In its quest to create a future where millions of people live and work in space, Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin is working on reusable rockets, orbital outposts and lunar landers.
Tying the systems together is a large, multi-use platform that can host, deploy and refuel spacecraft, as well as perform other services from Earth orbit, cislunar space and beyond.
Blue Origin is unveiling the platform, named Blue Ring, on Oct. 16, along with a new business unit, In-Space Systems, to broadly market its transportation, hosting, refueling, data relay, cloud computing and other services.
“This is going to leapfrog all of the other orbital transfer vehicles, tugs and propulsive-ESPA concepts that are out there,” Lars Hoffman, vice president government sales, said in an interview with Aerospace DAILY.
ESPA is an acronym for Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adapter.
“It has a lot of capability and a lot of energy. It is a platform that has versatility across multiple missions and multiple customers on any given launch,” Hoffman said.
For starters, Blue Ring can host and/or deploy 1,100-lb.-class satellites on a dozen generic ESPA and ESPA Grande ports, which are 15-in. and 24-in. in dia., respectively, as well as anchor a 2-ton-class satellite on a top deck.
A single Blue Ring can carry more than 6,660 lb. of payloads, depending on whether the spacecraft would be flown to single or multiple Earth orbits—including geostationary—and/or to Lagrange points, cislunar space, lunar orbits or even to interstellar space.
“Currently, the commercial marketplace is still very much sending payloads and satellites to predictable orbits,” Hoffman said. “Some of the new markets are looking to be more dynamic. That’s one of the things Blue Ring is really attuned to—it can do a lot of different things.”
The platforms will be powered by a hybrid chemical and solar-electric propulsion system, designed and mostly manufactured by Blue Origin. “It’s taking advantage of the best of both systems,” Hoffman said. “You have the energy of chemical propulsion to get you from point A to point B more quickly and you have the electric propulsion for station-keeping, or if you wanted to save on energy for transferring from one orbit to another.”
The company declined to provide details of the Blue Ring engines, except to say they are not repurposed from the current engine line of BE-3, BE-4 or BE-7s that support the New Shepard suborbital system, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets, the Blue Moon lunar lander, respectively, among others. “It’s using a variant specifically for Blue Ring,” Hoffman said.
For electric power, Blue Rings will be outfitted with roll-out solar arrays that span about 144 ft. The dimensions of the platform itself were not disclosed.
“Blue Ring is rather large, but when it’s integrated, it can fly inside of the current 5.4-m (18-ft.) fairings of National Security Space Launch-class vehicles, like Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Vulcan—and it can certainly fly on New Glenn, with a 7-m fairing,” Hoffman said. “It’s launch-vehicle agnostic.”
In addition to thermal control, communications and other payload infrastructure, Blue Rings will have the energy to maneuver its payloads between different orbits. “That’s something a lot of platforms are not able to do today,” Hoffman said. “Most satellites are dropped off and they have to boost themselves to their eventual orbits or they are placed precisely into their orbit. Blue Ring offers that stretch to the final orbit and the ability to deliver multiple payloads to multiple different orbits.”
The platform, which is being designed to operate for five years, can be refueled in orbit and is also capable of fueling other spacecraft. Blue Origin is paying all development costs and offering the platform as a fully matured service. “We have customers willing and ready to launch on Blue Ring,” Hoffman said. “The manifest is already pretty full.”
“We have interest in launches in 2024-25,” he added. “I think the realistic first launch of Blue Ring will be 2025. We’re going to let the market dictate how rapidly this grows.”
Blue Ring development units are being manufactured at Blue Origin’s Kent, Washington, headquarters. Additional units will be built at the company’s Huntsville, Alabama, facility, with other sites providing components.
Blue Origin’s In-Space Systems unit is headed by Senior Vice President Paul Ebertz.
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