With its sharp-nosed fuselage and sweeping, feathering tails, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) makes for an imposing sight as it comes together in the Scaled Composites facility at Mojave, Calif.

Measuring 60 ft. in overall length, the 42-ft.-span clipped delta-wing vehicle merges the proportions of a business jet with the sci-fi look of a Star Wars fighter. Yet there is nothing illusionary about this project or its suborbital ambitions as Scaled workers begin to close up the wing skins and complete the systems installation on the SS2.

The composite vehicle is on track for rollout in December, and shortly after will be carried aloft beneath the capacious 140-ft.-span wing of the White Knight Two (WK2) mothership for captive-carry tests. Glide flights in 2010 will then lead to initial powered flights to space before culminating in the start of commercial services, widely expected later in 2011.

To reach this point, the project has weathered development issues—including a 2007 propulsion system test accident at Mojave—but Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn now believes most of the biggest hurdles are behind it. “The big one now is to make sure the spaceship will work properly, but there’s nothing I can see at the moment that’s a showstopper,” he says.

With a rather unique support base of $40 million in deposits representing $60 million in total income from 300 suborbital adventurers, the project’s financial footing remains firm despite the global economic gloom. “These are the kinds of customers who are not much affected by that, and sales this month are better than they were a year ago. Regardless of what’s happening in the economy, success or failure is in the hands of the people in the project,” says Whitehorn.

Yet for all the headline-grabbing plans for space tourism, a key element of Virgin Galactic’s business plan is to quickly develop the baseline WK2/SS2 architecture into a delivery system for cargo and science payloads at a fraction of current prices. “We’ve got the basis for a really good business in three areas—payloads, science in space and space tourism. These are all symbiotic and not mutually exclusive,” says Whitehorn, who notes that low-Earth-orbit launch costs of less than $3 million could be achieved, versus the $28-30 million typical of today.

Longer-term ambitions to develop the launcher business were boosted in July when Abu Dhabi-based investment group Aabar committed to buy a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic for $280 million. The deal includes plans to commit a further $100 million to develop a satellite launch capability for the system and the creation of a spaceport in Abu Dhabi.

“This new investment allows us to bring forward the satellite work,” says Whitehorn. In addition, Virgin Galactic aims to pursue a recently issued NASA request for proposals for a suborbital science program. “We will go to 110 km. [68 mi.] with SS2 for space tourists and up to 140 km. for space experiments such as microgravity,” he says.

Space tourists remain the key enabler to both continuing development of the spaceship and launcher combination, as well as to building the economies of scale, which will help bring launch frequencies up and costs down. “We’re still getting sign-ups, and we’d like to be at around the 600 level by the time we begin operations,” says Whitehorn. Initial flight tempo will be around one per week, gradually increasing to around one per day. The first passengers will gain space-farer status on reaching an altitude of 100 km. and are each paying $200,000 for the experience. “But after the first few years we will start bringing prices down,” says Whitehorn, who alludes to the similar gradual reduction in cost over time for luxury items such as flat-screen TVs.

The SS2 is sized to take up to six passengers and two crew, and has a 90-in.-dia. fuselage to provide sufficient room for maneuvering for several minutes in zero-g, as well as for sizable science experiments. The vehicle is more than double the size of SS1, the pioneering Scaled Composites-built craft with capacity for a single pilot and two passengers. SS1 sparked the space tourism market into life when it claimed the $10-million Ansari X Prize in 2004 by reaching 100-km. altitude twice in a two-week period with the equivalent of three people on board.