What about long distance cargo and passenger services via suborbital vehicles (e.g. the famous claims of one hour express flights between New York and Tokyo)?
The energy that it takes to fly long distances, such as New York to Tokyo, are no so far from what is needed to go to orbit. So such capabilities will not be among the initial generation of suborbital vehicles. Also, there is considerable uncertainty as to the size of the market for super high speed long distance transport. There are certainly situations where high value items would warrant the cost of such a delivery. For example, a crucial part in California might be required to repair a broken semiconductor assembly line in Malaysia that is causing millions of dollars to be lost each hour the line is inactive. However, it is not known whether such services could support a dedicated services. See Conceptual design of a global fast package delivery system – MIT thesis by Kurt Palmer 1998 and Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles and Applicable Markets, October 2002 for further discussion. We note that some suborbital space tourism services may fly fairly short horizontal distances, e.g.
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