…and hopefully at least as good, if not better. Clark Lindsey explains the significance of the successful UP Aerospace launch:

So why is this a big deal? Suborbital rockets have been launched at WSMR and elsewhere since the 1940s. This flight is significant because of the business model, not the altitude attained. The vehicle was designed to serve a consumer market rather than to carry out a task for the military or some other government entity. To do this profitably, the vehicle must be built for as low a cost as possible and must be cheap to fly. Spaceflight for the general public is new to the rocket world.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jon Goff has a very instructive post for those who buy into the mantra about how much more of a problem orbital is than suborbital with respect to energy.

As I note in his comments section, while these are great points when it comes to getting to orbit, the real issue is the energy that has to be dissipated to come home. I think that this will be the far greater challenge for orbital vehicle developers, at least if they’re reusable (and despite progress that can continue to be made in dropping the cost of expendables, ultimately that’s the only way to go for truly low costs, not to mention ability to bring the customers home).

Even Burt claims not to have a solution (though he may be sandbagging us). Certainly his current shuttlecock concept won’t ever scale up to an entry from orbit. As I’ve noted before, though, Burt is not God, and just because he doesn’t know how to do something, doesn’t mean that it can’t be done.