Virgin Galactic unveils SS2 details and Space sex

To bad I don't have $200,000 - still, sounds great. Go Burt go! On a related note, did anyone else notice that the latest "girls gone wild" commercial included KC-135 weightlessness? (including a guy with a NASA patch on his jumper...) Sex in space... I really need to change my dissertation to that... now that would be a fun research project...

SpaceShipTwo will be much larger than SS1, carrying 6 passengers and 2 pilots. The vehicles will be carried into the air by bigger versions of the White Knight aircraft. Once they fire their new hybrid rocket motors, the vehicles will be capable of reaching an altitude of 140 km. Brave passengers will experience 5 minutes of weightlessness, where they might be allowed to float around the cabin. They’ll have to hurry back to their chairs; however, as they’ll suffer 7Gs of force as the vehicle decelerates back through the atmosphere.

Scaled Composites is still working on the vehicles, with the first test flights in 2007. Virgin Galactic hopes to have paid customers launched by 2008 or 2009. The company claims they already have 100 founder members who’ve already set aside $200,000 for one of the first flights.