Virgin birth: what private spaceflight may lead to

Right. Private spaceflight.

Anything less than orbit is a hack. And we won't have that until we build something better than chemical rockets. This venture has no more in common with spaceflight than a catapult has with atmospheric flight.

  It is the launch cost ($20m a time) that restricts their use. A successor to the SpaceShip/White Knight combination could deal with that.

The reporter obviously doesn't understand the problems at hand.

"It's just a matter of incremental improvement to get into orbit, after all the lower bound for LEO is 160 kilometers. 160km-110km=50km, so we just need a bit short of 50% improvement in the technology. In fact, we just need to spend 50% more to get into orbit."

Find 3 errors in that line of reasoning.

  It is famously difficult to predict the market for disruptive technologies, whether they be computers, muskets, jet engines or digital cameras. *But cheap access to space, and to the other side of the Earth, is likely to be revolutionary.*

Well, yes...but it won't be Virgin or Bigelow that make access to space cheap. Virgin will make 5-minute access to space cheaper. This development won't bring anything. If it is weightlessness you're after, going up in a jet flying parabolas is a much better option. Cheaper, plus you can move around the cabin and do acrobatics.

A friend recently told me the key is a Casino on the Moon!

No one will ever pay enough for space tourism unless it becomes a destination like Vegas.