BREAKING NEWS! Private Spaceship Completes Second Rocket-Pow

Then it wouldnt be SpaceShipOne. SS1 right now uses ablative tps on the leading edge and the nose.. Reengineering SS1 for orbital using metallic tps a la X-20 would be engineering a completely new vehicle. Basically you'd be using the SpaceShip1 shape. Then would come the question of how you would actually get ss1 to orbit. Stick it on top of an expendable? SS1 is a fine suborbital vehicle, but that's the extent of it's use.

Also problems with metallic tps during the X-20 program were never completely worked out, and there were questions regarding the durability of it. Whether those same issues were ever worked out completely with X-33 , I don't know. I never read anything to say that they were, but of course that wasn't the showstopper that killed X-33.

Besides being exciting, those pictures of the SS1 at apogee are quite important. They show that a "mere" suborbital flight will provide views of Earth and space that are just as stunning as a full orbital flight (albeit for much less time). This bodes well for the space tourism industry, which will initially depend on convincing millionaires to spend $100,000 to fly on suborbital vehicles.