Virgin Galactic's and Blue Origin's Space Flights - are these just Extended Skydiving in an Enclosure? [closed]

Question

Sorry for four questions in the three paragraphs below, but they all are around the same curiosity that I have.

In both of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin's space flights happening in July 2021, it seems that the weightlessness part felt by the passengers is due to more or less vertical freefall (as is felt in skydiving). Is there anything different from usual skydiving in terms of the experience apart from the view and no wind hitting your face?

At any point in their flight, can they be said to be orbiting the earth, in the sense ISS or satellites do?

It is evident that they both have some tangential component of velocity, but it doesn't look at all of the magnitude that can put them in orbit temporarily. And I think to even attempt something like this will be a different ballgame because of the energy requirement. Am I right in this understanding? Lastly, is that the reason I don't see any heat shields?

Answer 1

When above (nearly all of) the atmosphere all trajectories bound to Earth are elliptical, arguably including circles and straight-down (though for the former it's also a circle and for the latter the eccentricity is unity).

However folks have chosen to call those that will not complete one orbit without hitting the atmosphere hard and reentering as "suborbital" because they can not actually complete at least one full real orbit. Sede Wikipedia's Sub-orbital spaceflight.

So yes you've got the free fall stuff correct, and no those elliptical trajectories are not generally called actual orbits, at least by spaceflight folks.