British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Rutan’s Scaled Composites have joined forces to manufacture spaceships, launch aircraft, and support equipment for commercial space companies. Their joint partnership is called The Spaceship Company. In addition, Mojave Aerospace Ventures, owned by U.S. entrepreneur Paul Allen and Rutan, has signed a deal with Virgin Galactic to build the suborbital spacecraft SpaceShipTwo for space tourism.

Branson has ordered five SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and two White Knight 2 launch aircraft for its fleet. The plan is to carry SpaceShipTwo about 1,828 meters (about 1.1 mile) into the air by the White Knight 2, also being built by Rutan. At that point, White Knight 2 will release SpaceShipTwo for its launch into space to an altitude of 135 to 140 kilometers (84 to 87 miles) and with a downrange distance of about 160 to 320 kilometers (100 to 200 miles). The edge of space is generally considered to be at a height of 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earth.

Six passengers will pay about $200,000 apiece to take the approximate 2.5 hour suborbital voyage into space. SpaceShipTwo will be crewed by two pilots. As of February 2007, Virgin Galactic has secured about $40 million in earnest money from about 200 customers.

SpaceShipTwo and White Knight 2 are projected to begin about 50 to 100 test flights in the late 2007 to 2008 timeframe, with its first commercial flight carrying passengers in late 2009. The U.S. Department of Transportation issued, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved, the first license for a suborbital manned rocket flight to Scaled Composites in 2004.

The company’s launch site is located at the Mojave Spaceport (also known as the Mojave Airport and Civilian Aerospace Test Center) in the Mojave Desert, near Mojave, California. It is the first nongovernmental launch facility (spaceport) to be given a FAA license (in 2004) in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft.

In September 2006, the first SpaceShipTwo was officially named VSS Enterprise, where ‘VSS’ stands for Virgin Space Ship and ‘Enterprise’ is in recognition to the starship Enterprise as seen on the science-fiction television show “Star Trek”, created by Gene Roddenberry. The first White Knight 2 has been named Eve.

As more tourism flights are scheduled, a second spaceport will be used. Called Spaceport America (currently the Southwest Regional Spaceport), the site near Upham, New Mexico (near the towns of Truth or Consequences and Los Cruces) is already under construction, with a finished runway length of 3,810 meters (12,500 feet) and width of 61 meters (200 feet).

SpaceShipThree spacecraft are in the planning stages—to be developed for more ambitious future orbital flights about the Earth.

For more information about:

Scaled Compositions—http://www.scaled.com/. 

Virgin Galatic—http://www.virgingalactic.com/.

Mojave Aerospace Ventures—http://web1-xprize.primary.net/teams/mojave_aerospace_ventures.php.

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