In 2015, the Blue Origin team executed the first unmanned flight test of the New Shepard system, a reusable vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vehicle that’s been to space and back. Amid a successful launch, New Shepard pulled space closer to humanity, cutting the distance between earthlings and the great beyond. With room to fit six people aboard, New Shepard offers a comfortable, weightless experience with unparalleled views out of the largest windows in space, payload lockers for experimentation, and a frequent flight schedule. But did you know that many parts of New Shepard were designed with tools built on AWS? Blue’s next generation engine, BE-4, and our orbital, two-stage launch vehicle, New Glenn, are also being designed leveraging the capabilities of AWS. Join us to learn more about how AWS has powered robust analytical tools to be hosted in the cloud.
2. Blue Origin Proprietary & Confidential |Blue Origin Proprietary & Confidential |Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018 2
MILLIONS OF
PEOPLE
LIVING AND WORKING IN SPACE
OUR VISION
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New Shepard Flight History
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing
Designed to carry six astronauts and payloads
Reusable booster powered by BE-3
April 29, 2015 – Successful ascent, capsule recovery; booster not recovered
November 23, 2015 – Historic rocket landing from space
January 22, 2016 – First reuse of a rocket flown to space
April 2, 2016 – Third flight of booster
June 19, 2016 – Fourth flight of booster; one chute out
October 5, 2016 – Fifth flight of booster; in-flight escape
December 12, 2017 – Successful first mission of next-gen booster
Planned 2018 – Continued test flights
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Planned 2019 – First Commercial Human Spaceflight
April 29, 2018 – Second flight of next-gen booster; additional science payloads
4. Ring Fin
Aft Fin
Landing
Gear
Wedge Fins
& Drag
Brakes
Engine
Restart
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018Blue Origin Proprietary & Confidential |
How to Make a Rocket Reusable
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New Shepard Suborbital Capability
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018
COMMERCIAL
CAPABILITIES
100 km apogee
Payloads from 1 to 250 lbm
~3 minutes of milli-g accelerations
Internal and external interfaces
Future human-tended capabilities
KEY APPLICATIONS
Basic and applied microgravity research
Earth, atmospheric, and space sciences
Technology risk reduction demos
Education and outreach collaborations
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New Shepard Design Cycle
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TIMELINE
DESIGN
New Shepard was designed and built in 3 years with ~200 people
• Among the first users of AWS
• Amazon EC2
• Amazon S3
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
• Before AWS IAM, Amazon Glacier, Amazon Redshift, AWS
Lambda, SageMaker, …
Early AWS applications focused on on-demand compute capability:
• Crew Capsule Outer Mold Line (OML) development
• Aerodynamic database development
• Engine loads and thermal analysis
• Prototype 6 Degree-of-Freedom (6-DOF) Monte-Carlo development
• Post-flight data reconstruction
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018
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Crew Capsule: Aerodynamic Database Development
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CONSIDERED MANY (> 100) DIFFERENT CONFIGURATIONS
PARAMETRIC SWEEPS
For each configuration sweep
Mach Number
Angle of attack
…
To generate static aerodynamic
coefficients for stability, control,
simulation, packaging, and other
analysis
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018
EMBARRASSINGLY PARALLEL
First instantiation of in-house tools based on Amazon AWS
Amazon EC2, Amazon S3
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Post-Flight Reconstruction
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LANDING OSCILLATIONS
Landing Oscillations observed in attitude during early landings
Fault tree created:
• Engine plume reducing vehicle’s static stability
• Unsteady plume shedding created chaotic large-magnitude
disturbances
• Control coupling effects
• Reduced Aft-Fin effectiveness or Aft-Fin control reversal
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018
Infrared video of propulsion module landing showing engine plume
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Post-Flight Reconstruction
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UNSTEADY CFD AND 6-DOF ANALYSIS
Conducted unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis using forces and
moments backed out from flight data
