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by modeless 3865 days ago
SpaceX has been launching and landing non-orbit rockets for a long time: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4

There's nothing magical about 100 km that makes Blue Origin's rocket more useful. 100 km is just a round number. It's not useful until it's literally 100 times more powerful so it can get to orbit. Implying that Blue Origin's achievement is comparable to what SpaceX is attempting is disingenuous. But, predictably, that's exactly what the news media is doing.

1 comments

100km is the edge of space. Reusable human transport payloads that go to space and back are sufficient for a space tourism ecosystem to start forming, which may be the orange Bezos is chasing (to Musk's "payloads to orbit and beyond" apple).

In that sense, this is exciting news for Blue Origin, as it gets them one step closer to the insane-but-possible goal of profitable space tourism---with the world's money being as disproportionately allocated as it is, one can imagine actually being able to find six people willing to pony up enough cash to get launched into the edge of space purely for the delightful view.