Pilots at Richard Branson's Spaceship Company continue testing Burt Rutan designs that will carry paying passengers into space. The company says SpaceShipTwo will achieve its first space flight by the end of this year. This year's flights will be for testing purposes, and tourist flights will begin in 2014. "The view will be fantastic," said pilot David Mackay, in an interview with the BBC. "And of course you'll be able to experience weightlessness." The tourist spaceship is based on the Rutan design that won the $10 million X Prize, utilizing a rocket-powered vessel that is carried aloft by a twin-fuselage mothership.
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