Billionaire Richard Branson has unveiled the first commercial passenger spaceship, a sleek black-and-white vessel, which is scheduled to fly in 2011.
The spaceship is said to be Branson’s expensive gamble on creating a commercial space tourism industry.
Present in the unveiling of the SpaceShipTwo at its hangar in Mojave, California that will rocket tourists into zero gravity were the 300 people who have given their initial deposits of $20,000 to Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways. Space-ride tickets will cost $200,000.
A twin-hulled aircraft would carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of about 60,000 feet (18,288 meters) before releasing it. The spaceship would then fire its onboard rocket engines, climbing to about 65 miles (104 km) above Earth.
“Once in space, [passengers] will unbuckle their seats,” Branson said. “There are enormous windows, which no spacecraft has had before, for them to look back at the Earth. They can float around and become astronauts.”
After experiencing ‘zero-G fun,’ the spaceship with the six paying passengers aboard will glide back to Earth and land in New Mexico, where it was launched.
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