Sir Richard Branson is preparing for the dawn of a new space race which will be contested by private companies and hopes within the next decade to be launching 40 spaceships twice a day, carrying six passengers at a time.
The founder of the Virgin Atlantic airline unveiled the VSS Enterprise, his first commercial spaceship, in the windswept Mojave desert in California late on Monday, and said his engineers would spend the next 12 months completing rigorous tests to make sure the craft is safe and ready to carry paying customers.
His Virgin Galactic company aims to have the spaceship ready for commercial flights by 2011. It has signed up more than 300 customers who will pay $200,000 for a two-hour round trip into space.
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