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If I could bring two of my best friends to a spaceport and take a rapid trip to a city hundreds of kilometers away (think half an hour to cross a continent), what would would be the vehicle's flight characteristics?
I am mainly asking about the top speed, maximum altitude, and flight time. Since there are passengers involved, I was also wondering about any G-forces they might encounter. For an example, what if I and my two space buds took such a rocket from Cape Canaveral to Columbia, SC?
800km is not very far:
Zooming in:
This is the kind of distance where both ballistics and aerodynamics agree that a ballistic trajectory is a good option.
A 800km ballistic trajectory reaches an altitude of more or less 200km, depending on the exact flight profile.
The free-fall arc is very close to 7 minutes, but since the rocket needs time both for acceleration and deceleration (and safe landing?), you have to add a couple of minutes to that.
The velocity at the lower end of such a ballistic arc is approximately 2,700m/s. The rocket needs "a couple of minutes" to clear the lower atmosphere, and for an acceleration period such as that, the G forces aren't any more severe that "a couple of Gs".
About half the flight would be in freefall.
