The suborbital space tourism industry is on life support

It's not clear whether Virgin Galactic has the cash reserves to fund a prolonged test phase.

See full article...

 

[Wickwick]

Are you thinking just about rockets though? Does a suborbital plane have to work that way?

I found this paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576509004767


I'm talking about something that "translates the vehicle horizontally" a further distance at the current height it reaches.

Again, I realize that this would take more propulsion, and thus more fuel, etc. , but not necessarily faster velocities.

I found an article that I believe is discussing what I'm talking about, and talks about the pitfalls:


Again, it's arguing staying at suborbital height for a longer time. Yes the delta-V increases (to 80% of orbital), but that's due to having to maintain height and velocity, not going higher or faster. Still, it introduces an interesting complication of heat buildup staying at the sub-orbital altitudes for longer making it similar to orbital re-entry.

Also, this image:
View attachment 134206

From this article:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...Space_Tourism_to_Commercial_Suborbital_Travel

That looks different than the more uniform loops of almost straight up-then-straight down of sub-orbital rockets, or even of the path Virgin Galactic uses now:

View attachment 134207
https://maxpolyakov.com/the-future-of-commercial-space-travel-part-1-suborbital-and-rocket-tours/

An interesting wrinkle is the concept that the longer sub-orbital plane flights wouldn't have such a steep AOA for either accent or descent. The point wouldn't be to get to "space" as fast as possible, or provide a period of "zero g," but to go farther at comfortable levels of acceleration for passengers.

So I can see where the argument is that "the delta-V is about the same" as for a rocket or other spaceplane going higher and faster to travel the same distance, but it looks like you don't have to go higher and faster to go a further distance.

Lifting bodies can trade velocity and height for cross range. I think Statistical is ignoring that. But the overall result is still very much that you need a lot more propellant to be going very far to make the effort worth it.

As a crude approximation we can take the L/D of the aerodynamics (upside-down) to figure out how far one can get to the peak value. We'll be off by a factor of 2 or 3, but it starts to give us an idea of whether it's practical.

Being very generous, we'll say that the ship can maintain a 3:1 glide slope at the supersonic speeds of the climb. We know it can make it ~80 km in the air. If we had made that an ideal cross-range lifting profile, we might make it 240 km downrange - with another 240 km to glide down. There's probably some benefit of reduced gravity losses of the thrust angle, so we'll call it 550 km very generously.

Whether the craft is 500 km or 2,000 km range doesn't make all that much difference. It's not enough to justify the half-million per-person given the time involved (given the mother aircraft takes quite a while to climb to altitude after all). You'd want that number to be 5,000 or 7,000 km to even start discussions. At which point, you need a much bigger rocket.

Edit: L/D is also referred to as the "glide slope" of an unpowered aircraft so it's how one approximates range once you've achieved altitude. I'm using that idea to approximate range staying in the atmosphere up and down - it's a very rough approximation.

 

[Wickwick]

That is the reason for the mass. The further you want to go the more deltaV it requires. It also means the hotter you would come back in on the other end.

To reach space straight up and down requires 1.4 km/s. We know this spacecraft has less than that because it can't even reach 100 km up. Flying New York to London would require > 5 km/s of dV.

Where are you getting that velocity? For a single impulse, I get 808 m/s as the required initial velocity to reach 100 km straight up. If you're taking into account drag and gravity losses, that's going to depend on the the thrust profile, aerodynamics, etc.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

There's a reason why Jeff Epstein's circle of contacts was a thousand or so people world wide. Because the number of high net worth individuals in the entire world is very small. Consequently, it isn't hard for someone, once introduced to that creche of society, to know everyone worth knowing about.

What does Epstein have to do with space tourism?

His circle of contacts (not necessarily clients, but contacts)...are the only people in the world who can afford a 90 minute suborbital roller coaster ride for funsies. They're literally the entire market. And once they've had their ride to space and are satisfied--well, that is the entire market for the service.

