Orbital flight via SSTO vs TSTO is an off topic straw man you have posed. Who said anything about it? You're connecting dots that are not necessarily there.

Nobody is saying that a John Carmac X-prize design just gets 'scaled up' for orbital flight. Nobody except 'authorities' like clueless Pike. In fact, the leading X-prize contender is in effect a two stage approach, not that that matters to the thread. It's the infrastructure and the meme. The meme that spaceflight can only be done by big expense riddled goverments needs to be killed. The meme that all or nothing expensive objectives are requirements needs to die. Back in the early X programs the US had great success building vehicle after vehicle with incremental improvememts that were flight tested. Build a little, fly a little. Repeat.