The mission isn't getting the booster back, the mission is delivering the payload to where it is supposed to go. Customers don't care about the launch company's booster — they care about their payload. Blue Origin needs to prove it can do the part that matters reliably. Pretty damn disappointing, even with a successful booster landing.
That is a false opposition. The mission is both getting the booster back and delivering the payload.
Customers don’t care about the booster, but if you continue thinking that way, you are Old Space. Because the business models of both SpaceX and Blue Origin assume that they can take market share through lower cost, which requires launch volume, and for that to be sustainable requires booster reusability. Booster recovery is required for the business models to work!
So the fact that the customer doesn’t care about the booster is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the customer cares about successful payload delivery, but not just that…they care about successful delivery at the lowest price. Which means the customer cares about booster recovery indirectly, because if Blue Origin can’t do that, then the customer chooses a company with a lower launch cost.
