Virgin Galactic Flight Video

Watch a seven-minute video of a simulated Virgin Galactic flight into suborbital space.

Virgin Galactic is training travel agents to begin booking tourism space flights that will launch from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral starting in late 2008. The program, which will use privately built spaceships modeled after SpaceShipOne, was established by British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

After three days of training, passengers will board the spaceship, which will piggyback a specially designed carrier aircraft. At 50,000 feet, the spacecraft will release from the carrier and climb vertically, reaching the speed of sound in 10 seconds powered by hybrid rocket motor. At about 75 miles above Earth, passengers will experience weightlessness. They'll be able to see the curvature of the Earth and its atmosphere before returning for a runway landing. Virgin Galactic executives say their mission is to make space travel affordable.