Jeff Bezos has had a pretty good year. After becoming the richest man in the world to have ever lived, Amazon also became only the second company (after Apple) to hit the trillion dollar mark. Clearly confident, Bezos will now also be supplying rockets to the US military.
Blue Origins
United Launch Alliance is the official spacecraft provider for the United States government, and the child company of the space teams at Boeing and Lockheed Martin. It¡¯s also been looking for someone to sign a contract with for engines for its spacecraft. That contract now goes to Bezos¡¯ space company, Blue Origin.
ULA, for its part, has been looking for American partners to end its reliance on the Russian-made RD-180 engine. Now they¡¯ll instead used the BE-4 rocket built by Blue Origin for national security mission i.e. rockets required to launch US military satellites. It¡¯s been a heated competition, with Blue Origin defeating Aerojet Rocketdyne to win the rocket, itself a rocket manufacturing legacy in the US.
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The BE-4 will be used as main engines on ULA¡¯s Vulcan rocket, which currently remains on track for a maiden flight mid 2020. RocketDyne¡¯s builds meanwhile will still be powering the Vulcan¡¯s upper stages, though that¡¯s a fraction of the cost of the contract Blue Origin now holds.
Reuters
On the other hand, industry analysts wonder just how long this partnership will last. After all, records indicate Bezos is funneling $1 billion of his own fortune into Blue Origin development each year. The company is actually scrambling to finish its own heavy launch vehicle, the New Glenn. If it hits the estimated completion data in 2020, it¡¯ll actually become a direct competitor to the Vulcan itself.