BE-3

BE-3 (Blue Engine 3) is a cryogenic rocket engine using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as propellants. Blue Origin began BE-3 development in the early 2010s and the engine completed acceptance testing in early 2015. The BE-3PM variant is used on the New Shepard suborbital rocket, which made its first test flight on April 29, 2015, and had its first crewed flight on July 20, 2021. The BE-3U variant is used on the second stage of the New Glenn orbital rocket, which made its inaugural flight on January 16, 2025.

Following Aerojet’s acquisition of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in 2012, Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson saw an opportunity to fill a gap in the defense industrial base. Blue Origin publicly entered the liquid rocket engine business by partnering with ULA on the development of the BE-4, and working with other companies. Meyerson announced the selection of Huntsville, AL as the location of Blue Origin’s rocket production factory in June 2017.

The BE-3 follows the earliest rocket engine development efforts at Blue Origin in the 2000s. Blue Origin's first engine was a "simple, single-propellant engine" called the BE-1 (Blue Engine 1) which used peroxide propellant and generated only 8.9 kN (2,000 lbf) of thrust, and their second, the BE-2 (Blue Engine 2) which was a bipropellant engine using kerosene and peroxide, producing 140 kN (31,000 lbf) thrust.

In January 2013, the company announced the development of the BE-3 (Blue Engine 3), a new liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen (LH₂/LOX) cryogenic engine. The engine was originally announced to produce 440 kN (100,000 lbf) thrust, with initial thrust chamber tests planned for mid-February 2013 at NASA Stennis. The thrust chamber tests were run sometime in 2013.

The BE-3 was successfully tested in late 2013 on a full-duration simulated suborbital burn, with coast phases and engine relights, "demonstrating deep throttle, full power, long-duration and reliable restart all in a single-test sequence." NASA has released a video of the test.

By December 2013, Blue Origin updated engine specifications following engine tests conducted on test stands at ground level, near sea level. This demonstrated that the engine could produce 490 kilonewtons (110,000 lbf) of thrust at full power, and could successfully throttle down to as low as 110 kilonewtons (25,000 lbf) for use in controlled vertical landings if needed for that purpose on particular launch vehicles. The final engine specifications, released in April 2015 following the full test phase, included a minimum thrust of 89 kilonewtons (20,000 lbf), an even wider throttling capability by 20 percent than the preliminary numbers, while maintaining the previously released full power thrust spec.

As of December 2013^[update], the engine had "demonstrated more than 160 starts and 9,100 seconds (152 min) of operation at Blue Origin's test facility near Van Horn, Texas." Additional testing of the BE-3 was completed in 2014, with the engine "simulating a sub-scale booster suborbital mission duty cycle." Test stand testing of the engine was completed by April 2015, with over 450 engine firings and a cumulative engine test time of over 500 minutes. Blue Origin stated it would make the first test flight of its New Shepard vehicle later in 2015, with the BE-3PM engine.

In the event, Blue Origin made the first flight test of the BE-3PM engine on the New Shepard suborbital vehicle before the month was out, flying a boost profile to 93,500 meters (307,000 ft) altitude on April 29, 2015.