Comment by idlewords
2 days ago
Blue Origin is a rocket company, not a live streaming company. The low orbit is the target orbit, and they will attempt to boost it to medium earth orbit later in the flight.
By any standard getting to orbit on the maiden launch of a new vehicle is an incredible achievement. You have to give them a pass on the live stream.
I am not sure if they hit their target orbit, since they didn’t declare that beforehand (at least on the stream). When they announced reaching orbit on the stream, they were only at 100 miles, below where Sputnik 1 was, and technically very low earth orbit. Note that the second stage actually dropped in altitude from its peak (above 120 miles). I saw your other comment saying this is typical. I do agree 100 miles is suspiciously exact. It would be interesting to see if they had declared their goals clearly somewhere.