Suborbital transportation

Research conducted over many years indicates that using a semi-ballistic, suborbital trajectory may be a future possibility for traveling between the United States and Europe in just one hour, or to Australia in less than two hours. At present this is being investigated for unmanned, courier, business, or for military quick-response applications rather than passenger travel, due to the high costs envisaged. In theory future transportation systems could develop suborbital “space-lines” carrying 50 passengers from Europe to Australia in 90 minutes or 100 passengers to California in an hour. A distant dream today, perhaps, but the thought of such hypersonic suborbital spaceplanes means that you could have breakfast in London, lunch on the beach in California or Australia, time for shop­ping and back home to catch an evening show! Of course the price of such a trip and what it would do to the jet lag effect would put all but the very rich, or higher society, off such a regular adventure, but eventually…