DROP TABLE, SELECT INTO, Performance

Hello -- thank you for taking the time to read this.

I have a very large table that is used both for archives and new information. To get the current information, the table is queried by many different users at various polling periods. The SELECT required includes about fifteen JOINS, and only returns about 200 rows at any given time.

So I got to thinking if it might be faster to periodically run the big query as a SELECT INTO into a smaller table and letting the polling clients query the smaller table with SELECT *. Periodically, the smaller table would be DROPPED and refereshed with another SELECT INTO.

Trouble is, the data would have to be updated once every 30 seconds, and there are inbound polls coming at the rate of about 200 per minute. It got me to thinking what might happen if a client attemtped to query the smaller table when it was in the process of being dropped and refilled.

So my question is three-part:

1) assuming a larger table of about 500,000 records and only 500 pertinent at any given time, is there any real potential of performance enhancement by switching to a SELECT INTO table?

2) if so, is there a chance of a client failing a query if the inbound query somehow collides with the DROP/SELECT INTO procedure?

3) if so, is there any way to prevent it or a better way of doing this?

Thanks again for reading, and in advance for any help you can provide. I apologize if I sound like a dummy - it's hard to fake intelligence!