Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "BE-3" in English language version.
The BE-3 engine is flying. The engine that powers the New Shepard suborbital vehicle today will be upgraded with a larger nozzle to operate in the vacuum of orbital space.
Specifically, Orbital ATK will combine the Air Force money with at least $31 million, and as much as $124 million, of its own to develop [..., including] an extendable nozzle for Blue Origin's BE-3U upper stage engine. Blue Origin uses the BE-3 for its New Shepard suborbital rocket. The BE-3 also is one of three upper-stage engines United Launch Alliance is considering for Vulcan, the Denver company's next-generation rocket. 'We are proud to provide the BE-3U high energy upper stage solution for Orbital ATK's next generation launch vehicle,' Rob Meyerson, Blue Origin's president, said in an email to SpaceNews. 'The BE-3U is a variant of our BE-3 engine that powers our New Shepard space vehicle for both launch and landing.'
We've recently completed acceptance testing, meaning we've accepted the engine for suborbital flight on our New Shepard vehicle, [the end of a] very, very long development program [of] 450 test firings of the engine and a cumulative run time of more than 500 minutes. The completion of those tests sets the stage for Blue Origin to begin test flights of the vehicle later this year at its facility in West Texas [where they] expect a series of flight tests with this vehicle … flying in autonomous mode… We expect a series of dozens of flights over the extent of the test program [taking] a couple of years to complete.
The BE-3 engine is flying. The engine that powers the New Shepard suborbital vehicle today will be upgraded with a larger nozzle to operate in the vacuum of orbital space.
