It is the engine technology that attracted the attention of Boeing. In July, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announcement said that Blue Origin was part of a Boeing team that entered a competition for an unmanned “space plane” launch system. Its low-cost engine addresses the competition’s focus of dropping the cost of putting large satellites into orbit to under $5 million per launch. SpaceX was not included in the teams selected for the first phase of the program, called XS-1, by DARPA.
The Boeing partnership with Blue Origin will apparently also extend to Boeing’s joint venture with Lockheed Martin, called the United Launch Alliance. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bezos or a representative will be on hand for a press conference on Wednesday in Washington to announce that Blue Origin is joining that venture in an effort to domestically produce rocket engines for the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rockets—replacing Russian-made engines.