Private Spaceship Factory Opens for Business in Calif. Desert

The WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo launch system is showcased during opening day ceremonies of the Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar.

In a grand and ceremonious style, a factory site that will crank out private spaceships has opened its hangar doors. The $8 million hangar was specifically designed to support the final stages of assembly and integration for prime customer Virgin Galactic’s fleet of passenger-carrying suborbital SpaceShipTwos and the mothership launch craft, WhiteKnightTwos. Called the Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar, or FAITH, the special building was unveiled Sept. 19 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. That’s the home port for Scaled Composites, builder of the SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnightTwo launch system.

Onlookers take part in Sept. 19 ceremonies at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

FAITH is a 68,000-square-foot (6,317 square meters) structure. It's big enough to accommodate the first-ever side-by-side public viewing of WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightOne/SpaceShipOne system, which happened at the grand opening ceremony. TSC is the aerospace production joint venture of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, which teamed up to build the world’s first fleet of commercial spaceships and flying launch pads.


Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is being built to carry six customers and two pilots on suborbital jaunts. That trek to the edge of space and back provides passengers several minutes of out-of-the-seat, zero-gravity experience. During the flight, space travelers are promised astounding views of the planet from the black sky of space for about 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) in every direction. In the space reservation department, Virgin Galactic has signed up more than 450 individuals who have made deposits between $20,000 and the total per-seat cost of $200,000. Total deposits received are over $57 million. Over 85,000 people from 125 countries have registered their interest in becoming a Virgin Galactic astronaut, according to the company.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo private spaceliner flies over San Francisco's Bay Area Bridge with the city as a backdrop while en route to San Francisco International Airport with the Virgin America aircraft "My Other Ride is a Spaceship" to open a new terminal at San Francisco International Airport on April 6, 2011.