Richard Branson unveils first commercial spaceship

Dec 7, 2009, 16:20 GMT

Los Angeles - Flamboyant British entrepreneur Richard Branson on Monday unveiled the world's first commercial spaceship, saying it heralded a new age in travel.

'We want this programme to be a whole new beginning in a commercial era of space travel,' Branson said of the 20-metre long craft, SpaceShip Two.

The eight-seater, rocket-powered vehicle was unveiled at a site in the Mojave desert, California. Branson said that after testing in 2010 he hopes the revolutionary spacecraft will be ready to start commercial flights from a space port currently under construction in New Mexico, by 2011.

Branson's company has already collected 42 million dollars from a lengthy roster of would-be space travelers paying 200,000 dollars each for a two-and-a-half-hour ride on SpaceShip Two.

The craft will be carried to a height of 50,000 feet by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, from where it will fire its own rocket motor and climb to 110 kilometres above Earth, allowing passengers to experience six minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth.

'NASA spent billions upon billions of dollars on space travel and has only managed to send 480 people,' Branson said. 'We're literally hoping to send thousands of people into space over the next couple of years. We want to make sure that we build a spaceship that is 100- percent safe.'