I am friends with someone whose net worth is $50M. I can assure you he’s never met Epstein or anyone in his book. He’s a Greek immigrant raised in US foster home who built a bunch of businesses and bought a bunch of real estate.

There are 25 million “millionaires” in the US alone. That means there are likely close to a million worth at least 8 figures and tens of thousands worth nine figures. Epsteins book covers only a tiny fraction of them.

 

[Statistical]

Where are you getting that velocity? For a single impulse, I get 808 m/s as the required initial velocity to reach 100 km straight up. If you're taking into account drag and gravity losses, that's going to depend on the the thrust profile, aerodynamics, etc.

https://www.vcalc.com/equation/?uuid=72958a70-805e-11e8-abb7-bc764e2038f2

Yeah I was algo ignoring impact of drag and gravity losses. Note this calculator ignores the impact of gravity decreasing with altitude but at 100 km the impact is small. At 1,500 km not so much.

 

[Wickwick]

https://www.vcalc.com/equation/?uuid=72958a70-805e-11e8-abb7-bc764e2038f2

Yeah and I was ignoring impact of drag and gravity losses. Note this also ignores the impact of gravity decreasing with altitude but at 100 km the impact is small.

Ah, I found my mistake. Acceleration needs to be negative so in the square root where they have a 2, I had a 1/2.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

If I had the money I would do it. Not for bragging rights or to say I am an astronaut but just to do it. I don't consider myself rich but if prices ever got down to $100k I would seriously consider it. Not something I could do more than once but a once in a lifetime experience? Why not.

Saying I want to go orbital only is dubious. Sure that would be great, but given Dragon 2 is $288M a flight (NASA price) that is out of the price range for 99.9% of people who might be interested and could pay $1M. Sure if an orbital flight was $100k I would gladly do that instead but pretty sure that isn't happening in my lifetime and maybe not this century.

If, and obviously that’s a big if, Starship met design goals, its launch cost would be around $10M and it could have a seating capacity of a hundred people, providing a ticket price of around $200k for profitable trips to orbit and probably days or weeks at a space station.

Now we know those design goals are aspirational, but the math works if a starship like vehicle can perform high cadence launches with minimal inbetween flight maintenance. I’d be shocked if it took 75 years to get to that point, I’m willing to bet it will happen within 20 years. It’s not just SpaceX, but BO and RocketLab who could leapfrog starship if it struggles.

And it’s even worse for Virgin Galactic at their price point. A $30M Starship launch cost should be achievable quickly, providing ticket prices equivalent to VG. Of course it’s still going to need thousands of successful launches and landings before it can be trusted to carry passengers, so maybe VG has a decade left.

 

[bb-15]

Are you thinking just about rockets though? Does a suborbital plane have to work that way?…

Again, I realize that this would take more propulsion, and thus more fuel, etc. , but not necessarily faster velocities…

An interesting wrinkle is the concept that the longer sub-orbital plane flights wouldn't have such a steep AOA for either accent or descent. The point wouldn't be to get to "space" as fast as possible, or provide a period of "zero g," but to go farther at comfortable levels of acceleration for passengers.

So I can see where the argument is that "the delta-V is about the same" as for a rocket or other spaceplane going higher and faster to travel the same distance, but it looks like you don't have to go higher and faster to go a further distance.

The above line of reasoning makes little sense to me on a fundamental level.
The above quote includes the idea of “longer sub-orbital plane flights“. Using the word “plane” suggests it includes competing airline plane flights for comparison.
And this is in the context of an article/discussion of the feasibility of Virgin Galactic’s projected suborbital equipment/plans.

** Here is what exists now which would “go farther at comfortable levels of acceleration for passengers”.

— Singapore Airlines’ flight from Singapore (SIN) to New York (JFK) is the longest nonstop flight in our world in 2026, covering 9,537 miles in about 18 hours and 50 minutes.
Singapore Airlines uses the Airbus A350-900ULR which has ultra-long range due to its increased fuel capacity. The plane can have over 250 seats.
— Ticket prices for this flight vary at the low end from $552 to $682.

