Errant upper stage spoils Blue Origin’s success in reusing New Glenn booster

Blue Origin's reused first stage hit its targets, but New Glenn's upper stage did not.

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[eduardopozo56]

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.

You said it yourself
Customer wants delivery at best price. Without delivery, the price is irrelevant, customer could not care less if the price is due to reusability, cheaper material, new tech or having superman on your roster.

If you cant deliver, the mission has failed for the customer, as simple as that, even if they cut the price by 50%, noone will want to flight if they cannot prove reliable delivery.