No box shifting, no Buck Rogers. Bezos-backed Blue Origin blasts off once again

Which will win?

My understanding is that the the best result is that none of them win per-say. It's the act of having the competition between them that will drive them on in a way that NASA on it's own would never do.

They're still building capability. You don't go from nothing straight to a reusable human-rated orbital space launch system. You get there in steps, proving each step before moving to the next.

SpaceX started with many small expendable orbital rocket launches, and also briefly had a small reusable non-orbital platform for testing their landings. Their rockets gradually got bigger, then they introduced reusability - with many early failures. Now they have a reusable space launch system and are working on larger ones and human-rating.

NASA's efforts started off as the Nazi Germany missile program, they gradually built bigger and bigger rockets, then bigger and bigger human-rated rockets, culminating in the Moon missions, and then built the semi-reusable human-rated shuttle. (Note: This was a long time ago, their idea of human-rated does not match our current definition, partly because we've learned from the accidents they had).

Blue Origin are taking a different approach, which is probably cheaper. They started out with a small reusable rocket, and are gradually building larger and larger reusable rockets, with a goal of getting to orbit with their next one. They are also considering human-rating for their rockets. They haven't had as much funding as SpaceX, so their growth has been much slower.

As far as I can see they spend a lot of money and have achieved very little so far

The one place they are enjoying success is with the BE-4 engine which has been selected by Boeing for their new Vulcan rocket. So they have income for engine sales and aren't purely selling launches like SpaceX.

However, it's hard to ignore the fact that BO are burning a billion dollars a year from Bezos (plus anything Boeing are punting their way for BE-4 dev) and have yet to reach orbit.

SpaceX developed Falcon 1, sent it to orbit and then scaled and launched their first Falcon 9 for less than $1Bn. The original version of F9 was a "good enough" effort that got them in at the bottom of the market and was much less performant than the current Block 5.

Presumably BO's theory was they could develop income with their sub-orbital fairground ride, but Musk is crashing launch prices so hard that - as Virgin Galactic are finding - this market is rapidly shrinking. The price difference for NASA to send experiments to actual space (instead of a few minutes of zero-g) is narrowing and anyone with that much money is wondering whether a Bigelow space hotel might actually be within sight.

Re: Is it just me

yeah, Blue Origin missed a potentially lucrative revenue stream selling side-of-the-rocket advertising space to Love Honey, etc.

Re: Is it just me

We've had discussions on this before including references to how Bezo's birds look like the ones in Flesh Gordon.

Re: Is it just me

Every time I see it, I think the company needs renaming to Electric Blue Origin.

Re: Is it just me

Over in California...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/12/penis-fish-fat-inkeeper-worms-california-beach

Re: Is it just me

Yeah, looks quite similar to that penisoid spaceship from "Austin Powers", albeit without rear spherical fuel tanks representing the testicles.

Re: No box shifting, no Buck Rogers. Bezos-backed Blue Origin blasts off once again

The warehouse workers are just a temporary thing - they'll be replaced with robots.