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> Most of the early work at Blue Origin was on a fairly tight budget, and SpaceX has always had significantly more development money than Blue.

Seriously doubt this, please provide sources for these claims.



Here's an older sheet with revenue numbers not made by me: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O7nXhhKqfy5aVOn-Fsys...

My preferred way to estimate this is with employee counts instead, and the difference there is also stark, and then in the early days it's also possible to prove on first principles since Bezos wasn't rich enough at the time to compete with SpaceX's early NASA contracts.

Blue has ramped up a lot recently, as in the last couple of years, but you can also check SpaceX's recent investment rounds and they are burning money like crazy (a lot of this will be Starship and Starlink, since the former is a cost sink and the latter is still a ways off breaking even).

There is an argument to be made that the nature of this money was different, but SpaceX has always done the Amazon thing of reinvesting every penny they make, and certainly in the early days their costs were especially R&D dominated.




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