Blue Origin’s anticlimactic victory and Aerojet’s Plan B

AR1 was long considered the underdog, in part because the engine was well behind the BE-4 in development.

by Jeff FoustOctober 5, 2018January 23, 2023

United Launch Alliance's updated diagram of the Vulcan Centaur finally reflects what many saw as a foregone conclusion: the main stage will be powered by Blue Origin's BE-4 engine.

ULA finally selects BE-4 engine for Vulcan, marking an anticlimactic victory for Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin (and another disappointment for Aerojet Rocketdyne).

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Jeff Foust

Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The... More by Jeff Foust