[8] The engine was initially planned to be used exclusively on Blue Origin's proprietary New Glenn launch vehicle.

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.

[11] Blue Origin publicly entered the liquid rocket engine business by partnering with ULA and other companies on the development of BE-4.

Meyerson announced the selection of Huntsville, AL as the location of Blue Origin's rocket engine production factory in June 2017.

One program was testing full-scale versions of the BE-4 powerpack, the set of valves and turbopumps that provide the proper fuel/oxidizer mix to the injectors and combustion chamber.

[17] The company planned to begin full-scale engine testing in late 2016 and expected to complete development in 2017.

The tests were used to confirm the theoretical model predictions of "injector performance, heat transfer, and combustion stability", and data collected was used to refine the engine design.

[29] In October 2018, Blue Origin President Bob Smith announced that the first New Glenn launch had been moved back to 2021,[30] followed in 2021 by an additional slip to late 2022.

[32][33] In August 2020, ULA CEO Tory Bruno stated that the second test BE-4 would be delivered soon, followed quickly by flight-qualified ones.

[46] The BE-4 is used on Blue Origin's New Glenn, a 7.0-meter (23 ft)-diameter two-stage orbital launch vehicle with an optional third stage.

[21] New Glenn launched on 16 January 2025, in which all of the seven engines performed well in ascent flight, except on the landing attempt, where the first stage booster failed at some point during the atmospheric reentry.

The XS-1 was to accelerate to hypersonic speed at the edge of the Earth's atmosphere to enable its payload to reach orbit.

[51][52] As of March 2016, Orbital ATK was evaluating Blue Origin engines for its launch vehicles, although they eventually went in another direction.

The BE-4 is designed for long life and high reliability, partially by aiming the engine to be a "medium-performing version of a high-performance architecture".