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KEY POINTS Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin suffered a rocket engine explosion while testing its BE-4 rocket engine last month, CNBC has learned. During a firing on June 30 at Blue Origin’s facility in West Texas, a BE-4 engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test. A Blue Origin spokesperson confirmed the incident, noting no personnel were injured and an investigation is underway, with a “proximate cause” identified. =============================================================== A Blue Origin rocket engine exploded during testing last month, CNBC has learned, a destructive setback with potential ramifications for the company’s customers and its own rocket. During a firing...

As we all know on July 20, Blue Origin successfully made a flight to the edge of orbit, making Jeff Bezos one of the first two billionaires to go to space. This seems to be the resounding success of Blue Origin so far. However, after the billionaire space founder came back to Earth, the company's internal affairs became chaotic, many key engineers and leaders decided to leave the company.At least 17 key leaders and senior engineers have left Blue Origin this summer, with many moving on in the weeks after Bezos’ spaceflight.Two of the engineers, Nitin Arora and Lauren Lyons,...

Blue Origin held a groundbreaking ceremony in Huntsville, Alabama, Jan. 25 to formally mark the start of construction of a factory that will be used for building BE-4 engines. The company announced plans to build the factory there in June 2017, contingent on the selection of the engine by United Launch Alliance for its Vulcan rocket. ULA picked the BE-4 in September 2018. The factory, scheduled for completion in March 2020, will build dozens of BE-4 engines a year for both Vulcan as well as Blue Origin's own New Glenn vehicle. Both rockets are scheduled to make first launches in...

The first thing to notice is how rapidly Elon Musk's SpaceX is altering the market for government-sponsored rocket launches. Witness how frequently the words "to compete with SpaceX" appear in industry statements and press coverage. To compete with SpaceX, say multiple reports, the United Launch Alliance, the Pentagon's traditional supplier, is developing a new Vulcan rocket powered by a reusable engine designed by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Because of SpaceX, says Aviation Week magazine, Japan's government has instructed Mitsubishi to cut in half the cost of the Japanese workhorse rocket, and China is planning a new family of kerosene-fueled Long...

Space makes for strange relationships. With NASA’s Space Shuttle shuttered since 2011, American astronauts have hitched rides to the International Space Station inside Russian Soyuz rockets for the past four years. But ever since Russia claimed Crimea and supported a separatist movement in Ukraine, the United States and Russia haven’t exactly been on great terms. Congress passed punitive sanctions on Russia, and in retaliation, Russia forbade the sale of rocket engines to the American military. Yet the Pentagon, which is currently supplying the Ukrainian military with vehicles, now needs a little help getting its military satellites to space. So it's...

On April 7, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson said that the space company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would be conducting its first unmanned test flights “later this year.” As it turns out, “later this year” meant “three weeks.” The company has announced that it had conducted the first flight of its New Shepard space vehicle yesterday. The propulsion module, powered by Blue Origin’s BE-3 rocket engine, took the New Shepard space capsule up to a speed of over Mach 3. The capsule then separated from the propulsion module and flew to an altitude of 307,000 feet before beginning...

In a surprise turn of events, U.S. space industry behemoth United Launch Alliance, or ULA, and Blue Origin — a secretive space startup owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos — have unveiled an American rocket engine that may end Russia's supremacy in the field. [....] The development of the engine, known as the Blue Engine 4, or BE-4, will certainly strike NPO Energomash, Russia's premier rocket engine design firm, analysts say.