{"id":19167,"date":"2016-11-18T18:39:05","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T10:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/billionaire-jeff-bezos-gets-all-geeky-over-blue-origins-robotic-rocket-drilling-machine\/"},"modified":"2016-11-18T18:39:05","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T10:39:05","slug":"billionaire-jeff-bezos-gets-all-geeky-over-blue-origins-robotic-rocket-drilling-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/billionaire-jeff-bezos-gets-all-geeky-over-blue-origins-robotic-rocket-drilling-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire Jeff Bezos gets all geeky over Blue Origin\u2019s robotic rocket drilling machine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Blue
Blue Origin\u2019s EDM drilling machine works on a nozzle for the BE-4 rocket engine, currently under development at the company\u2019s production facility in Kent, Wash. \u201cOnly 1,000 holes to go,\u201d Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos writes. (Blue Origin Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Building a rocket ship may sound romantic, but there are a lot of nitty-gritty details behind the work \u2013 and that\u2019s what Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is celebrating in his latest email about Blue Origin\u2019s BE-4 rocket engine.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin, the space venture that Bezos founded back in 2000, is building the engine for use on United Launch Alliance\u2019s next-generation Vulcan rocket as well as Blue Origin\u2019s own New Glenn rocket. The plan is to start testing the engine early next year, and start flying the rockets by 2019.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a bit of competitive pressure involved: United Launch Alliance has Aerojet Rocketdyne\u2019s AR-1 engine waiting in the wings, just in case Blue Origin and the BE-4 don\u2019t hit their marks.<\/p>\n

The BE-4 engine will be fueled by liquid natural gas, unlike the hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine that Blue Origin is using on the suborbital New Shepard rocket ship that it\u2019s testing in West Texas. It\u2019s designed to produce 550,000 pounds of thrust, as opposed to 110,000 pounds of thrust for the BE-3.<\/p>\n

That means new technologies have to be employed to build the BE-4 \u2013 and today, Bezos called attention to one of those technologies: the automated electrical discharge machining drill, or EDM. Here\u2019s how he describes the EDM in all its geeky glory:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cFor BE-4, not only do we have to design the engine itself, we also have to develop custom tools to make it. One of these tools is an automated electrical discharge machining (EDM) drilling machine. The EDM precisely locates and burns more than 4,000 tightly dimensioned holes into the nozzle and main combustion chamber, providing entry to the regenerative cooling channels.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as we know, this particular EDM machine is the only one of its kind in the world. It has 11 axes of motion allowing for precise hole location and accuracy within a few thousands of an inch. Its dual-head design results in reduced cycle time for the drilled holes. Brass multichannel electrodes are used to drill the holes. Water can be pumped through the electrode in order to speed up the drilling cycle. The use of water also helps flush the hole and remove the powder-like foreign object debris generated by the process. This eliminates the concern for plugging cooling channels, which can easily occur with conventional drilling methods. A pair of automated electrode-changing stations allows the EDM to continuously operate for long cycle times at an average rate of one hole every 90 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding and operating custom tools of this magnitude is a big investment, but it\u2019s critical for developing an engine that will power America\u2019s access to space in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cA pretty wise investment, if you ask me.<\/p>\n

\u201cGradatim Ferociter!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJeff Bezos<\/p>\n

\u201cPS: Blue Origin is hiring. Check out our Careers page and apply.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Drilling 4,000 holes at the rate of 90 seconds per hole adds up to, um, 100 hours\u2019 worth of drilling. But imagine doing all that work by hand. That\u2019s what engineers had to do more than a half-century ago when they built the Apollo F-1 rocket engines that sent NASA\u2019s spaceships to the moon.<\/p>\n

Strangely enough, Bezos has a reason to be familiar with the difference. Three years ago, he funded an expedition to recover F-1 engine components from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and some of those parts show the intricate (albeit corroded) patterns of hand-drilled holes. For comparison\u2019s sake, check out this example, which is now on display at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight:<\/p>\n

\"Injector
A close-up shows holes drilled into an Apollo 12 engine injector plate. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blue Origin\u2019s EDM drilling machine works on a nozzle for the BE-4 rocket engine, currently under development at the company\u2019s production facility in Kent, Wash. \u201cOnly 1,000 holes to go,\u201d Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos writes. (Blue Origin Photo) Building a rocket ship may sound romantic, but there are a lot of nitty-gritty details behind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5484,4459,509,291,1046],"class_list":["post-19167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-automation","tag-be-4-rocket-engine","tag-blue-origin","tag-commercial-space","tag-jeff-bezos"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}