Curtis Johnson, of Blue Origin, spoke to Johns Hopkins students and faculty on April 25, about the future of space exploration and two of Blue Origin’s vehicles – the New Shepard, currently in operation, and the New Glenn. The speech was part of the CGPO Speaker Series, a series of speakers that focused on the topic of space during the 2016-2017 academic year.
Johnson started out running his own company, working on government contracts in the space arena, and then 10 years ago decided to work for Blue Origin.
“I realized if I’m going to make hardware that flies, I need to go to one of the entrepreneurial companies,” Johnson said.
He describes Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos’ vision as “to enable a future where millions of people are living and working in space.”
Blue Origin is focused on building operationally reusable launch systems in order to reduce the cost of access to space. The New Shepard rocket demonstrated reusability when it became the first rocket to go to space then come back and land vertically. The same rocket completed this mission four more times showing how the same hardware can be reused.
New Glenn is Blue Origin’s orbital launch vehicle. Johnson is in charge of all propulsion for New Glenn, which is currently in design. Its first stage will be reusable. The vehicle will be fully orbital and is designed to carry people and payloads into space. Blue Origin recently broke ground on the facility in Florida that will be used to manufacture the New Glenn vehicle. The facility is expected to be complete in late 2017.
The company has recently completed assembly on its first BE-4 rocket engine, with the second and third engine following close behind. Seven BE-4 engines will power the New Glenn rocket and give it a total of 3.85 million pounds of thrust.
Johnson noted that Blue Origin is interested in hiring a mix of young and experienced workers, and is now hiring a lot of people right out of school. The company leadership looks for candidates with a passion in space, people who are tinkerers and have created things, and understand the persistence it takes to make things work.