In July, Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites and Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic unveiled WhiteKnightTwo, the workhorse of their burgeoning suborbital-tourism business.
WhiteKnightTwo is designed to carry a smaller craft, SpaceShipTwo, up to 48,000 feet and release it so it can fire up its rockets and carry paying passengers to the edge of space and back.