Blue Origin’s overhaul of historic NASA test stand presented challenge

Longtime city residents will recognize the thundering sounds and the shaking of area structures when NASA’s historic 4670 Test Stand at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is once again ready to play a key role in the country’s space exploration.

The 300-foot tall stand, first employed in 1965 to support the Apollo program’s Saturn V rocket and later in service for the Space Shuttle and RD-180 Atlas rockets into the coming decades, has been  inactive since 1998.

But 4670 will once again roar to life when Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space rocket venture, completes a refurbishment project of the stand through a deal with NASA.

Boosters have been tested at MSFC as America gets ready to return to the Moon and beyond. But the rockets that will do the heavy lifting – BE-3U and BE-4 – have yet to be fired at 4670.

David Helderman, a Purdue University alum and aerospace engineer, is director of Alabama Test Operations for Blue Origin and leads the Test Stand 4670 Project. He said the BE-3U and BE-4 engines, which will support both Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan space flight vehicles, are on schedule for testing later this year.

“The Saturn V was a seven-and-a-half million pounds of thrust that was tested on the test stand, so that definitely shook windows and everything a long distance away,’’ Helderman said. “Then in the eighties, the space shuttle main engines and RD-180 were an order of magnitude much more powerful.

“So that’s kind of what people often remember from the ’80s and ’90s. When we get into testing the BE-4 we’ll be at five hundred-and-fifty-thousand pounds of thrust. So it’ll be loud and people will hear it, but it won’t be near as loud as the Saturn V was back in the 60s.’’

Bob Smith, president of Blue Origin, previously promised the company would “provide for the refurbishment, restoration and modernization of this piece of American history – and bring the sounds of rocket engines firing back to Huntsville.’’

Getting the stand back into shape is no small task.

“The challenge that we’ve had is just dealing with the age of the test stand,’’ Helderman said. “Some parts of the test stand haven’t aged as well as others. We found some corroded steel and things like that that we’ve had to go into in-depth evaluation and then the repair or replacing in some cases some of those corroded steel members and things like that.

“So by and large our biggest challenge was just dealing with the age of the test stand and bringing it up to current standards and modernizing it.’’

According to Helderman, the 4670 team has embraced the history of the test stand since the start of the project.

“One of the coolest things about this whole project is the history,’’ he said. “We love that we’re building our history on history. It’s a cool, long history of America’s Space Program.

“I can tell you that the team out here, we love the history that goes with a test. And one of the big attractions for people to come work out here is being able to be a part of that history and carry on that legacy.’’

The BE-4 is the engine that engineers and explorers envision taking men, and women, to an eventual trip to the Red Planet and more.

“This is the rocket that’s going to enable our vision of millions of people living and working in space,’’ Helderman said. “That’s kind of the building block. It’s the first step of that situation that allows us to get a lot of things into space.

“It’ll allow us to build a space station like an orbital reef and will allow us to put people back on the moon. It will enable many many things beyond that fundamentally. It’s the heavy lift vehicle that’s going to allow us to put all sorts of things in space, which will open up space to generations to come and many things we haven’t even thought of yet.’’

Helderman wouldn’t hesitate to live in space, or on Mars.

“If I had the chance I would definitely go into space and I would I would live in pretty much anywhere in space as long as it was habitable,’’ he said.

Images provided by NASA.