Virgin Galactic unveils model of SpaceShipTwo

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Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled a model of the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis.

SpaceShipTwo will carry six passengers and two pilots on suborbital trips to the edge of space at an altitude of about 100 km. The trips are expected to take about 2.5 hours, with about five minutes of weightlessness. The $200,000 space trips will launch from a spaceport to be built in New Mexico, US, and test flights are to begin later in 2008.

Before firing its engine to reach space, SpaceShipTwo will be carried to an altitude of about 15 km by an aircraft called White Knight Two, which was also unveiled on Wednesday (scroll down for illustrations). Both craft were designed by Burt Rutan, whose SpaceShipOne collected the Ansari X Prize for privately funded spaceflight in 2004. Branson teamed up with Rutan shortly afterwards to design a suborbital spacecraft for Branson's company, Virgin Galactic.

"We really do want to have a situation where hundreds of thousands of people who want to experience space travel are able to do so," said Branson at a media event at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, US.

"Even though the dollar isn't worth much anymore, $200,000 is still too expensive for the majority of people," he said. "Within five years of launching, I would hope the price would come down fairly dramatically."
Vision of the future

Virgin Galactic now has more than 200 people signed up for the ultimate sightseeing trip, stumping up more than $30 million in deposits. Passengers getting ready for the suborbital trip include physicist Stephen Hawking, former soap star Victoria Principal and designer Philippe Starck.

About 100 of Virgin's reserved passengers attended Wednesday's unveiling, to get the first glimpse of the spacecraft's design.

"It's like something out of Thunderbirds," said Trevor Beattie, a British advertising executive, referring to the 1960s TV series. "It's what we as kids in the 1960s thought the future would be like." Beattie, who co-runs the Beattie McGuinness Bungay advertising firm in London, UK, said he bought the flight instead of splurging on a Ferrari, as he can't drive.

Richard "B J" Bjorklund, a portfolio manager for Citigroup's Smith Barney unit in Dallas, Texas, US, said the trip would be his only chance of experiencing space travel after failing to get into the US Air Force's astronaut program years ago.
Satellite launches

"I figured I would never have a chance to go into space again," said Bjorklund. "I'm thinking somewhere toward the end of 2009 (for launch). But I want them to be safe, so I'm ready to go whenever they say it's time to go."

Virgin Galactic says White Knight Two, the world's largest carbon composite aircraft, might be used for unmanned launches, as well. It could potentially carry rockets into the atmosphere, where they could then ignite and loft satellites into orbit while using less fuel than they would have if they had launched from the ground.

Work on SpaceShipTwo's engine was delayed last year by an explosion that killed three people during a test. Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, was cited and fined for safety violations last week.

Virgin Galactic is only one of several high-profile contenders in the new commercial space race. Others include Europe's EADS Astrium; Blue Origin, started by Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos; Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX), created by PayPal founder Elon Musk; Rocketplane Kistler, and hotelier Robert Bigelow.

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13219

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Cool!

Looks like a couple of E145's stuck together!;)

Scruff

Yeah it looks cool. Burt Rutan comes out with some wild non conforismt designs!
It reminds me of the WW2 era P-38 Lightning


heres a cgi video on what the flight will be like

AircraftTechie

I personally thought it looked like a BAE 146.

Run_to_da_hills

Nothing new for Richard Branson, The Irish Air corps had them years ago.

Davidth88

Bert Rutan is one of my personal heros

His aircraft design have been revolutionary for years , ever since the VeriEZE and LongEZE, they were using compasites ( sp ) long before anyone else.

One of my personal highlights was visiting the Smithsonian in DC years ago and seeing Voayager hanging from the ceiling , still with the damage it recvd on take of on that fantastic voyage.

If I had the money / won the lottery I would have my name on this list for sure.

WexCan

Gotta love original design eh?