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Manned suborbital launches are little more than glorified pogo-stick rides. This has been true ever since America tossed Alan Shepard into the air as desperate PR damage control after the Soviets put Yuri Gagarin into orbit.

If nothing else, "New Shepard" is appropriately named.

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Wow that's pretty funny. I never knew Shepard's flight was suborbital. Just verified it on wiki. I guess that was pretty effective PR!

For anyone unaware: getting to orbit is 25 times harder than just getting to space.

*In propellant terms, for an equal payload, for a SSTO

These are important qualifiers. Realistically if you tightened up the mass fraction on New Shepard, abandoned reuse, and added a second stage, the technology could probably put a small payload into orbit just fine. I'm not sure what the point would be, since it would ruin all the useful things New Shepard is doing as a pathfinder.

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