Mojave, California – Virgin Atlantic on Monday unveiled the first commercial passenger spaceship, a sleek black-and-white vessel that represents an expensive gamble on creating a commercial space tourism industry

It’s billed as the world’s first commercial spaceship, designed to be carried aloft by an exotic jet before firing its rocket engine to climb beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

The project, with a $450-million budget, would see the construction of six commercial spaceships that would take passengers high enough to achieve weightlessness and see the curvature of Earth set against the backdrop of space.

In a Hollywood-style rollout, Virgin Galactic on Monday took the cloak off SpaceShipTwo, which had been under secret development for two years in the Mojave Desert. The company plans to sell suborbital space rides for $200,000 a ticket, offering passengers 2½-hour flights that include about five minutes of weightlessness.

The stubby-winged spaceship possesses a slender fuselage that narrows at the nose and tail. Once in space, its unique twin tail booms can pivot upward to increase drag and allow the spaceship to plunge like a shuttlecock back into the atmosphere.

A twin-hulled aircraft named Eve would carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of about 60,000 feet (18,288 meters) before releasing it. The spaceship would then fire its onboard rocket engines, climbing to about 65 miles (104 km) above Earth.

Some 300 aspiring astronauts have put down deposits for the $200 000 ride, which includes three days of training.

Commercial space flight has been a dream for decades, but the 2004 flight was the first proof that industry might be able to achieve it without the help of government, which historically has dominated space travel.

A lethal 2007 explosion during a rocket engine test by Scaled Composites, however, illustrated the danger and risk to creating a safe and profitable venture.

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