Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by British entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Branson, has unveiled White Knight Two, an aircraft that, for $200,000 a seat, may one day take tourists who can afford it on the first course of regular, although very short, commercial flights into space.

Throughout exuberantly organized publicity at a historic test airfield near Edwards Air Force Base, Branson presented the double-hulled "mother ship" constructed to carry a capsule loaded with six wealthy tourists high into the atmosphere, from where the smaller aircraft would ascend into the cosmos void more than 60 miles above Earth.

The all-composite plane with double fuselage is an enlarged and refined version of the smaller one that renowned aircraft designer Burt Rutan used two times four years ago to start the trek of a piloted capsule to sub-orbital altitude. That journey brought Rutan a no.1 prize at the X-Prize competition, whose main purpose was to encourage private spaceflight.

No one knows when Virgin Galactic will fly, but around 100 people have already paid full price for the trip. This means that one minute out of the four the travelers will spend in imponderability is worth $50,000. An extra 170 individuals have made down payments.

"It's no good saying it's just extravagant. It could lead to all kinds of things," said Evette Branson after baptizing the strangely shaped four-engine jet, named Eve in her honor.

"If you're going to name a mother ship, you might as well name it after your mother," said her adventurous son, who almost had an eye put out when the champagne cork bounced off the fuselage.

"Hope they didn't poke a hole in it," said Buzz Aldrin — the second man on the moon —, who was watching from the hangar. Aldrin did not show to be excited by the perspective of redoing on a commercial scale what Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and astronaut Alan Shepard did 47 years ago, for the first time.

However, Aldrin said the venture might light up again the interest in traveling in space, either on orbital circuits that might rocket voyagers from one place to another on Earth with never before seen speed, or by sending humans to Mars.

"It's called leading," Aldrin said. "It's all part of that."

The White Knight Two “mother ship” looks like two aircrafts pieced at the wing. The space capsule that the larger plane will carry is still concealed. The plan is to transport will the capsule hanging between the two fuselages until it is released at 48,000 feet.

After the release, its rocket engine will fire up, covering the next 300,000 feet in 90 seconds. The six passengers and two pilots will have to endure up to three Gs — pushed back into their seats by three times the force of gravity.

"Even though this is a pretty weird airplane, we expect it to fly pretty well," said Rutan, who also designed the Global Flyer that daredevil Steve Fossett piloted around the world without stopping in 2005. Both planes are made from composite materials, which the creators advertised as an example to commercial airlines, which favor metal planes. This means more expensive fuel bills.