2017, March 07 -- Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos revealed new details of his space company’s reusable orbital-class booster. An animation released by Blue Origin shows the New Glenn rocket taking off from Complex 36 on the power of seven BE-4 main engines, burning a mixture of liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen. The engines each produce about 550,000 pounds of thrust at full throttle, combining to generate 3.85 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
The first stage engines will give way to a single modified BE-4 engine on the New Glenn’s second stage to deliver satellites, and eventually crews, into orbit, while the booster flips around and reignites to slow its descent toward a barge positioned offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, according to Blue Origin.
The New Glenn first stage will have aerodynamic fins, or strakes, for improved steering and extend six landing legs just before touchdown. The two-stage New Glenn variant, shown in the animation, will stand 270 feet (82 meters) tall and haul nearly 29,000 pounds, or 13 metric tons, to geostationary transfer orbit, the drop-off point for most communications satellites. The rocket’s payload capacity to low Earth orbit, a few hundred miles in altitude, will be nearly 100,000 pounds, or 45 metric tons. With the addition of an optional third stage for deep space missions, the New Glenn’s height will increase to 313 feet (95 meters). Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine in development to power the New Glenn rocket is scheduled to perform its full-scale hotfire test later this year.
Bezos tweeted two pictures of the first fully-assembled BE-4 engine, adding that the second and third copies are “following close behind.”