Billionaire Unveils Commercial Spaceship

Mojave, California - a speck of a town between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. It's here, literally in the middle of nowhere, that billionaire Sir Richard Branson is unveiling the craft he hopes will rocket into a thriving business.

His Spaceship Two is designed to carry six paying passengers and two pilots soaring into Earth's orbit.

[Sir Richard Branson, Owner of Spaceship Two]:
"Well, it's certainly a dream come true. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning, and that was the most incredible dream. For many years, I sort of have dreamed about the idea of actually going into space myself and to actually be able to go on our very own spacecraft is certainly almost too unbelievable to be true.

Branson's engineers are planning tests for Spaceship Two next year with commercial flights starting as early as 2011.




Flights will last around two and a half hours - that is, for those with two hundred thousand dollars to spare.

Branson claims the experience will be completely safe, and shrugged off comparisons to NASA.

[Sir Richard Branson, Owner of Spaceship Two]:
"The advantage we have over NASA is that our technology is 50 years younger than theirs. Burt came up with this idea of a feathering mechanism, so when you are coming back into Earth's atmosphere, you don't have this enormous build-up of heat. The whole spaceship turns into this giant shuttlecock and actually shuttlecock's back into Earth's atmosphere."

Branson plans to be on the first flight. Where to after that?

Branson hopes the technology can eventually be used for commercial air travel - possibly a two hour flight from Los Angeles to Australia.

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