They idea is to have fast international flights by allowing the plane to go in the orbit for a short while and come down again. So instead of spreading 10 hours in a flight you may cut it down to 3
I thought the point of it was space tourism (eventually “affordable) and how inspiring it would be for more people to get to see the earth from that perspective.
No, that's just a side business at least for virgin. Their main focus was to make high speed flight internationally. After all Richard Branson already own an airline (Virgin)
Is it? I can’t find any mentions of that plan. This ship was designed for space tourism, the burn is so short it doesn’t really go much far - it even lands back on the same location it launched from.
On top of that, a seat will cost half a million dollars.
SpaceX and maybe Blue Origin can do that, but Virgin would need a different aircraft.
Space X and blue origin can not do that. Sure they can get a rocket up but you can't launch a giant rocket at Heathrow Airport. You can take off in an aircraft carrying a payload.
What space x proposed with their point to point listing cities such a Zürich Switzerland is insane. If you launch in the middle of Lake Zürich you will blow out every window in the city and probably permanently deathen part of the population. Zürich is a tiny city. Thinking there would be multiple flights like this per day when we can't eve deal with the plane noise is insane.
Your original reply was to this, and I'm commenting in this context:
> What are we talking about as far as going into space? This craft resembles a passenger plane more than a rocket.
Whatever plans they may have for international flights, they seem unrelated to the craft we saw today - the proposed design in the article you linked is for a new "conventional" supersonic plane, not going to orbit and back à la Starship with SpaceShipTwo.
Also, I thought Virgin Galactic was founded specifically with space tourism in mind, not transportation?