Doug! well that would be pretty cool.
I'll try and cover some of the questions here... sorry for not answering anyone specifically but you know who you are
this whole concept anticipates there would be new, large facilities, both in space and on the ground to handle increased space traffic of the future - the iss would be a little redundant with monsters like this around. current runways and airports too small. to accomodate smaller facilities it could compensate with hover engines. though it perhaps can't take off with them alone but they assist low speed flight. the thrusters would enable a shorter takeoff and perhaps open up more runways if it doesn't melt them too much
but it would mean that you could use the standard orbiter runways.
it could glide at high speed, and perhaps glide-land at a high speed on a specially prepared, very large runway. How fast would you have to fly to land as a pure glider on earth, at sea level with no fuel is an interesting question.
For how long it takes to get to mars, surely depends on where it is in relation to earth, if we're in alignment between it and the sun its what, 60 million miles?
I'm going to really simplify it here, i'm sure someone can fill in the gaps and double check the maths here, i think this is about right. but lets assume they're both static relative to each other in simplified space when they're about 60million km apart, so to get there in a week we'd need to travel at an average speed of 400,000 kmh which i think means accellerating at 1g for about 3 hours to get up to speed and burning half our fuel perhaps. then we can deploy the centrifuge and coast to mars. perhaps it could get there in a few days if it burns longer... ya know, whatever really, i'm sure you'll be able to edit the values to whatever you want anyway
I'm just basing this around 'getting there in a week'.
perhaps a lower accelleration would be desirable, and more plausible - less heat to deal with for a start. perhaps even a boost phase for a longer time which allows the centrifuge to be deployed at the same time. I imagine this is something you'll be able to experiment with. with maybe a breaking limit for the centrifuge.. so it breaks down if its deployed and you push the spacecraft past so much g could be set.
possibly you might takeoff with a low fuel load, swing past the moon on the way and meet up with a helium 3 / naquadriah / altea magic tea platform to tank up. anything like that would slow you down which sorta goes against the concept, but perhaps if you're being thrifty like a budget spaceline who has bought some second hand, you could accomodate more passengers like that, takeoff with less fuel more passengers or cargo weight and tank up in space... maybe you would need to do that to reach mars at its furthest point with enough supplies to last the journey.
By this point in time i don't think passengers would be exposed to any extreme forces, you might be ferrying the elderly, children, pregnant women for example, anyone who might get on a public transport, airliner or ferry or whatever today. not limited to physically fit trained astronauts in their prime. and passengers should be warned and restrained prior to manuvering.
You might even carry livestock, in which case you'd have to be really careful:lol:
anyway, just some thoughts really.