Virgin's Richard Branson has unveiled the rocket plane he will use to take paying passengers into space.
About 300 people are reported to have signed up for a two-hour flight, costing $200,000 a go.
The plane is called SpaceShipTwo. It will be tested over the next 18 months before being allowed to fly passengers on short trips just above the atmosphere.
Mr Branson intends to run the first flights out of New Mexico before extending operations around the globe.
The billionaire said he plans to be on the craft's first passenger flight, accompanied by his family and the US designer of the space ship, Burt Rutan.
SpaceShipTwo is a successor to SpaceShipOne, a single-seat suborbital spaceplane also designed by Mr Rutan, which won the 2004 Ansari X-Prize for the first manned private spacecraft.
Mr Rutan made aviation history in 1986 with the Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling.
Mr Branson said that he was proud that Virgin was in the forefront of commercial space travel.
'I am sure there will be other people who will compete with us and I am sure that one day we will have a Virgin hotel in space,' he said.
'One day we will transport people from Paris to Australia in two hours using similar technology, so I think a lot could come from today's event.'
