I think it's mostly a question of how NASA assesses the vehicle: is it going to be an endless series of patches on a fundamentally flawed base? Or is it somewhere over 50% done, with some software cleanup, thruster fixes, and some decent QA and then good to go?
Rejigging New Shepard with appropriate docking, heat shielding, maneuvering thrusters, life support, power, cooling, etc, etc, etc, is a huge project. Certainly it's a head start, but I think it'd be a ground-up redesign with that as experience and maybe a starting point for beefed-up parts.
Rejigging New Shepard with appropriate docking, heat shielding, maneuvering thrusters, life support, power, cooling, etc, etc, etc, is a huge project. Certainly it's a head start, but I think it'd be a ground-up redesign with that as experience and maybe a starting point for beefed-up parts.