Virgin Galactic unveiled it's "mothership" today in the Mohave desert to select dignitaries and space aficionados. The White Knight II is just one stage of a project that will ultimately allow passengers a brief experience in space. The craft, made entirely of carbon composite and with the wingspan of Boeing B29 Superfortress, will carry the Spaceship II between it's fuselage from liftoff. At 50,000ft, it will disengage Spaceship II, where the smaller craft will fire it's booster rockets and climb to 62mi, which is the international boundary for outer space.

The next step is for the White Knight II to undergo extensive flight testing, which shall begin this fall. The smaller SpaceShip II craft is currently 70% complete. If all goes to plan, commercial trips will begin sometime in 2010. For $200,000, anyone can go through the training and experience up to 6min of being in space. There currently are over 200 people on the waiting list.

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One part of me is all, "Commercial space flight!? Awesome!"

And the other part of me remembers I become frozen with fear when I have to get on a plane from California to Texas. No way do I have the testicular fortitude for space flight.

Or the cash, it would seem.

Especially the guy who brought ShockWave up from the Thames...

This is me, to the letter.

all that comes to mind is "Airplane II"