TOKYO — Being a start-up launch-service provider backed big-time by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos means never having to to financial roadshows or smile to venture-capital investors.

That’s the enviable position of Blue Origin, which is honing a space-tourism vehicle called New Shepard and building a very large rocket called New Glenn.

Bezos has agreed to invest around $2.5 billion in New Glenn, which should be in service within four years. A year before that, the New Glenn first-stage engine, called BE-4 . . .

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