Well, it took a while but Blue Origin nailed it on the first try! Nice!
Did they land the booster?
Oh, it landed (technically, splashed down I suppose)... quite a bit faster than intended, probably not in the intended orientation or on the barge, and quite likely in more pieces than desired. But I'll wager they got a whole lot of data and will do better next time.
No, they did not. I haven't seen any video of that attempt yet so I don't know how close they came.
They lost contact with it during descent.
I am not going to bring the Elon Musk debate here. But for the space fans, Starship flight 7 is in a few hours. It is the first time with reused parts, a V2 ship, more cameras and a dummy payload (if you don't count a banana as payload.
It has been interesting to see the difference in approach between Blue Origin and SpaceX. Blue started New Glenn a full 10 years ago. In the meantime SpaceX have made over 400 orbital launches.
Yes, definitely a different R&D approach. Not many rockets have achieved orbit on their maiden launch so you have to give them credit for a successful 'slow but sure' approach. It will be interesting to watch their progress from now on.
Bezos has a different goal than Musk in that he is looking to start commercial exploitation of LEO rather than strike off for Mars. I think that is a better plan as he can perfect manufacturing and living off-planet without having to haul a lot of raw materials across the solar system. I would build a space station in Earth orbit with manufacturing capabilities and fly it out toward a promising asteroid.
Well it is an interesting discussion. While Mars is a lot further to go, it has some notable advantages - gravity, and a solid surface to build on. While we take those for granted, in free space, you get neither and must build them.
So I actually see building manufacturing in space actually far harder than building on Mars.
However, I don't really see any commercial exploitation of space, the economics are against it. There is nothing of enough value in space to warrant getting.