space tourists.

Presenting the final draft of Virgin Galactic spacecraft that will carry space tourists luar.Pesawat was based on the concept of the award-winning X-Prize, called SpaceShipOne, which will be carried by the aircraft carrier before being fired into orbit. Virgin spaceship SpaceShipOne exactly the same, but its size is enlarged so that it can carry eight passengers in one trip into space.

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, said the space tourism business has great potential and will be planned to begin in 2010. "I think it's very important to make this project is commercially successful," he told a news conference in New York.

"If we managed to make it happen then we open the lock from the private sector to launch the aircraft systems and space technology." Branson added this tour to the same space like mobile phones and the Internet.

"It could be a competitor in the investment for mobile phones and the Internet after the opening of its origin, the military, the private sector."

Virgin Galactic already contacted spacecraft designer, Burt Rutan, to build aircraft carriers, the White Knight Two or WK2. Making WK2 carrier aircraft called the already nearly complete and will menajalani CBA test later this year. Meanwhile, SpaceShipTwo, or SS2, according to Virgin Galactic is over 60%. SS2 and WK2 done in a hangar owned by Burt Rutan in California.

SS2 plane will carry two pilot astronauts and six passengers, who can afford the ticket price of $ 200,000 or approximately Rp. 2 billion. They will fly from the new runway is called the Spaceport in the desert of New Mexico, USA. The total journey from beginning to end approximately 2.5 hours to reach 110 kilometers altitude.

In that altitude the passengers will be in a situation without gravity for a few minutes and watch the Earth and the blackness of outer space.

Virgin Galactic says it has recorded 200 prospective passengers who are about 85 000 memsan where others say the desire to join the space tourism. And advances that reach tens of millions of dollars already paid to Virgin Galactic to guarantee a place to enjoy the experience of space.

Sir Richard Branson said the launch system for Virgin's space tourism can also be used by industrial and researchers. "The fact that the system has the ability to carry a certain load or low-cost satellites is very important," he told the launch SS2 at the Museum of Natural History. And with the SS ", according to Branson, then the researchers have the possibility to do more experiments into space in order to answer questions about Earth's climate and the mysteries of the solar system.

The design of SS2 and WK2 presented Wednesday, January 23. Essentially is the award-winning SpaceShipOne Ansari X-Prize in 2005 with a prize of U.S. $ 10 juta.Yang different is the size of SS2 to double from SS1 to be able to carry eight passengers. The simulation SS2 now can be used to train pilots.

Virgin Galactic is one of the few companies who wish to carry out space tourism. Site owners Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos, also plans to tour space with his own version, as well as the European airline industry, EADS Astrium, which is developing persawat own space.

Currently a new space tourism can be executed via the Russian Soyuz launcher with ticket prices are reported to reach U.S. $ 20 million. With ticket prices, tourists will also get a chance to stop over briefly in the International Space Station. You interested? Time to start saving from now.