They're launching the EscaPADE Mars mission later this year. Their reusable booster lands vertically. They sell rocket engines to orher companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EscaPADE

(A decade? Wikipedia says "Founded September 8, 2000".)

BO is a rich man's hobby, kinda perpetually on-and-off struggling to re-imagine & re-invent itself as an A-list rocket company.

But Rocket Science Is Hard. And Jeff's maxed-and-buffed stat is Online Retailing.

He wouldn't be competent at Brain Surgery or Nuclear Physics, either.

They hired the same "experienced" people who slowed down NASA, ULA, Boeing, etc.

Europe is much worse and depressing. Envious of US people being able to work at companies such as SpaceX, I recently looked up what is done in the EU. So they are currently doing preliminary tests (Temis program) for a rocket design similar to Falcon 9 that may fly, maybe, in the 2030s, if there are no delays.

It seems like SpaceX is the exception here rather than the other way around. It's not just Blue Origin, but also Armadillo (John Carmack), Virgin Galactic (Richard Branson), and Scaled Composites Tier One (Paul Allen). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire_space_race?wprov=s...

There are also a bunch of other smaller aerospace companies, but SpaceX seems to have won the majority of the launches and mindshare.

I think that SpaceX just spends a lot more effort on PR and marketing (a good thing, not a bad thing), and they have a rather boisterous leader (Elon) which generates more awareness and excitement.

In contrast, Blue Origin is spending very little, leading to people questioning whether they are still alive. Blue Origin is certainly out there doing stuff, as other commenters have mentioned.

That's a good point.