Dale Amon thinks about spaceports

Dale Amon does a bit of interpretation of Richard Branson's foray into space tourism:

Now notice he is considering more than one spaceport location. He is not talking of abandoing the US launch site in the Mojave. He wants to add another site for suborbital fares. He would have two sites at which he could operate suborbital space ship take offs and landings.

Branson is in the airline business and knows better than I what the size of the market is for people who want to take a short suborbital tourist hop . . . versus the number of high value business people who would pay extraordinary fares to reach the antipodes in 45 minutes. British Air refused to sell him the Concordes, but Richard might just laugh last and best.

Inference two: I expect we will at some point see a proof of concept flight of a Rutan vehicle which leaves the Mojave on a suborbital intercontinental ballistic trajectory and lands in Australia. If he has a vehicle capable of carrying 6 paying passengers for tourism, that same vehicle with a lone pilot can probably boost onto a trans-Pacific trajectory.