Billionaire Richard Branson's latest creation met the press today in the California desert. Branson and legendary designer Burt Rutan, whose SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X-prize for reaching suborbital space five years ago, unveiled SpaceShipTwo in Mojave, California. Branson's company Virgin Galactic says the craft could carry space-faring tourists soon.
Seating six passengers and two pilots, SpaceShipTwo will begin test flights next year with commercial launchings carrying paying customers starting after government regulatory requirements are met. Tickets for a sub-orbital up-and-down flight are expected to run about $200,000 a seat for the initial flights [CNET]
. SpaceShipTwo, though a technically correct name, isn't a terribly romantic moniker. So governors Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Bill Richardson of New Mexico will christen the vessel the Virgin Space Ship Enterprise at today's ceremony.
SpaceShipTwo is designed to carry “many thousands of private astronauts into space,” Virgin said today in a statement ...
