Overview of SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two

A SpaceShipTwo model was shown to reporters for the first time in January 2008. The SpaceShipTwo is the worlds first commercial space craft. The SpaceShipTwo will carry 6 passengers, or space tourists as they are being referred to, 110 km above the Earth’s Surface and into space. While the SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital passenger ship offering little more than a view of earth from space and a few minutes of weightlessness. SpaceShipThree, part of the tier two program of Scaled Composites space program, will be an orbital spacecraft with the ability to dock with the International Space Station.

The cabin of SpaceShipTwo is 12 ft long and 7.5 ft wide, which is larger than a Hummer H1. In the cabin are 2 crew and 6 passengers. Once in space the passengers will have several minutes to release their seatbelts and to enjoy the sensation of weightlessness. While much has been made of the initial $200,000 price tag for the trip considering that this is merely for a demonstration flight and that in the 1930’s the cost, when adjusted for inflation, to fly across the Atlantic ocean one-way in coach was approximately $47,000. Later passengers on SpaceShipTwo will likely pay $100,000 per flight.

The White Knight Two which will be functioning as the mothership for the SpaceShipTwo is a double fuselage aircraft with 4 jet engines capable of reaching 60,000 ft. The White Knight Two will serve many functions. One of its hulls is an exact replica of SpaceShipTwo allowing passengers to train before the actual space flight. The other hull of the White Knight Two will also carry passengers, these passengers however will only be taken as high as the stratosphere, the 60,000 ft altitude limit of the White Knight Two. The main function of the White Knight is to carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 50,000 ft then release it to do its climb into space. The White Knight Two is not only the largest aircraft made by Scaled Composites but the largest all composite aircraft ever built.

The first test flights will begin in July of 2008 and commercial flights should begin in 2009.