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Aerospace engineers have been busy over the last four years, secretly working diligently in a Mojave Desert hanger. Their goal: develop a commercial spaceship to loft rich tourists 62 miles above Earth. This ambitious venture is the work of British billionaire Richard Branson and American aerospace designer Burt Rutan.

On October 4th, 2004 SpaceShipOne was the first private vehicle to make it in to space and after a second successful flight won the Ansari X-Prize. On July 28th, 2008 WhiteKnightTwo rolled out on the runway with SpaceShipTwo getting ready for a 2009 rollout.

The mothership which will launch the first space tourists into the atmosphere was unveiled by Sir Richard Branson in California yesterday. WhiteKnightTwo (WK2), the carrier aircraft which will be used to launch SpaceShipTwo into orbit, "will allow thousands of people to realise their dreams" and "act as a catalyst to transform human access to space", Sir Richard said.

  SpaceShipOne is making news again as it come close to being one of the first spaceship vehicles to carry tourists into space. This is a very cool technology and I would love to take a trip into space before I die. Of course with the current $200,000 dollar price tags, I don’t think I will be able to afford it anytime soon.

Flightglobal has a picture of what looks like the cockpit for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, the successor to the SpaceShipOne, which successfully completed the first private manned flight into space. Like the SpaceShipOne, it is being built by Scaled Composites in Mojave, CA, where these shots were taken.

More than 1,000 men and women from around the planet gathered in Washington, D.C., recently to explore the idea that the future of the human race is not confined to this world alone. They came together for the 27th-annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC), sponsored by the National Space Society (NSS).

The following text is the expanded notes from my 23 January interview with Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn. The registration number for SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is N339SS and the White Knight II (WK2) is N348MS. The Virgin Group has a 15 year licence for technology from SpaceShipOne (SS1) from its financier Paul Allen's Mojave Aerospace Ventures.

"'Sports car' of commercial spaceflight unveiled" from New Scientist reports that a new two seat space ship has been rolled out in Mojave, California - smaller than Virgin's spacecraft which seats eight. Xcor say Lynx Mark I will start flights two years from now.