The future of space travel.

Richard Branson has unveiled the plane that is intended as the launch aircraft for his Virgin Galactic spaceship full of the first of his paying passengers, In July 2007, three Scaled Composites employees were killed when a test of a propellant system failed at the Mojave Airport which had put a hold on the unveiling of the new spaceship.

It has been called The WhiteKnightTwo (Which has the nickname Eve after Richard Branson's mother) and it was on display for a small group of invited guests and reporters at the California desert headquarters of Scaled Composites, the aerospace firm where it was built.

It is designed as a high-altitude aircraft that will launch SpaceShipTwo from midair. It has a 43-meter wingspan and twin fuselages and it will carry SpaceShipTwo under the center of its wing, between the two hulls, It is the longest single carbon composite aviation part ever manufactured. The plan is for The WhiteKnightTwo to free the spacecraft at about 15,240 metres, from where it will rocket into space under its own power.

Virgin Galactic is part of Branson's airline, vacation and retail company Virgin Group and he hopes to send his first paying customers into space within the two years at a cost of US$200,000 each.

Richard Branson already has 200 people signed up for the ultimate sightseeing trips into space, The ticket price is expected to drop significantly over the next five years. Among the first passengers that are expected to make the first trip into space are physicist Stephen Hawking, actress Victoria Principal and designer Philippe Starck. Each flight into space will carry six passengers up to 50,000 feet.

Virgin Galactic is one of several contenders in the new commercial space race. Other contenders include Europe's EADS Astrium, Blue Origin which was started by Jeff Bezos who is the founder of Amazon.com Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) which was created by Elon Musk, who is the PayPal founder, And Bigelow Aerospace, a venture aimed at creating space hotels, started by hotelier Robert Bigelow.