** Besides the fact that Virgin cannot afford to build a much more powerful long range space plane as discussed by Statistical and the article;
There is also the fact that Virgin cannot compete on price by building an imagined longer range Virgin Galactic space plane which would have a ticket price of at least $750,000.

 

[Tactical Finesse]

I am friends with someone whose net worth is $50M. I can assure you he’s never met Epstein or anyone in his book. He’s a Greek immigrant raised in US foster home who built a bunch of businesses and bought a bunch of real estate.

There are 25 million “millionaires” in the US alone. That means there are likely close to a million worth at least 8 figures and tens of thousands worth nine figures. Epsteins book covers only a tiny fraction of them.

Um, congrats, I guess?

Are any of those folks you know remotely interested in blowing a million dollars on a 90 minute sub orbital roller coaster ride? No? Then they aren't the high-net worth individuals worth knowing who are the target market.

Being a millionaire or even a centi-millionaire...doesn't make you a HNWI in 2026. The people in Epstein's book--who are the people worth knowing, who would blow a million dollars on a 90 minute roller coaster ride for funsies? They're the people with names ending in Altman and Bezos and Buffet and Black.

Congrats on the shallow brag BTW, I'm impressed.

 

[marsilies]

There is no such thing as suborbital ALTITUDE. You can go 5,000 km up and still be suborbital. In fact to test ballistic missiles without flying over other people's countries (and they tend to dislike that) this is often done. You fly a near vertical trajectory see how high you go and then can compute how far you could have gone with a 45 degree launch angle.

Suborbital vs orbital is about velocity not altitude. Going to orbit means going fast not going high. Most people visualize the high part but really is 100 km that far away. Getting to orbit is hard because of the 9km to 10 km/s it takes to get the required level of fast to stay up there (7.3 km/s plus losses).

Ok, so I think I understand. An orbital flight is one that's fast enough to maintain an orbit. Orbital flights often go higher because then they don't have to go as fast around the Earth to maintain orbit.

But then, are all commercial airplane flights technically suborbital? They go up, they come down, and they never reach orbit. Longer plane flights don't necessarily need faster speeds to go farther.

Correct and that requires a high higher velocity. There is no magic go further with less velocity using suborbital/ballistic flight.

Maybe the distinction is that you're talking about a ballistic flight. I was thinking of an engine that could maintain a velocity, but I'm probably thinking more of jet engines and something along supersonic jets like Concorde, just higher.

But as they're using a rocket, it's just basically constant acceleration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid-propellant_rocket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RocketMotorTwo

From your own reference

OK, I'm going to go over those quotes

The bottom line is that a useful suborbital transport would require many of the same design features of an orbital vehicle. The TPS; the high-performance rocket engines; the amount of propellant that would need to be carried; the guidance, navigation, and control systems; as well as the launch support infrastructure would have it looking a whole lot like an orbital RLV.


During my involvement with a hypersonic vehicle program in the late 1980s, the rule of thumb was that once you got over about 5,000 meters/second, the difference between that and an orbital reentry environment were small.

I took those bolded parts to be talking about physical characteristics of the vehicle in terms of size, weight, heat protection, etc. , not necessarily the specifics about the flight path.

For example, a flight of about 10,000 kilometers would require a delta-V of over 7,300 meters/second, which is already about 80% of that required to reach low Earth orbit.

This is confusing because delta-V is given in m/s, so it looked like velocity to me, but looking it up it's the magnitude of the impulse of the rocket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget

OK, so I think I'm closer to getting it. I assumed a "spaceplane" would have characteristics closer to a conventional plane than a rocket, but it looks like they're really just a rocket with wings.

