Free Republic

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 nation cannot afford to simply put all of that critical intelligence gathering “on hold” for several years No matter which party wins the White House in November our next Commander in Chief will inherit a world far more unstable than at any point in recent history. From the rapid expansion of ISIS, to recent nuclear tests in North Korea, to the many problems in Afghanistan and Iraq, the very real threats to America and its allies have never been more evident. Roughly 150,000 U.S. troops are stationed in more than 150 countries around the world and they are the...

<p>Should the Russian government yank its supply of rocket engines for United States launches, critical national-security satellite missions could be delayed up to four years, experts told a joint Senate hearing Wednesday.</p> <p>United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket is the workhorse of heavy satellite launches in the United States, but the booster requires a Russian RD-180 engine to get off the ground.</p>

Future Mars outposts or colonies may seem more distant than ever with NASA's exploration plans in flux, but the rocket technology that could someday propel a human mission to the red planet in as little as 40 days may already exist. A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time. "People have known for a long time, even...

MOJAVE - XCOR Aerospace will help develop a rocket engine for NASA's next manned spacecraft under a multimillion-dollar contract announced Tuesday. Mojave-based XCOR is teamed with Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, for the first phase of developing a rocket engine that runs on liquid oxygen and liquid methane, nontoxic fuels that could help lower the overall cost of spaceflight. XCOR's portion of the $10.4 million contract is $3.3 million, the biggest government contract the company has had to date, CEO Jeff Greason said. "We were a significant part of this team," he said. "We are very excited about the opportunity to...

An Oklahoma space-travel company says it is aiming to win the race to put paying passengers on suborbital trips, with commercial flights scheduled to begin by early 2007. "We intend to make it a five-star experience," said David Urie, vice president of Rocketplane Ltd.

Boeing Co. on Tuesday agreed to sell off a key part of its commercial jet-building operations and a rocket engine unit in two separate deals worth about $2 billion. The deals come as Boeing tries to sell off manufacturing capacity and cut costs amid fierce competition from European rival Airbus, the world's top aircraft maker, in the commercial airline market. Boeing sold its commercial plane manufacturing operations in Kansas and Oklahoma to Canadian leveraged buyout firm Onex Corp. for $1.2 billion including $900 million in cash and the transfer of certain liabilities, such as employee pension costs. The sale to...