Virgin Atlantic yesterday unveiled the first commercial passenger spaceship, a sleek black-and-white vessel that represents an expensive gamble on creating a commercial space tourism industry.

The company hopes the winged, minivan-sized SpaceShipTwo will rocket tourists into zero gravity beginning in two or three years.

"This will be the start of commercial space travel," Virgin Atlantic Airways founder and billionaire Richard Branson said at the launch in California's Mojave Desert. "You become an astronaut."

The project, with a $450 million budget, would see the construction of six commercial spaceships that would take passengers high enough to achieve weightlessness and see the curvature of Earth set against the backdrop of space.

A twin-hulled aircraft named Eve would carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of about 60,000 feet (18,288 metres) before releasing it. The spaceship would then fire its onboard rocket engines, climbing to about 65 miles (104 kilometres) above Earth.

The trip would take about two and a half hours, with passengers experiencing about five minutes of weightlessness.

Some 300 aspiring astronauts have put down deposits for the $200,000 ride, which includes three days of training.

Eventually, Virgin Galactic, the offshoot of Virgin Atlantic, may offer suborbital travel that could dramatically cut the length of flights.

"Subject to American government permission, we may well start developing a programme to try to take people from continent to continent, you know, two hours from Los Angeles to Australia," Sir Richard said in an interview with Reuters TV.

"Can't promise that we're going to be able to do it, but if you don't try things you don't succeed, so we'll definitely give it a go," he said.

Other potential business ventures include flying scientists and experiments and launching small payloads into space.