You mean it wasn't because Kathy Lueders had a heavy bias towards SpaceX (she now works at SpaceX) to the point where she forgot to select a second commercial p

You mean it wasn't because Kathy Lueders had a heavy bias towards SpaceX (she now works at SpaceX) to the point where she forgot to select a second commercial partner for the Artemis missions? When Blue Origin was suing NASA, they were primarily pointing out Kathy Lueders' gross incompetence during the procurement process. It's kind of weird that someone would select a launch architecture that is meant to go to Mars and whose company CEO thinks the moon is a waste of time for a moon mission. Yeah sure, SpaceX is going to Mars, but are they going to the moon? Considering the massive delays at SpaceX, their Starship will turn into another SLS type boondoggle. At the current rate of development, it is not obvious that the schedule of Artemis 3 is going to be meaningfully ahead of Artemis 5. If it takes Blue Origin 2-3 years to launch their New Glenn rocket, then all they have to do is build the lander and they are pretty much set, because it only takes 3 New Glenn rockets, which could launch simultaneously to minimize time in orbit and thereby reduce boil off. Reusability is a nice to have cost optimization for Blue Origin. When it comes to the Artemis 3 architecture, it is impossible to stay under $1 billion per launch without some form of reusability.