MOJAVE — A souped-up aircraft that would help boost well-heeled thrill seekers into the outer atmosphere was unveiled Monday, lifting the prospects for travelers to one day fly in a commercial spaceliner.
After keeping the project shrouded in secrecy for more than three years, project developers dropped the curtain on the White Knight Two, an odd-looking aircraft with two airplane bodies joined at the wings and resembling a flying catamaran.
And that was just the mother ship, designed to ferry an eight-person rocket from the Earth's surface to a launch point 48,000 feet up.
Still under construction is the rocket-powered passenger ship, dubbed Space Ship Two, which would be attached to the mother ship and carried to its launch altitude.
There the rocket ship would be released and its engine ignited, hurtling it up to an altitude of 360,000 feet -- the edge of space -- where passengers and crew would experience about four minutes of weightlessness. The craft would then drift back to Earth and land at an airport like a plane. Elapsed time from takeoff to touchdown: about 2 1/2 hours.
Space Ship Two could be ready for flight tests next year. If all goes well, the first spaceflight is expected by the end of the decade.
The mother ship was revealed at a much-hyped ceremony at the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 95 miles north of Los Angeles. The spaceport is the home of the aircraft's developer, Scaled Composites, a Northrop Grumman Corp. subsidiary founded by famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan.
The maverick engineer has built such pioneering aircraft as the Global Flyer, which shattered aviation records by flying around the world on one tank of fuel.
On hand for the ceremony were Rutan and British billionaire Richard Branson, who bankrolled the project. In typical Branson fashion, the aircraft was unveiled in front of about 150 journalists, many of them flown in by Branson's U.S.-based carrier, Virgin America, for the two-hour affair. The plane was painted with the message, "My Other Ride Is A Spaceship."
After the media were corralled into a hangar, a massive white curtain was dropped to reveal the White Knight Two.
Sitting alone, tucked in a corner and covered in black so it could not be seen was Space Ship Two.
Both vehicles are larger versions of the mother ship and rocket that made the first privately funded suborbital spaceflight four years ago. Unlike most of today's planes, which are made of aluminum and other metals, the space launch vehicles are built with composite materials.
