Blue Origin BE-4 Engine Test

Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine will be used on the company’s New Glenn launcher and the first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur. It burns liquefied natural gas (methane) and liquid oxygen with an oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle, producing 2.4 meganewtons (550,000 pounds-force) of thrust at sea level. This test includes gimbaling the engine to simulate steering during flight.

This is a more conservative design than SpaceX’s Raptor 2 developed for Starship. The BE-4 operates at a chamber pressure of 134 bar, while Raptor 2, with its full-flow staged combustion cycle, runs its chamber at 300 bar with a goal of up-rating to 330 bar in the future, providing a sea level specific impulse of 330 seconds. Blue Origin has not disclosed the specific impulse figure for the BE-4.

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On 2023-06-08 (UTC, evening of the 7th in local time), United Launch Alliance conducted a flight readiness firing of their first Vulcan Centaur launcher. This involved completely fuelling the vehicle, counting down to the point of ignition of the two BE-4 engines on the first stage, then shutting down the engines after they reached full stable thrust for launch.

I have cued the replay to start one minute before the firing. The video is a little confusing because the Radial Outward Firing Initiators (ROFI) “sparklers” which burn off any propellant leaked during the engine start and shut-down phases continued to run and have nothing to do with the exhaust plumes of the engines, which were almost transparent during stable burn and then brightened to a fuel-rich shutdown at cutoff.

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Scanalyst cuing has not been working for me for several weeks. Firing is just after 3:05:30.

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This appears to be a browser/configuration problem. The cue point (t= specification in the YouTube URL) works for me both logged in to the site with Chrome and as a visitor with Firefox.

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