BO posted a Notam for today/tomorrow

[KSK]

9 hours ago, Rune said:

Well, there is not much of a suborbital market either. In fact, rather much less of a market right now (as in, none). The way I look at New Shepard is that of a technology demonstration vehicle: it develops all technologies to build a reusable rocket, but scaled back so that you can build it with a lean crew in a prototype fashion. The DC-X comments are smack on, because the development is surprisingly similar (even is the intended end result is not). The suborbital tourism market, at best, will be a way to pay for tech development, for a good while at least IMO.

The way I see it, BO played the same game with a different strategy. SpaceX built the business, then added reusability on top, meaning F9 might never make it as a good reusable launcher, but they have the pockets, and the production capability, to finance a new iteration of the idea designed form the ground up if need be. After all, they do their tests with articles straight from one of the busiest rocket production lines in existence. BO, OTOH, played it safe developing tech with a small hand-crafted prototype, and now can go to full scale with plenty of confidence in their design and a lot of lessons learned in a cheap way (and a decent upper stage engine). Time will tell which strategy works best, but my gut tells me grabbing the customers first is mighty important.

Put like that, I think SpaceX but as you say, time will tell. The SpaceX approach of 'first start by making money then figure out a way to make more money' seems like the more financially sustainable approach. On the other hand, Blue Origin might have a great design but I think (without a shred of evidence other than my gut feel)  that scaling up that hand-crafted prototype whilst keeping the cash flowing is going to be tougher.

On the other hand this is two extremely successful businessmen being critiqued by some random guy on the internet who knows almost jack-squat about the challenges of running any sort of business. So my comments will probably turn out to be so much hooey.