 

[Lexomatic]

On the feasibility of point-to-point rocket-propelled passenger travel, let's ignore the technical feasibility (velocity, ballistic or powered trajectory, etc.) and focus on the economic. @bb-15 describes the Singapore Airlines 19-hour SIN-EWR (it's Newark Liberty, not JFK) flight as the current technological limit. As a baseline and with round numbers, let's say any ocean-crossing flight is 10 hours and (business-class ticket) $5,000. If you cut the flight in half, but charged twice the fare, how much of a market do you have -- that is, how many passengers a year can you attract? If one hour at $50,000, how many?

Working from the other direction -- Virgin Galactic charges $750,000 for a thrill ride. Can they reduce their price by a factor of 15 to $50,000 and provide a point-to-point service?

This is the same calculus faced by Concorde and by the new crop of low-boom supersonic aircraft developers. Is there a solution that maximizes revenue? Does it justify development cost? More generally for any airline, can you build a network with sufficient demand? U.S. carriers have trouble with profitability in part because they serve a lot of low-traffic routes; the Gulf carriers like Etihad have found a lucrative niche in long-haul between limited cities. If VG picked any single route, like NYC-TYO or LAS-LON, what's the market? If you have to schlep to their hub, does that negate the appeal of a zippy ocean crossing? But if they expanded the market with multiple routes, what's the operational cost?

 

[Lynchenstein]

There's a reason why Jeff Epstein's circle of contacts was a thousand or so people world wide. Because the number of high net worth individuals in the entire world is very small. Consequently, it isn't hard for someone, once introduced to that creche of society, to know everyone worth knowing about.

What does Epstein have to do with space tourism?

His circle of contacts (not necessarily clients, but contacts)...are the only people in the world who can afford a 90 minute suborbital roller coaster ride for funsies. They're literally the entire market. And once they've had their ride to space and are satisfied--well, that is the entire market for the service.

Wasn't OceanGate catering to a similar demographic? While I don't wish death on too many (but there are a few), it seems that "space" flights for funzies is a pretty good way to introduce billionaires to mortality.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

Um, congrats, I guess?

Are any of those folks you know remotely interested in blowing a million dollars on a 90 minute sub orbital roller coaster ride? No? Then they aren't the high-net worth individuals worth knowing who are the target market.

Being a millionaire or even a centi-millionaire...doesn't make you a HNWI in 2026. The people in Epstein's book--who are the people worth knowing, who would blow a million dollars on a 90 minute roller coaster ride for funsies? They're the people with names ending in Altman and Bezos and Buffet and Black.

Congrats on the shallow brag BTW, I'm impressed.

Buffett never had any contact with Epstein. He mostly sits on his ass in Omaha reading financial reports, he’s not part of those circles.

 

[Wickwick]

Ok, so I think I understand. An orbital flight is one that's fast enough to maintain an orbit. Orbital flights often go higher because then they don't have to go as fast around the Earth to maintain orbit.

But then, are all commercial airplane flights technically suborbital? They go up, they come down, and they never reach orbit. Longer plane flights don't necessarily need faster speeds to go farther.




Maybe the distinction is that you're talking about a ballistic flight. I was thinking of an engine that could maintain a velocity, but I'm probably thinking more of jet engines and something along supersonic jets like Concorde, just higher.

But as they're using a rocket, it's just basically constant acceleration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid-propellant_rocket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RocketMotorTwo


OK, I'm going to go over those quotes


I took those bolded parts to be talking about physical characteristics of the vehicle in terms of size, weight, heat protection, etc. , not necessarily the specifics about the flight path.



This is confusing because delta-V is given in m/s, so it looked like velocity to me, but looking it up it's the magnitude of the impulse of the rocket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget

OK, so I think I'm closer to getting it. I assumed a "spaceplane" would have characteristics closer to a conventional plane than a rocket, but it looks like they're really just a rocket with wings.

