Mothership for space tourists set to be unveiled

AEROSPACE engineers have been holed up in a Mojave Desert hangar for four years, fashioning a commercial spaceship to loft rich tourists some 100km above Earth.

Now the wraps are to come partially off the top-secret project.

British billionaire Richard Branson and American aerospace designer Burt Rutan are due to show off their mothership today, which is designed to air launch a passenger-toting spaceship out of the atmosphere.

The rollout — a year after a deadly accident at Rutan’s test site — marks the start of a rigorous flight test programme that space tourism advocates hope will climax with the first suborbital joyrides by the end of the decade. More than 250 wannabe astronauts have paid $200,000 (€127,000) or put down deposits for a chance to float weightless for a mere five minutes.

“Having invested all my faith in it, I’m so excited to see the actual thing,” said artist Namira Salim, a customer who is lined up for a ride on Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

Among the new space entrepreneurs is the swashbuckling Branson, who teamed with Rutan’s publicity-shy Scaled Composites to commercialise SpaceShipOne. Its successor, SpaceShipTwo, is being designed out of the public eye, along with the carrier aircraft White Knight Two.

“They’ve been hyping this and selling tickets,” said Alan Radecki, a helicopter mechanic and aviation photographer who follows the private space race. “This is the first time they’re going to have hardware to show people.”

Branson previously heralded 2008 as the “Year of the Spaceship”.