• Unsteady plume shedding created chaotic large-magnitude disturbances
• 6-DOF Simulation and Monte-Carlo analysis
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018
RESULTED IN FLIGHT SOFTWARE
UPDATESUpdated landing strategy on M4 to minimize the
unsteady oscillation
• Increased engine thrust cap
• Faded in TVC control earlier
• Moved engine restart to a lower altitude
THAT SUCCESSFULLY RESOLVED THE
ISSUEAttitude excursions all within limits on subsequent
flights
AWS and On-Demand HPC were the enablers
Unsteady CFD Simulation
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From Design to Operations
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• Outer Mold Line (OML) and Aero Database Development
• Engine Design
• Post-Flight Reconstruction
• Simulation
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018
DESIGN
OPERATIONS
• In-house built system for storing time series data (telemetry)
• Test Stands
• Flight Data
• Hardware-in-the-Loop and Lab Testing
• Streamed and batch data
• Enables seamless transfer and usage of data across mission
operations, sim labs and engineering
• Amazon S3 and Amazon DynamoDB
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On-Demand HPC using AWS
Initial internal capability (2008-2009)
Supported embarrassingly parallel jobs; simple job management
Based on EC2 and S3
Custom encryption and security handling
Second generation (2010-2011)
Added MPI Support; Cluster of Clusters
More advanced job and data management, robust data transfer
Third generation (2016-2017)
Simpler API
Native Server Side Encryption; additional HPC applications
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ON-DEMAND HPC CLUSTERS
NEW SHEPARD NEW GLENN
2-STAGE
NEW GLENN
LANDED BOOSTER
SATURN V
HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
EXAMPLES
Aero: 20M-100M cells; 200-400 cores; overnight or 1-2 day
turnaround
Combusting CFD: 1M-200M cells; 200-2000 cores; 3 days to
several week turnaround
FEA: 1M-10M degrees-of-freedom; 32-128 cores; 1 day turnaround
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Step By Step Ferociously
NewShepardsuborbital system in flighttestingstage
Propulsion Module
Crew Capsule
BE-3 Engine
NewGlennorbital system in development
Reusable first stage
Initially expendable upper stages
BE-4 & BE-3U Engines
NewGlenn2-stageperformance:
Leo (200 km) GTO (1800 M/S)
The Gradatim Ferociter Approach
Reusable First Stage
Expendable
Upper Stage
7m Fairing
Orbital
New Glenn
System
Suborbital
New Shepard
System
Crew Capsule
Propulsion Module
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45 TON 13 TON
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BE-4 LNG Engine
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SPECIFICATIONS
DEVELOPMENT
Liquid Oxygen, Liquefied Natural Gas (LOx/LNG) Engine
• Oxygen Rich Staged Combustion (ORSC) cycle
• 550,000 lbf (2400 kN) sea level thrust
LNG Fuel
• Commercially available liquefied methane
• Established supply chain
• Enables autogenous tank pressurization, eliminates helium
• Low cost enables extended development test program
• Hundreds of LOx/LNG ignitions over a variety of conditions
• Lower carbon emission alternative
Partnership with United Launch Alliance (ULA)
Single part number engine for both ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New
Glenn
In-house, fully-funded development underway since 2011
Not dependent on the U.S. government for funding
Earth and Space on AWS | June 19, 2018
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Continued AWS Investment
NewGlenn:
Configuration design
Primary CFD cluster for external flow analysis, including
database development, wind-tunnel pre-test predictions, aero-
and aero-thermal analysis
Launch Pad design
BE-4 Engine:
Finite Element analysis (FEA)
Primary CFD cluster for all internal flow analysis, including
combusting CFD
MATLAB clusters for heavy computation
Operations:
Time Series Data Storage
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Because of what AWS has enabled us to do, we’re now using AWS for the BE-4 engine and New Glenn vehicle designs.
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Continued AWS Investment
Business Systems:
Blue Origin Public Website
Autoscaling to support livestream of missions on launch
days
Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and Amazon SQS to accept
technical data for payload customers
Redshift coupled with Tableau for business intelligence
• Storage and delivery of media related to the manufacturing
of our vehicles, engines, and test stands to the
manufacturing floor
• CloudWatch for monitoring
• RDS servers for a variety of different services which allow
us to offload the operational overhead of managing in-
house servers
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