Aircraft for space tourism to be unveiled

Aerospace engineers have been holed up in a Mojave Desert hangar for four years, fashioning a commercial spaceship to loft rich tourists some 62 miles above Earth. Now the wraps come partially off the top-secret project.British billionaire Sir Richard Branson and American aerospace designer Burt Rutan will show off their ... on Monday, which is designed to air launch a passenger-toting spaceship out of the atmosphere.The roll out -- a year after a deadly accident at Rutan's test site -- marks the start of a rigorous light test programme that space tourism advocates hope will climax with the first suborbital joy rides by the end of the decade. More than 250 wannabe astronauts have paid USD 200,000 or put down deposits for a chance to float weightless for a mere five minutes.''Having invested all my faith in it, I'm so excited to see the actual thing,'' said artist Namira Salim, a customer who is lined up for a ride on Branson's Virgin Galactic.The last time there was this level of buzz in the high desert north of Los Angeles was in 2004, when throngs of spectators gathered to witness SpaceShipOne capture the USD 10 million Ansari X Prize by becoming the first private, manned craft to reach space. It was designed by Rutan and bankrolled by Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen.SpaceShipOne ushered in a new space age dominated by deep-pocketed entrepreneurs with dreams of making space voyages as mundane as airplane travel. That vision remains unfulfilled.

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