[SEJeff]

BO is sub orbital meaning their rockets don't actually break out of the Earth's gravitational field. What they are doing is hard, but much easier than what SpaceX is doing.

For the BO missions, their rockets travel Mach 3.7 (3.72 was the exact top speed from a previous launch). This is called Suborbital. In comparison, since SpaceX is trying to break out of the earth's gravitational pull, its first stage goes around Mach 10 (per the media package of CRS-3).

This article does a better job putting things in laymans terms:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9793220/blue-origin-vs-sp...

In short, the Falcon 9 has unbelievably more thrust than the BO rocket due to being designed for carrying payloads into outer space, not simply small objects into suborbital flight. Both are necessary and both are amazing.

[marcosscriven]

Sorry to be pedantic, but there's no "breaking out of Earth's gravitational field" here in either case.

The essential difference is the huge velocity required for orbit, the kinetic energy for which goes up with the square of that velocity.

Reuse is also much easier for BO - their rocket goes straight up and down.

[molyss]

I believe I might have completely misunderstood what "lower level work" meant. I took it for "more fundamental work" in opposition to "easier work". My bad

[dandelany]

Worth noting though, that as mentioned (announced) in this post, they are working on an orbital vehicle too. Part of this is the development of the BE-4 engine, which will also be used on the orbital ULA Vulcan rocket.