Tucked away
in Blue Origin’s coverage of its launch in Texas were some details on progress being made at the company’s new facilities in Cape Canaveral.
Tucked away in Blue Origin’s coverage of its launch in Texas on Sunday were some details on progress being made at the company’s new facilities in Cape Canaveral.
Blue Origin is currently hiring and gearing up its rocket factory near Kennedy Space Center — where it plans to build its New Glenn orbital rocket — and at its operations center at Launch Complex 36.
“Things are coming together nicely for the New Glenn maiden flight for the end of 2020,” said Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s Head of astronaut strategy and sales. “When New Glenn takes off, with 3.85 million pounds of thrust, you are going to feel it. It’s gonna make a rumble.”
Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, held a successful eighth launch Sunday of its smaller, sub-orbital rocket — New Shepard — in West Texas. As Cornell narrated the launch over an hour or so, she also spoke briefly about Cape Canaveral.
Behind her, Blue Origin showed aerial photos of the cape facilities.
She said the company is “basically completely redoing the pad for a large rocket” and installing a large propellant fuel tank farm to store the natural gas used in the rocket’s BE4 engines.
Blue Origin is also working on a refurbishment facility at the pad, to inspect, refit, and refuel rockets that come back to land at the pad. Blue Origin’s biggest competitor in the new commercial space industry, SpaceX, is already bringing orbital rockets back to the cape after launching commercial and government payloads and has indicated its refurbishment facility will be at Port Canaveral.
Blue Origin plans to land rockets on a barge and on land. Cornell said the barge will be moving when the rocket lands, which she said will provide greater stability and faster turnaround times.
She also mentioned a detail about Blue Origin’s operations at Cape Canaveral: Its mission control center will be at the 750,000-square-foot rocket factory, which is on Kennedy Space Center land leased by Space Florida.
She said New Glenn is “such a large rocket that we decided to build the rocket not far from where we launch it. We take the raw materials in, and a finished rocket comes out the other side.”