In article ,
(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Personally, I am skeptical of the argument that suborbital incrementally
grows to orbital, because I don't see enough market for the intermediate
steps. You don't gradually improve suborbital vehicles to make orbital
ones -- it's a substantial jump up in technology.

But what about the point that, in a competitive market, those who offer
a longer microgravity time are offering a better product? If company A
gives you 5 minutes of weightlessness for $1X, and company B gives you
10 minutes of weightlessness for $1.5X, then many customers would prefer
to fly company B, assuming they have $1.5X available, I would think.

But maybe I'm making an assumption here, which is that the flight
profile needed to get a longer hang time must necessarily evolve towards
an orbital profile. I suppose that, in principle, you could instead
just throw yourself higher straight up, without accelerating
horizontally. My intuition is that that would be a stupid approach,
since (1) it would mean a much hotter reentry, and (2) you're not taking
advantage of the curvature of the Earth to increase your hang time. But
that's just intuition; perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can
chime in on this point.

*However*, the main barriers here *ARE NOT TECHNICAL*. Suborbital *does*
spill over quite directly to orbital in areas like technical credibility
of the company, financial credibility of the industry, and regulatory
experience. And those are bigger problems than the technical issues.

Yes, that's a very valid point I had quite overlooked.

Best,
- Joe