An orbital path is one that's high enough and fast enough to stay above the atmosphere. All trajectories (ignoring air) are actually ellipses not parabolas. But for short distances, the difference is negligible. To achieve orbit you have to go up out of the atmosphere, then sideways really fast. One cannot achieve orbit simply by going fast from the surface*. If you just launch fast from the surface you're going to come down ... somewhere. That's what's called a ballistic trajectory. All your velocity is set at the start then you just fly like a cannonball until you hit the ground.

Lifting bodies (like planes) can change the rules. As they fall, they can convert speed into lift which can then make them fall slower and allow them to move further sideways. When I drop a paper airplane from a ladder at the same time as an apple, the apple falls quickly straight down. The paper airplane will move sideways many meters and take several seconds to finish falling.

As currently designed, Virgin Galactic's craft currently pushes straight up out of the atmosphere then falls mostly straight down because once it's past 30 km or so, there's really not enough air to push against with wings. It only burns its engines for a few seconds (16 I think I read) while low(ish) in the atmosphere. It then continues going up then comes back down as a ballistic object - one can't be a lifting body outside of the atmosphere! But once it gets lower, the wings do engage to orient the craft and allow it to convert speed to lift. It then flies a corkscrew profile until it lands.

For point-to-point, one wouldn't go straight up. One would shoot off to the side at some angle. And if your wings are good enough, you can glide from altitude some distance further than you would have gone just as a ballistic object. But that's not to say you can go anywhere. You're still limited in range by how much propellant you can expend to get started.


* ignoring an escape trajectory

 

[A Man A Plan A Canal Panama]

... Which would mean a whole new system that doesn't look like this one.

Not seeing any downsides to doing that.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

If you are talking about Virgin they shutdown because the spaceplane had excessive wear. It was never going to work for the cadence they needed to break even. They couldn't even sustain their anemic cadence much less increase it by an order of magnitude.

For Blue it was more resources. A lot of the people on New Shepard are now working in the Blue lander program.

Both worked as a proof of concept but had turnaround and scalability issues. To make this work economically you really need weekly flights if not daily flights. Even at $1M a ticket with 4 to 8 people that is $4M to $8M gross revenue per flight. There is huge operational overhead meaning you need to fly hundreds if not thousands of customers per year. If you can't turn the vehicle around in a few days and get 100, 200, 300 launches a year you can't make the math work.

If suborbital tourism every works economically I think it will require much larger vehicle. Scale the NS capsule up to be two stories and twice the diameter holding 30 people. Have it land using retropropulsion with methalox thrusters. Parachutes as emergency backup only they are expensive to recover, inspect, and repack. If you can someday turn something like that around daily and have three vehicles then at $300k ea that is $1B gross annually. Now you are approaching the scale where you might be able to turn a profit.

If there ever is a market, surely SpaceX can just eat it? They have a well-tested system that can put people in orbit for days. If it's made available, I think few of the people rich enough to afford it would prefer the tourist-only option.

Then again, maybe I'm no judge. The stratospheric balloons mentioned in the article sound kind of cool to me but seemingly are unsuccessful.

 

[Statistical]

If there ever is a market, surely SpaceX can just eat it? They have a well-tested system that can put people in orbit for days. If it's made available, I think few of the people rich enough to afford it would prefer the tourist-only option.

Then again, maybe I'm no judge. The stratospheric balloons mentioned in the article sound kind of cool to me but seemingly are unsuccessful.

Right now orbit is two orders of magnitude more expensive. There are far more people who can pay $500k to $1M for a suborbital flight then there are who can pay $50M to $100M for an orbital one.

The SpaceX fanboy answer would be "but Starship" but given it has been almost a decade and it still isn't orbital and honestly nobody really knows when it could flies crews or what cost I am just sticking to what is available right now.

 

[GFKBill]

Right now orbit is two orders of magnitude more expensive. There are far more people who can pay $500k to $1M for a suborbital flight then there are who can pay $50M to $100M for an orbital one.

