Virgin Galactic Rolls Out White Knight Two

Aircraft to Launch First Private Space Liner

Virgin Galactic rolled out its White Knight Two aircraft, which is designed to loft the planned tourist spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of fifty thousand feet before launching it on suborbital flights with two pilots and six paying customers.

The White Knight Two roll-out took place at the Mojave Air Space Port and was attended by thousands of people, including Virgin Galactic CEO Sir Richard Branson, White Knight Two designer Burt Rutan, and Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Also included were at least one hundred future private astronauts who have already signed up for jaunts on SpaceShipTwo and were flown in especially for the occasion. SpaceShipTwo is scheduled for its rollout in 2009.

The White Knight Two aircraft, dubbed Eve in honor of Richard Branson's mother, is the world's largest all carbon composite built aircraft and has a wing space of 140 feet. White Knight Two has a maximum altitude of fifty thousand feet and can fly nonstop coast to coast across the United States. 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.

On the occasion of the winning of the X Prize, Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson announced a joint venture to create what would be, in effect, the first private space line. Paying customers would be launched in suborbital flights to experience, at least for a brief time, the joys of weightlessness and the best view of the Earth most people will ever see.