Sir Richard Branson shows off a model of the SpaceShipTwo, the future of tourist space travel.

Sir Richard Branson hailed 2008 the “Year of the Spaceship” today at the unveiling of the designs for Virgin Galactic’s craft which could one day take tourists into space.

Work on SpaceShipTwo (SS2), and the White Knight Two (WK2) mothership, is now close to completion and is expected to begin flight testing in summer 2008. 

WK2 is the world’s largest all carbon composite aircraft, and features a unique high altitude lift capacity to launch SS2 and its crew into sub-orbital space flight. It is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines – amongst the most powerful, economic and efficient engines in the world.

Designed to lift payload for launch, the WK2 may also one day be used to send satellites and other items into space unmanned.

At today’s launch event held in New York, Sir Richard highlighted the possibility that utilising space could one day protect the future of the Earth.

He said: “…the utilisation of space is essential not only for communications but also for the logistics of survival through things such as weather satellites, agricultural monitoring, GPS and climate science. I also believe that someday we will be able to use space as a source of energy for the planet, through solar power satellites, using the most sustainable source available – our Sun.”

He also suggested that the system has the potential to become a passenger carrying vehicle “able to take people from A to B around the planet, outside of the atmosphere.”

Virgin Galactic already has a hefty database of 200 future astronauts, with around 85,000 registrations of interest to fly. Aspiring space travellers could venture into space as early as 2009 – tickets cost US$200,000 (£101,000) and deposits start from US$20,000 (£10,100).

For more information, visit www.virgingalactic.com

By Natasha Piscitelli