The British billionaire hopes to offer tickets aboard his spacecraft at a cost of 200,000 dollars each, giving adventurous, well-heeled travellers a chance to experience space for a fraction of the cost of a seat on a NASA shuttle or Russian spaceship.

Announcing the roll-out of the Virgin Galactic spaceliner in California's Mojave desert, Branson said he planned to be on the craft's first passenger flight some 18 months from now, accompanied by his family and the American designer of the space ship, Burt Rutan.

The craft is composed of two parts -- the SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightTwo, the prototype of which has been dubbed Virgin MotherShip Eve in a tribute to Branson's mother.

The futuristic-looking craft emblazoned with the image of a young woman that represents Branson's mother Eve diving through space, resembles two jet aircraft joined together at their wing tips.

The White Knight will transport the two-pilot, six-passenger SpaceShipTwo high above the Earth where the space pod will break away and propel beyond the atmosphere.

"It is attached to the mothership in the middle and when the mothership gets up to 60,000 feet, the spaceship will drop away," Branson said of SpaceShipTwo at the unveiling.

"They will ignite the rocket and it will go from zero to 2,500 miles per hour in 10 seconds, so a real rush."

Passengers aboard the SpaceShipTwo will be able to remain strapped in and view the Earth from portholes next to their seats, or unbuckle and experience weightlessness, once the craft passes beyond the atmosphere.

"This is a very big space ship so you have got a lot of room to float around, lots of windows to looks out," Branson said.

"There will be two astronauts at the front, but the six passengers will be astronauts by the time they are finished."

In an interview with CNN before the unveiling, Branson described the space ship's unique design, which will allow it to return to Earth in an unusual fashion.

"At that stage the space ship effectively turns into a giant shuttlecock -- that would be the genius of Burt Rutan, the engineer behind it," he said.

"And so it literally feathers its way back into the Earth's atmosphere so it doesn't have the enormous heat buildup that some of the NASA spaceships have had in the past."

The mothership completed a year of "rigorous and successful" first phase flight testing prior to the attachment of SpaceShipTwo, the company said. Another period of intensive testing will follow.

Built from carbon composite materials like the mothership, SpaceShipTwo is to be powered by a hybrid rocket motor that is still under development, Branson's company said.

In a statement, Branson said the unveiling "takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this ambitious project is not only moving rapidly, but also making tremendous progress towards our goal of safe commercial operation."

Some 300 passengers have reportedly paid in advance for tickets on the spaceliner. They will be among guests invited to a VIP roll-out at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will christen the spaceliner Virgin Space Ship Enterprise.

New Mexico is building a space port in Upham, New Mexico with a 10,000-foot (three kilometer) runway that is scheduled to be completed by mid-2010.

SpaceShipTwo is successor to SpaceShipOne, a single-seat suborbital spaceplane also designed by Rutan, which won the 2004 Ansari X-Prize for the first manned private spacecraft.

Rutan made aviation history in 1986 with the Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling.

He is the founder of Scaled Composites, LLC, an aircraft design and prototyping outfit, in Mojave, California.

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