White Knight Two with Spaceship

A souped-up aircraft that would help boost well-heeled thrill seekers into the outer atmosphere was unveiled recently, lifting the prospects for travelers to one day fly in a commercial spaceliner.

After keeping the project shrouded in secrecy for more than three years, project developers dropped the curtain on the White Knight Two, an odd-looking aircraft with two airplane bodies joined at the wings and resembling a flying catamaran.

And that was just the mother ship, designed to ferry an eight-person rocket from the Earth's surface to a launch point 48,000 feet up.

Still under construction is the rocket-powered passenger ship, dubbed Space Ship Two, which would be attached to the mother ship and carried to its launch altitude.

There the rocket ship would be released and its engine ignited, hurtling it up to an altitude of 360,000 feet -- the edge of space -- where passengers and crew would experience about four minutes of weightlessness. The craft would then drift back to Earth and land at an airport like a plane. Elapsed time from takeoff to touchdown: about 2 1/2 hours.

Space Ship Two could be ready for flight tests next year. If all goes well, the first spaceflight is expected by the end of the decade.

The mother ship was revealed at a much-hyped ceremony at the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 95 miles north of Los Angeles. The spaceport is the home of the aircraft's developer, Scaled Composites, a Northrop Grumman Corp. subsidiary founded by famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan.