Blue Origin's Alabama rocket engine plant shaping up, and it's big
A new aerial photograph shows the size of the new rocket engine plant Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin is building in Alabama. All 400,000 square feet of the new $200 million plant appear to be roofed in and ready for interior development.
The plant will build Blue Origin’s new BE-4 engine for the company’s own rockets and rockets made by nearby United Launch Alliance in Decatur, Ala. ULA supplies rockets mostly for national security launches. The new Alabama plant will employ about 350 people and will also produce Blue Origin’s smaller BE-3 engine.
Bezos has always been interested in space, he told a group of reporters visiting his rocket plant near Seattle in 2016. He has degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from Princeton and said he has been fascinated with space “since I was five years old.” Bezos told reporters then that considers himself “incredibly fortunate” to do that. He “won a lottery called Amazon,” Bezos said, and now “can fulfill my childhood dream.”
The rocket plant is not the only connection Blue Origin has to Huntsville. The company is working to retrofit an original Saturn V engine test stand at the Marshall Space Flight Center to test its engines including the ones built in Huntsville.
Read more: https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2019/11/blue-origins-alabama-rocket-engine-plant-shaping-up-and-its-big.html