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> $200K per ride for less than 3 minutes of zero gravity

There's more than just weightlessness to appreciate on a suborbital flight. Plus the 8 minutes up and 8-20 minutes back down are probably pretty fun too.

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apparently even ex fighter pilots say the return trip on soyuz is the craziest, scariest ride of their lives.

Since this is sub-orbital it won't be nearly as intense as reentry in something moving as fast as the Soyuz capsule.

That's not actually true, Soyuz re-enter on a very shallow profile, shedding a lot of speed over a lot of time with relatively low G. Additionally, Soyuz is a lifting body, which makes the profile even shallower.

Mercury had 8g deceleration on orbital reentry vs 11-12g on suborbital one.

I was surprised to see a higher deceleration on suborbital flights - is that due to a flatter trajectory for the return from orbit?

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