Commercial spaceship unveiled
Virgin Galactic have released the final design of their ship which will take high-paying passengers into space.Starting in 2010 the ship will take eight people (two pilot astronauts and six ticketed passengers) on two-and-a-half hour sub-orbital trips.
Despite each seat costing £100,000 Virgin Galactic say 200 people have already booked with another 85,000 having registered interest.
SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is a rocket ship which will be lifted by a plane before blasting off backwards."I think it's very important that we make a genuine commercial success of this project," said Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson at a New York news conference.
"This could rival the scale of investment in the mobile phone and internet technologies after they were unlocked from their military origins and thrown open to the private sector."
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Virgin Galactic
