This should be the last time you see this New Shepherd rocket in action, since Bezos said he would put it in a museum if it made the landing. It certainly has quite the storied (if brief) history: it's the first reusable rocket to visit space and safely land, and also the first to actually see reuse. It managed the feat five times before retirement.

It's a sharp contrast to what we've seen with rivals like SpaceX. Elon Musk's company has yet to reuse a rocket, but it's the only one of the two firms to have delivered honest-to-goodness payloads into space, or to manage sea landings. Blue Origin simply isn't interested in cargo runs, though. It's focused on manned flights, and space tourism in particular (service could start in 2018) -- it may have have a narrower scope, but it's making more progress within that scope.