Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism and more "space base" type stuff? Also pretty sure BlueOrigin is almost all funded by Jeff B, SpaceX has a lot of external funding and focused on tangible markets vs just "people will want to do stuff in space" - I think it was only very recently they started to work with NASA.
> Isn't BlueOrigin going after at totally different market segment, I thought it was focused on things like space tourism
They have New Shepard, a crew-rated suborbital spacecraft, primarily targeted at tourism, but it has also done some science payloads for NASA, university and commercial clients.
But they also are doing a lot of non-tourism stuff: they designed and manufacture first stage engines for ULA’s new Vulcan launch vehicle; they have their own reusable orbital launch vehicle (New Glenn) due to launch soon (planned for next month, but might slip to early next year); they have a contract with NASA to build a lunar lander to compete with SpaceX’s; they are part of one of the teams NASA has chosen to compete for the contract to build a commercial ISS replacement.
And SpaceX is involved in space tourism too: both directly, and indirectly via resellers such as Axiom.
It is just that the most publicly noticeable thing Blue Origin has achieved is space tourism, which makes people think it is primarily a space tourism company; meanwhile, SpaceX has had numerous publicly visible achievements other than tourism, so people view tourism as just another thing they do, not their main thing.