The SpaceX fanboy answer would be "but Starship" but given it has been almost a decade and it still isn't orbital and honestly nobody really knows when it could flies crews or what cost I am just sticking to what is available right now.

"Still isn't orbital" isn't really true, they've put it in orbit several times.

It doesn't feel like they're too far off, relatively speaking, getting the thing to stability and reusability. It's entirely conceivable they could be flying crew on it in 5-8 years or so.

The discussion point was who might eat Virgin's lunch in future, sticking to "available right now" doesn't even apply to Virgin

Frankly, I think it's more likely SpaceX will be offering passenger flights at some point than Virgin

 

[__d]

you don't get it, because you don't have $1 million laying around waiting to be spent

It’s all relative.

If you make $100k a year spending $1k on an awesome day trip is kinda plausible.

So if you make $100m a year, spending $1m on an awesome day trip is kinda the same (while noting that your other $99m probably stretches to cover your living expenses a whole lot more easily).

 

[telenoar]

I agree, it is just a husk and they are more likely than not to run out of cash before they can resume flying customers, let alone get profitable. And I don't root for d**khead billionaires who make our world worse instead of better.

But damnit, I want to be in a world where spaceflight tourism exists, even if I can't afford it myself. Maybe I'll even put $100 of fun-casino-money on SPCE. But not my retirement savings.

 

[rhgedaly]

Maybe they should try to merge with Spirit Airline.

 

[rhgedaly]

So their new ship still will not reach the Karman line. That's a lot of money for astronaut wings with an asterisk attached.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

"Still isn't orbital" isn't really true, they've put it in orbit several times.

@Statistical is technically correct, Starship hasn’t made an orbit yet. You are spiritually correct, it could have easily made orbit by burning its engines a few seconds more, but that wasn’t part of the test plan.

 

[bp_968]

Because that wouldn’t raise them any money? They don’t own the stock.

Maybe they just plan to run out the clock? Keep collecting salaries, maybe make some new IP, and work until the money runs out, then shrug their shoulders and say "oh well, we triied" and walk away. That way they collect checks until the last dime trickles out (or last pence I guess)

 

[The_Motarp]

If, and obviously that’s a big if, Starship met design goals, its launch cost would be around $10M and it could have a seating capacity of a hundred people, providing a ticket price of around $200k for profitable trips to orbit and probably days or weeks at a space station.

Now we know those design goals are aspirational, but the math works if a starship like vehicle can perform high cadence launches with minimal inbetween flight maintenance. I’d be shocked if it took 75 years to get to that point, I’m willing to bet it will happen within 20 years. It’s not just SpaceX, but BO and RocketLab who could leapfrog starship if it struggles.

And it’s even worse for Virgin Galactic at their price point. A $30M Starship launch cost should be achievable quickly, providing ticket prices equivalent to VG. Of course it’s still going to need thousands of successful launches and landings before it can be trusted to carry passengers, so maybe VG has a decade left.

I really doubt that a Starship capable of carrying a hundred people to orbit for a day trip would have a price tag under $500k per ticket any time in the next 20 years. Crewed ships are a lot more expensive to build and maintain and there would have to be competition before SpaceX would be willing to cut their margins down.

However if space station development took some big enough strides forwards I could see a Starship possibly carrying as many as 500 people up to a space station at a time for only $100k per ticket, although you would likely pay tens of thousands more just to briefly breathe station air and look out the station windows before heading back down with the shortest possible layover.

I will also say that I don’t think anyone is going to get internal costs for suborbital tourism below several million per ticket any time soon without spending way more than can possibly be justified on research and development.

 

[NetMage]

I will also say that I don’t think anyone is going to get internal costs for suborbital tourism below several million per ticket any time soon without spending way more than can possibly be justified on research and development.

Blue Origin New Sheppard and Virgin Galactic had already gone below that.

