Branson Shows Off Snazzy Sub-Orbital Space-Tourist Vehicle

It looks a lot like SpaceShipOne (SS1) from the outside, but the similarities end there. SpaceShipTwo (SS2) sports over three times the cabin area of SpaceShipOne. With two pilots, there's still enough room for six passengers.

Branson hired award-winning design artist Philipe Starck to help with the interior accoutrements, and by all accounts, they're sensational!

Branson unveiled a mockup of the new craft during a press conference at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City on Thursday. He was participating in a technology show.

The craft's designer, Burt Rutan, has accounted for passenger comfort with unique auto-reclining seats that orient themselves based on the phase of flight. Upright, the seats are reclined sixty-degrees for the flight up and launch, then fully reclined for the reportedly violent reentry and returning to upright for the glide to landing.

The voluminous cabin should give passengers plenty of space to float around during the estimated five minutes of weightlessness on the planned flight profile. With 15 windows -- spaced around the floor, walls and ceiling -- everyone should get a spectacular view of mother earth during the ride.

SS2 will ride aloft slung beneath the behemoth WhiteKnightTwo (WK2). Larger than a 757, with a cabin identical to SS2, WK2 will double as a launch vehicle and a training platform for customers preparing for spaceflight.

Just as the famous SS1 did, SS2 will ignite its hybrid rocket motor after dropping from beneath WK2 at around 50,000 ft. The craft will ascend under four Gs of acceleration to a to a sub-orbital altitude before falling back to earth in the shuttlecock configuration. Once at a safe altitude, SS2 will reconfigure and glide to a landing.

This marks the first public display of any kind for the SS2 program. Burt Rutan and his company Scaled Composites have been working on the craft at the company's Mojave, CA hangar not necessarily in secret, but certainly without a lot of fanfare.

Virgin Galactic's plans for an initial fleet include two mother ships and five sub-orbital craft.

Among Virgin Galactic's first customers will be Englishman Alan Watts. Watts has racked up over 2-million frequent-flyer miles on Virgin Atlantic Airways -- and he intends to cash them in for a flight on SS2.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Watts said, "The nearest I've come to space before was going on the Space Mountain ride in Florida."

We don't know how much of the cost Watts' frequent flyer miles will cover, but everyone else will pay $200,000 for a view stretching nearly 1000 miles in every direction.

Virgin Galactic told CNN it already has 200 confirmed bookings for the flights slated to begin in 2009 -- with another 65,000 registered at "potentials."

FMI: www.virgingalactic.com