they plan to build another 32,000 m2 (340,000 sq ft) of facility in Washington state.[7]

Florida facilities
Blue Origin's Orbital Launch Site (OLS) manufacturing facility, 2019

In September 2015, Blue Origin leased Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) in Cape Canaveral, Florida to build a launch pad for their orbital launch vehicle New Glenn. As of March 2016, the first Blue Origin launch from LC36 is planned for 2020. An August 2015 estimate predicted that initial launch happening earlier than 2020.[8] Groundbreaking for the facility to begin construction occurred in June 2016.[9] By March 2018, Blue's construction at LC-36 was lagging, but the company stated they did not think it would delay achieving the anticipated 2020 initial launch of New Glenn.[10]

The Blue Origin orbital launch site will be situated on a total of 306 acres of leased land assembled from former Launch Complexes 11, 36A, and 36B. The land parcel will be used to build a rocket engine test stand for the BE-4 engine, a launch mount—called the Orbital Launch Site by Blue—and a reusable booster refurbishment facility for the New Glenn launch vehicle, which is expected to land on a seaborne platform and returned to Port Canaveral for refurbishment.

In addition, the manufacturing of "large elements, such as first stages, second stages, payload fairings, etc." will occur at the Blue launch vehicle production facility on Space Commerce Parkway in nearby Exploration Park, near the entrance to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island.[11]

In October 2018, Stena Freighter, 182 meter cargo-ship purchased from ferry operator Stena Line, arrived in Florida from Spain. CEO Bob Smith, confirmed Stena Freighter would be used as the landing platform vessel for first-stage boosters.[12] The landing ship will be hydrodynamically stabilized.[13]

Corn Ranch suborbital launch and engine test site
Main article: Corn Ranch

Blue Origin has a suborbital launch facility known as Corn Ranch. It is located in West Texas, near the town of Van Horn. Current launch license and experimental permits from the US government Federal Aviation Administration authorize flights of Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital system,[14] In addition to the suborbital launch pads, the West Texas site includes a number of rocket engine test stands. Engine test cells to support both hydrolox, methalox and storable propellant engines are present.

Included are three test cells just for testing the methalox BE-4 engine alone: two full test cells that can support full-thrust and full-duration burns, as well as one that supports short-duration, high-pressure preburner tests, to "refine the ignition sequence and understand the start transients."[15]

The 2020 ribbon-cutting at the Huntsville facility.

Alabama engine manufacturing facility

In June 2016, Blue announced that they would build a new facility in Huntsville, Alabama to manufacture the large BE-4 cryogenic rocket engine.[16]

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References
  1. Mylene Mangalindan (10 November 2006). "Buzz in West Texas is about Jeff Bezos space craft launch site". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 28 May 2008.
  2. Price, Wayne T. (12 March 2016). "Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin could change the face of space travel". Florida Today. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
  3. "Local engineers aim high for cheaper spaceflight". Seattle Times. 31 May 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  4. Foust, Jeff (8 March 2016). "Blue Origin plans growth spurt this year". SpaceNews. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
  5. Stile, Marc (20 October 2016). "Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin, is the new owner of an old warehouse in Kent". bizjournals.com. Puget Sound Business Journal. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  6. "Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture has plans for big expansion of Seattle-area HQ". GeekWire. 22 February 2017. Retrieved 11 August 2017.
  7. Boyle, Alan (28 December 2017). "Blue Origin space venture spends $14M on space for offices and warehouse in Kent". GeekWire. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
  8. Gebhardt, Chris (8 October 2015). "Canaveral and KSC pads: New designs for space access". NASASpaceFlight.com. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  9. http://www.space.com/33293-blue-origin-construction-florida-rocket-factory.html, accessed 7 July 2016.
  10. Foust, Jeff (19 March 2018). "A changing shade of Blue". The Space Review. Retrieved 31 May 2018. construction at LC-36. The Air Force ... limits work that can be done on "critical days" around launches, to avoid construction work that could cause mishaps—broken pipelines or severed cables—that would delay those launches. "Part of building is that you've actually got to be able to put a shovel into the ground", Henderson said. "On a critical day at Cape Canaveral you cannot break the surface of the ground". The number of critical days has been growing, in part because of increased launch activity. In 10 of the previous 12 months, he said, more than half of the work days were deemed critical days. "It's nearly impossible to build a project under those kinds of constraints".
  11. Bergin, Chris; Munson, Noel (29 March 2017). "Blue Origin working towards making the Cape its Orbital Launch Site". NASASpaceFlight. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
  12. "Blue Origin will be Landing its Rockets on a Used Cargo Ship. It'll Get Converted in Time for First Flights in 2021 - Universe Today". Universe Today. 28 October 2018. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  13. "Blue Origin publishes New Glenn overview as pad and landing ship continue development". NASA Space Flight. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  14. Final Supplemental Environmental Assessment for the Blue Origin West Texas Launch Site (Report). Federal Aviation Administration. February 2014. Retrieved 3 May 2015.
  15. "BE-4 Engine Testing Update From Jeff Bezos – Parabolic Arc". Parabolic Arc.
  16. "Why is Jeff Bezos building rocket engines in Alabama? He's playing to win". Retrieved 11 August 2017.
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