What I see is Musk supplying the ISS, and Bezos doing a PR stunt.

Let's try comparing those on more than just media, shall we ?

Perhaps, perhaps not.

Financially speaking, between the two goals, there's enough money concentrated in private individuals' hands that you might be able to find six people willing to shell out for space tourism.

Government funding supplies the ISS. A laudable goals, but there's a grim realpolitik view that suggests it's not as guaranteed sustainable of a market as space tourism.

On the other hand, SpaceX's goals also allow for deployment of orbital payloads... Now that's lucrative.

There are plenty of videos of Musk successfully landing a rocket? Just never actually landing one from orbit.

No-one has managed a landing from orbit. Yet.

It would be a breakthrough of Gaussian proportions!

>> That's neat.

You make a very good point about public perception. But your opening line seems sarcastic and aggressive. I think that's why your comment is light grey.

SpaceX already achieved suborbital VTOL in 2013 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t15vP1PyoA&app=desktop

Not that I have any skin in the game - I think Musk and Bezos are both insufferable billionaire jerks, scamming taxpayers and working the lower class to death - but Grasshopper went to 250m, while Blue Origin went to 100km.

it's not that much of a difference, going almost straight up and falling mostly straight down is a matter of burning longer. it is an achievement, it's just not useful for much (for the price) and overengineered at that. if it actually went to orbit and didn't come back, it'd be a bigger thing.

* Excluding your "media win" part of the comment.

Parallel parking a Prius vs. parking a dragster is different. But as you said, you understand the technical differences.