[stcredzero]

New Glenn still won't quite have the lifting power of Falcon Heavy (despite it's larger size).

If that's true then perhaps they are going the route outlined in The Rocket Company -- Fuel is cheap, so make a really freakin huge rocket that holds a freakin huge amount of fuel and go ahead and send up a relatively small payload, so long as they have true re-usability.

[Klathmon]

(complete speculation here with nothing to back it up).

That's what i'd bet they are going for. Every launch (even GTO launches) will be RTLS. Plenty of fuel on board to avoid the suicide-burns that SpaceX is doing, lots left over to give some wiggle room in case corrections are needed.

If they can maintain the same level of reusability that New Shepard is expected/hoped to have (basically rivaling that of airplanes), then the additional cost of the rocket itself can be amortized over many many launches.

[greglindahl]

SpaceX does suicide burns because of engine throttling issues; that's a separate issue from margin, and a separate issue from landing on a barge vs landing on land. It remains to be seen which of these are dangerous enough that you don't want to do them with a rocket you want to land many times.

[caconym_]

There's also the aspect of the density of the fuel. Blue Origin may be going with a less dense option and dealing with the overhead of a larger rocket to see payoffs elsewhere, e.g. fuel cost, technical difficulty of fueling the vehicle, flexibility with launch schedules, and so on.

[fbender]

> Fuel is cheap

No, you pay with weight. Just using more fuel means your efficiency may(!) go down, with an ultimately worse outcome. But I'm lacking info on the design vs. other designs, so that general rule might be couterbalanced by other gains.