 

[Bad Monkey!]

I love how "systems integration" is being used to say, "we still have to put in a fucking FLOOR, let alone seats, insulation, avionic, rocket motor, guidance ssytem, flight control system, pressurization checks, air supplies...

The fucking thing is just a shell. Nothing inside. It's not hard to tell. You can see through the gaping holes in it (windows eventually? Who knows?). There' s literally nothing in there.

Systems integration means exactly what it says on the tin: integrate the functional systems of the spacecraft. If the systems you intend to integrate are behind/underneath things like floors, seats, and insulation, then it doesn't make much sense to install those things, does it?

 

[Malmesbury]

It's not the same thing though. The article I linked to talked about the complications around additional mass for travelling longer distances, while @Malmesbury claimed that it'd need "vastly more velocity," and the complications that would entail.

It seems like for point-to-point, their craft wouldn't have to necessarily go faster or higher, just travel longer at the altitude it currently reaches. That wouldn't need a heat shield like Malmesbury claimed.

With suborbital, you don’t get (very much) option - longer range means faster.

Remember, it’s lobbing a rock, not flying a plane, for nearly all of the trip.

 

[Malmesbury]

Ok, so I think I understand. An orbital flight is one that's fast enough to maintain an orbit. Orbital flights often go higher because then they don't have to go as fast around the Earth to maintain orbit.

But then, are all commercial airplane flights technically suborbital? They go up, they come down, and they never reach orbit. Longer plane flights don't necessarily need faster speeds to go farther.




Maybe the distinction is that you're talking about a ballistic flight. I was thinking of an engine that could maintain a velocity, but I'm probably thinking more of jet engines and something along supersonic jets like Concorde, just higher.

But as they're using a rocket, it's just basically constant acceleration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid-propellant_rocket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RocketMotorTwo


OK, I'm going to go over those quotes


I took those bolded parts to be talking about physical characteristics of the vehicle in terms of size, weight, heat protection, etc. , not necessarily the specifics about the flight path.



This is confusing because delta-V is given in m/s, so it looked like velocity to me, but looking it up it's the magnitude of the impulse of the rocket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget

OK, so I think I'm closer to getting it. I assumed a "spaceplane" would have characteristics closer to a conventional plane than a rocket, but it looks like they're really just a rocket with wings.

Yup - the problem is that once you try and glide, you are spending energy. And start needing exotic structures to survive.

Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Isinglass and related.

The start was a rocket/ramjet/something powered spaceplane dropped from a B52

The rapid realisation was that trying to do Mach 5+ in the upper atmosphere was harder than sub orbital/boost glide.

Boost glide was nearly as hard.

Then they moved to full sub-orbital. And outgrew what could be launched on a B52.

So they went for conventional rocket first stages, launching a spaceplane upper stage. Remind you of something?

The potential cost exploded. And it was pointed out that they were planning a manned ICBM - from the point of view of the Soviets, whom it would be flying over…

 

[Torbjörn Larsson OM]

its next-generation spaceship

That's no spaceship. That's a spaceship: SpaceShipOne went into space, above the Kármán line.

Current space tourism largely died with BO.

So they went for conventional rocket first stages, launching a spaceplane upper stage. Remind you of something?

It reminds me of two spaceships, X-15 and SpaceShipOne, that was launched from a plane.

 

[Wickwick]

@Statistical is technically correct, Starship hasn’t made an orbit yet. You are spiritually correct, it could have easily made orbit by burning its engines a few seconds more, but that wasn’t part of the test plan.

They didn't even need to burn the engines a few seconds longer. They simply needed to point their engines a slightly different way at the end of the second-stage burn and they would have been in orbit. Starship had sufficient orbital energy to be in orbit. It just chose to put it into an eccentric enough orbit to enter.

Arguing that Starship hasn't made orbit, while technically true, is a bad-faith argument generally made by those hoping to sway the opinions of the uninformed.