I think that you have missed the whole point of the space tourist experience. The main advantage is that the tourist has been in space. Not on an airplane forty or fifty miles below space. Not on a balloon thirty or forty miles below space. In Space. That is what people are paying for. To be one of the few people to have ever gone there.

pazatchok: This is exactly what Virgin Orbit did for its LauncherOne rocket. They very quickly realized the limitations of Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo, and abandoned it for a 747.

Rip out the seating. And maybe even the windows for that section. There is no one on the plane in the passenger area to look out of one anymore.

Add in a bunch of internal re-enforcing to the air frame.

Rip off the bottom of the fuselage to accommodate the small rocket plane rolling in from the back, hooking on and being lifted into the ‘bomb bay’.

Drop it like the X-15.

If one could carry the space shuttle it could carry that little thing.

You wouldn’t even need to hire Scaled Composites to build a whole new plane.

Definitely agree with you that there are design limitations in the implementation that Virgin has been able to obtain at whatever level of finance and schedule they have been able to afford., or desire to risk. The powered rocket plane launched from a jet aircraft concept is historically an incremental approach that evidently takes a lot of time and experimentation to get right. I think there is still a lot to learn. Recall that the first powered X-15 flight, dropped from a B-52 was more than 60 years ago, And the B-52 is still a fully operational system with about 60 in service, with a scheduled program lifetime of 100 years. Looking back 60 years, obviously engineers and politicians saw rockets as the quickest way to the Moon. One X-15 pilot named Neil Armstrong switched from flying the X-15 to flying the lunar lander. Rockets all the way up and down and back up again., like Starship. It was the fastest way to the goal of getting to the Moon with 1950’s technology and is obviously the fastest way to get to Mars today.

But in terms of quality of the tourist experience, I don’t view a full weightless experience as a positive. The view from an aircraft is much better, and a vomit-comit is not to everybody’s taste. It could very well be that we have Starship on Mars years before the rocket-plane launched from an aircraft is a popular tourist experience, but I hope you can see that it will be popular; a thrilling, visually exiting ride without all the vibration, noise, and g-force excursions a human experiences as a rocket payload.

Yes, hybrid rocket engines, with solid fuel, and a liquid oxidizer, maybe are too difficult to engineer, and if the human-rated SuperDraco engines could be purchased by Virgin it might be a lot better way to go. Maybe a commercial off the shelf Airbus or Boeing aircraft converted into a bomber so as to carry one or more tourist-class rocket planes would be a sound investment. But you will have to wait another 25 years to be able to pick up military surplus B-52s.

And its way cheaper.

The whole design is a cluster of ducks.

The rocket engine should have been thrown out and a liquid engine put in its place. For extra thrust they could have put on proven JATO style packs.

The plane design was all wrong also.
Under thrust if the wings came unlocked the craft lost all stability. And they had no way of keeping the wings locked while under thrust.

Making money, Branson’s heart isn’t in space flight. He just wants to make money (and get talked about),. Look at all the pots he’s had a finger in over the years,

This does not mention stocks he owns in other companies (like artificial meat thing to go on line to the public in 2021 which Bill Gates sold 2/3 of his stock after Branson increased its net worth)

He’s doing OK.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/11/30/hs2-contractor-buys-virgin-hyperloop-developer-18bn-deal/

Of course seeing SpaceX put astronauts into orbit and onto the ISS makes Virgin’s 50 mile hops look a bit lame.
Still, while Branson can’t brag about first paying passenger (Russians got that), he might yet be able to achieve first regular passenger service. There is still a window for Virgin, if Musk decides to move on passenger service it will take time and will be a much higher cost trip. If there are no more mishaps and if they don’t run out of money, Virgin might have something going.
Some big ifs there but Virgin still has a chance (until Starship is developed and SpaceX’s cost/passenger drops dramatically).

October 2020

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — The CEO of New Mexico’s commercial spacecraft launch facility facing accusation he pressured a former chief financial officer to circumvent internal financial controls was ousted Friday.

Dan Hicks was terminated as Spaceport America’s executive director and CEO with little public discussion at a Friday virtual meeting, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports.

The governing board of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority met in a special session via video conference. The firing comes as Hicks has been on administrative leave since June while allegations of mismanagement and abuse of authority have been under investigation by the New Mexico State Auditor and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.

When such taps are in the hands of upper management types in giant entertainment companies, it’s only amusing to see them expensively swept away by a master of “soaring on the updraft of his own rhetoric.” But when those taps are in the hands of government officials … that is our money and its use for something that can be done by private enterprise necessarily compromises the marketplace’s ability and motivation to provide the service in a free market.

But as big as Branson’s ego may be, it is infinitesimal compared to those of the politicians whose hands are on the government taps! The solution, of course, is to limit government — for our own safety. It is a dangerous servant, a force like fire, and we MUST limit fire for our own safety.

This is the ONLY WAY people on planet earth can pioneer liberty and self-ownership in the 21st century.

Wayne: Another one that sums it up (wish I’d written this slogan!): In business, only performance is reality.
It could be doubly true for space!

What I’d like to see is that after SpaceX flies its first paying passenger, Musk offers to buy Branson’s remaing holdings in the firm and merges it into his operation.

David M. Cook: It’s called a typo, repeated several times because of cut and paste. Thank you. It is fixed.