The whole Bezos&#x2F;BlueOrigin thing is kind of sad.  They are nowhere near a &quot;club&quot; with SpaceX.<p>One of the huge differences (and there are many) is that Falcon 9 was doing 6,000 Km&#x2F;hr (~4,000 mi&#x2F;hr) when the first stage separated and turned around to come back.<p>The path was not straight up, but rather one to launch the second stage into orbital flight (which reached 26,000 Km&#x2F;hr and 600 miles of altitude).<p>Then Falcon9&#x27;s first stage FLEW a curved return path; fired three engines to slow down from holy-crap miles-per-hour, shut them down and then, at exactly the right moment in time, fired one engine to land.<p>The Bezos rocket went straight up to zero velocity and came straight back down.<p>It&#x27;s like throwing a bottle straight up in the air compared to throwing one in a parabolic path to the top of the Empire State building and having that bottle then turn around, fly that same parabolic path to return and land at your feet.<p>Not sure why Bezos feels the need to try to imply his effort (which IS significant) is on the same league as SpaceX other than to potentially try to leverage the fabricated parity for publicity and external funding.