Re: Lower & slower than a V2
"VG => Giving a dummy a few seconds weightlessness in a 82km suborbital hop."
What they're hoping to achieve is several minutes of weightlessness in a somewhat higher suborbital hop, using a re-usable people-carrying pressurised vehicle much, much more reliable than an A4/V2. I mean, A4/V2s couldn't even re-enter reliably and all they were meant to do was carry a warhead.
Development has to be incremental to achieve the hoped-for reliability. You expand the flight envelope one step at a time, checking everything all the time. Whether or not Virgin Galactic's intended flights are worth doing is arguable, but I don't see that one could reasonably suggest that the technical achievement demonstrated so far is anything other than quite impressive - albeit severely behind schedule.