Branson to unveil spaceship

The world’s first commercial passenger spaceship, funded by Virgin boss Richard Branson, will be unveiled today.

SpaceShipTwo, to be put on show in America’s Mojave Desert, is a joint effort between Sir Richard and famed aviation designer Burt Rutan, the brains behind the venture.

It is based on Rutan’s design of a stubby white prototype called SpaceShipOne.

In 2004 SpaceShipOne captured the 10 million dollar Ansari X Prize by becoming the first privately manned craft to reach space.

Since the historic feat, engineers from Rutan’s Scaled Composites firm have been labouring in a Mojave hangar to commercialise the prototype in heavy secrecy.

The last time there was this level of showbiz in the high desert was a little more than a year ago when Sir Richard and Rutan trotted out to great fanfare the twin-fuselage mothership, White Knight Two, that will ferry SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude.

But more hard work lies ahead before space journeys could become as routine as air travel.

Flight testing of White Knight Two has been continuing for the past year. The first SpaceShipTwo test flights are expected to start next year, with full-fledged space launches to its maximum altitude by or in 2011.

It remains unclear when Virgin Galactic customers will receive their astronaut wings, but it will largely depend on how the test program fares. Some 300 clients have paid the 200,000 dollar ticket or placed a deposit, according to the company.

SpaceShipTwo, built from lightweight composite materials and powered by a hybrid rocket motor, is similar to its prototype cousin with three exceptions. It’s twice as large, measuring 60 feet long with a roomy cabin about the size of a Falcon 900 executive jet. It also has more windows including overhead portholes. While SpaceShipOne was designed for three people, SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots.

The ability to view Earth’s curvature from space has been limited so far to government astronauts and a handful of wealthy people who have shelled out millions to board Russian rockets to the orbiting international space station.

After SpaceShipOne’s history-making flights, many space advocates believed private companies would offer suborbital space joyrides before the end of this decade.

Tragedy struck in 2007 when an explosion killed three of Rutan’s engineers during a routine test of SpaceShipTwo’s propellant system. The accident delayed the engine’s development.

Virgin Galactic plans to operate commercial spaceflights out of a taxpayer-funded spaceport in New Mexico that is under construction. The 2 1/2 hour trips – up and down flights without circling the Earth – include about five minutes of weightlessness.

SpaceShipTwo will be carried aloft by White Knight Two and released at 50,000 feet. The craft’s rocket engine then burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a rubber-based solid fuel to climb more than 65 miles above the Earth’s surface.

After reaching the top of its trajectory, it will fall back into the atmosphere and glide to a landing like a normal plane. Its descent is controlled by “feathering” its wings to maximise aerodynamic drag.

Virgin Galactic expects to spend more than 400 million dollars for a fleet of five commercial spaceships and launch vehicles.

It is not the only player in the ultra-secretive commercial space race. A handful of entrepreneurs including Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, computer game programmer John Carmack and rocketeer Jeff Greason are building their own suborbital rockets with dreams of flying people out of the atmosphere.