I'm sure someone has asked this before, but why doesn't SpaceX develop the 9R-Dev1 vehicle into a manned commercial suborbital rocket? They could fly out of both Mojave and Spaceport America. The suborbital industry has been severely disappointing, so it's basically wide open.
Also: the suborbital industry has been severely disappointing. No sense throwing good money after bad.
I think the general assumption has been that it's not worth their time. They don't want to spend money or engineering time on something that doesn't relate to, or fund, Mars.
I think that suborbital tourism with F9R is not going to work, not for a lack of demand, but because it is the first stage of an orbital launch vehicle, with cost and engineering margins set for that. It would probably not be cost effective to do suborbital flights with it.
Class-1 Suborbital= (Pretty much) Straight-up/Straight-down suborbital (above the Karmen line) flight. This is what BO as well as VG are/were planning where there is little to no lateral motion during the flight. (And yes even VG as a "lifting" vehicle trajectory has very little lateral motion compared to what it could do but at a significant cost in required capability)...SNIP...An F9SoR (Suborbital Reusable) rocket with a passenger cabin wrapped low around the propellant tanks with permanently extended "legs" could be a pretty robust and economic "Launch Vehicle" for such missions with not a lot of major modifications to the design.
I just don't get why this idea hasn't gained traction.
Well for starters F9R-Dev1 only reached 1000m so far at very low speed,
With suborbital falcon 9, you still have the rocket overhead and are still spending $200k on propellant for a trip that would cost $2k in a longer period of time on an airplane.
I'm not sure paid suborbital tourism is that compelling. When it happens, I think it will be a letdown.
Right now the manned suborbital industry is looking pretty grim - which is to say, it's still nonexistent a decade after the X Prize was won, and its most prominent "provider" has become something of a joke for its profligate hype and seeming terror of flying its own fully built spaceship. Others either seem to be going nowhere despite massive resources (Blue Origin), or else going somewhere at a measured pace due to limited resources (XCOR) that could easily evaporate at any time. Like I said, grim.
They're not doing that anymore.. which is a shame. It was actually unique and didn't require wider cores than it seems they're capable of doing.