[laughing_man]

New Glenn's engines are quite a bit less efficient than those at SpaceX. Lower chamber pressures, lower thrust:weight ratio, and they're partial flow staged combustion.

I assume BO will increase their performance over time, but for now they company is about a decade behind SpaceX.

[hgoel]

That doesn't make the BE-4 not impressive. It isn't a full flow staged combustion engine like Raptor, but it's still a highly efficient, high thrust, relightable and deeply throttleable rocket engine. These things don't often come in the same package when it comes to rocket engines.

[damnitbuilds]

Spacex's work is out there ( and I am grateful for the excitement that generates ) but BO work in the shadows, surprising us sometimes with major advances.

I suspect BO not as far behind as you think.

[hagbard_c]

They'll remain behind as long as they keep copying SpaceX's concepts since they need to wait and see before they can copy.

[damnitbuilds]

I am glad there is competition and BO clearly do enough novel work that calling them copycats is simply incorrect.

[laughing_man]

That would surprise me, given how much trouble they had supplying engines for Vulcan.