I completely disagree. Blue Origin is not far ahead on the ground, either. SpaceX did a bunch of suborbital hops before retiring their Grasshopper/F9Rdev1 program.

However, Blue Origin's technical approach with New Glenn is sound and could easily give SpaceX a run for its money (but SpaceX likes to run anyway). Blue Origin is the only real long-term competitor for SpaceX that we've seen so far.

Even in spite of the fact that SpaceX is so far ahead, Blue Origin at least isn't making the same mistakes that 90% of SpaceX's competition is: using really outdated ideas that don't stand a chance at competing with SpaceX if first stage reuse works very well and /definitely/ no chance if upper stage reuse ends up working, too. Blue Origin is ultimately pursuing full reuse just like SpaceX, not partial gimmicks like engine pod reuse (which might be better than full expendable, but that isn't the standard any longer).

Blue Origin can and will be able to compete not because they have any kind of technical edge (they don't) but because their launch technology is going in the right direction and because Jeff Bezos has more money than God and wants to use all that cash to open the space frontier.

It's worth noting that Blue Origin was founded /before/ SpaceX and had been pursuing VTVL reuse while SpaceX was still messing with parachutes, but they basically squandered that initial lead and now are playing catch-up. But a billion dollars non-diluting investment each year certainly helps a lot, and I have no doubt that Blue Origin will succeed.

>Blue Origin at least isn't making the same mistakes that 90% of SpaceX's competition is: using really outdated ideas that don't stand a chance at competing with SpaceX

This is why BO is so behind. They went with new technology thus have a lot of catching up to do to the old designs and the guys running the old designs get an instant leg up, but ultimately will fail from a cost perspective. A bit like writing an OS and just using an established kernel or writing an OS with a new kernel. The latter will simply take longer but if your design is innovative it'll beat out the previous kernel designs.

I think SpaceX is something of a freakshow of success. Elon has talent and drive and surrounds himself by similar personality types on top of entering the space game at the right time where the STS to SLS delay was significant the US was hungry for private rockets. As well as our cooling of relations with Russia and the various rockets, engines, and launch services they're been providing post-communism.

BO being behind SpaceX is a bit like saying I can't outrun Usain Bolt but I can come within 5 seconds of his time. That's still incredibly impressive. I don't feel like the current private space race is necessarily zero sum. There's no big advantage to being #1 or hitting goals faster than the other guy. Practical concerns like scale, launch windows, economics, etc mean that SpaceX probably can't monopolize this market and competitors will always be able to land contracts as long as they're remotely competitive against the very expensive nation-state/public-private rockets we're so used to.

I also think the market will open up to a more casual manned program and I think the people behind the Dreamchaser will find a nation state or even private buyer. The DC mounted on a low cost SpaceX or BO rocket is going to be able to launch humans into LEO for a incredible fraction the STS or Soyuz do. I think we're in for a lot of interesting developments and I doubt it'll be SpaceX trouncing the competition as much as a very busy and competitive space market with SpaceX at the top, for now.

Blue Origin is ahead of SpaceX when it comes to their engines. I actually think the similarity is a lot like Waymo and Tesla with respect to their self driving programs. A billion dollars is a lot of money for a company that has very few launches and only about 600 people.

It's an apples to oranges comparison. One of the two companies manufactures O(100) engines per year, flies them to orbit on a regular basis, and has had the opportunity to examine and test O(50) engines that have flown and were recovered. That counts for a lot, even if the other company is going to test-fire a full scale methane engine sooner.

How? Isn't the Raptor already in testing? How is the BE-4 ahead of it?

Blue Origin has more press releases about BE-4 than SpaceX has about Raptor. /sarc

EDIT: In all seriousness, Blue Origin has had a reputation for secrecy, but in the last year or two, they've shed that partly because they're now a major contractor for ULA in a competition to provide the main engines for their new rocket (Vulcan). They are facing a politically-well-connected opponent (Aerojet-Rocketdyne). If they keep silent, they could very well lose out. I think that explains why Blue Origin has been very vocal even though it hasn't even been test-fired, yet. (I think Blue Origin's engine is way better than AJR's, BTW.)

SpaceX, on the other hand, had a reputation for loudly proclaiming any progress. Early on they would roll out half-finished prototypes as evidence of progress even though they still had a lot of work to do. Yet in the last few years, they've started being more secretive. Other than a few miniscule mentions in NASA PR releases from Stennis mentioning a little bit about the component testing, they've only publicly released evidence of all the work they've been doing after they did a test firing in Texas with Musk's big Interplanetary Transport System unveiling. SpaceX doesn't have as much reason to be show-boating progress, partly because they HAVE been making a lot of progress.

So since their secrecy is relatively recent, people assume that just because SpaceX hasn't loudly proclaimed something, that therefore they haven't made any progress, while Blue Origin is the opposite. But if you look at who has test-fired and who hasn't, then SpaceX is ahead for Raptor vs BE-4. If you look at actual orbital-scale reuse, SpaceX is far ahead. If you look at level of technology in the engine and things like Isp, density, and thrust to weight ratio, then Raptor is much higher than BE-4. If you look at thrust to weight ratio period, then Merlin 1D is ahead of everything in existence, with a thrust to mass ratio of somewhere between 150 to 200, depending on which version and thrust level. The nearest competitor is NK-33 with T/W of 137.

The Raptor that was test fired was a scaled version.

That's the poorly-sourced hearsay. It was lower thrust, but that doesn't mean it was physically smaller. Most likely, it was operated at a lower chamber pressure, since the most difficult thing about Raptor is the crazy high chamber pressure. Also, Raptor needs to be able to throttle down a lot anyway.

Keep in mind SpaceX has been launching rockets to orbit since 2008. Blue Origin has yet to even complete their orbital engine. Even if we assume Blue Origin can somehow ramp up at 2x the rate SpaceX did, we're still looking at another 5 years before they're where SpaceX is today on orbital flights.