Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos takes his own seat in the first manned Blue Origin flight – IT Pro – News

It is indeed quite a hassle there, but I think like everyone else they have 1: Underestimated SpaceX 2: Underestimated Space.
And if SpaceX didn’t make such insane progress, then a two-year delay wouldn’t sound so unbelievable.
If transitioning to an orbital launch technology was a little simpler, they wouldn’t be so behind.
As far as I can tell their BE-4 engine had been slowly lagging behind schedule for a long time – not a disaster in itself, but they had promised it for Vulcan launches which now have to be postponed/tuned. Ditto for New Glenn, with the additional problem that he also has to do a lot of test launches before it can take passengers at all. And a launch isn’t that cheap if you don’t have a well-insured customer who pays part of the price.
So something has to be done in the meantime, and their crew capsule has been waiting for a rocket for almost ten years.

In addition, Origin has a lot of friends in the classic ‘pork barrel’ industry. For example, in 2016 they received the ‘Collier trophy’ because their booster had landed… so after SpaceX landed their f9 B1019 from an orbital launch. Agree, NS was a month earlier, but only just reached the 100 km Karman line and certainly no orbital speed. A bit of transparent favoritism, then, but by now New Glenn’s postponement does have its consequences for the plans of those military-industrial friends. I can imagine that they also rely on Origin to produce a ‘win’, and preferably quickly. To be paranoid for a moment, I can imagine the atmosphere is by now: “and if you can’t come back with your shield, Jeff, then on it…”

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