
The White Knight Two 2,392 Views - Click for Larger Image
Virgin Galactic showed off the White Knight Two, the long awaited aircraft that will carry tourists into space. SpaceShipTwo will be flown up to 50,000 feet and launched for suborbital flight, making non-stop flights from one United States coast to the other.
The White Knight Two craft was revealed at the Mojave Air Space port and thousands of onlookers and well-wishers marked the occasion.
At least 100 future astronauts have signed up to fly and were on hand to see their spacecraft. SpaceShipTwo will rollout in 2009. White Knight Two is called Eve in honor of Richard Branson’s mother.
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White Knight Two is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines. White Knight Two is approximately the size of a World War II era B 29 bomber.
The effort by Virgin Galactic to create a space tourism business began in 2004 when Burt Rutan designed and built White Knight One and SpaceShipOne to win the X Prize, awarded to the first team to launch a space craft capable of carrying three people to an altitude of a hundred kilometers, turn the space craft around, and launch it again within two weeks. Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites team won the X Prize in October 2004.
(crunchgear)
References: associatedcontent, crunchgear
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