I don't think the aim is for New Shepard to be a sustainable business, you only need maybe a dozen or two launches to gain experience and knowledge to pump back into the New Glen project. If they can have a tourist soak up $200k of the cost, then that's great because the astronaut doesn't actually do a whole lot on these trips, save for being a human guinea pig to send vitals back down.
Once New Glen starts launching in 2020, they want to quickly move past human certification, so practicing with New Shepard is less costly in terms of critical-path length and probably financially too-- bigger rocket, bigger spend per test.
Once New Glen starts launching in 2020, they want to quickly move past human certification, so practicing with New Shepard is less costly in terms of critical-path length and probably financially too-- bigger rocket, bigger spend per test.