Mojave , California ( CNN ) -- Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson on Monday unveiled the winged rocket his company developed to give paying customers a brief taste of space . The 300 people who have given Branson 's Virgin Galactic $ 20,000 deposits toward the $ 200,000 space-ride tickets were invited see SpaceShipTwo in its Mojave , California , hangar . CNN was given an early peek . The first flight in 2011 -- after 18 months of testing -- will launch from a spaceport under construction in New Mexico , Branson said . Another aircraft will carry the 60-foot-long SpaceShipTwo to 60,000 feet above the Earth , where `` they will drop away and they will then go to 2,000 miles per hour in 10 seconds , where they get propelled into space , '' Branson said . Its hybrid rocket motor -- still under development -- will reach a suborbital altitude high enough to reach the edges of space and weightlessness , according to Branson . `` Once in space , [ passengers ] will unbuckle their seats , '' he said . `` There are enormous windows , which no spacecraft has had before , for them to look back at the Earth . They can float around and become astronauts . '' The cabin , which seats six paying passengers , is 90 inches -- nearly 8 feet -- in diameter , which provides `` lots of room for zero-G fun , '' Branson 's Web site said . The first voyage will carry Branson , his wife , mother and children , the entrepreneur said . `` Actually , that 's my mum on the side -- a younger version of my mum on the side of the spaceship , '' he said . After just a few minutes of space tourism , SpaceShipTwo will glide back to Earth , landing where it began the trip in New Mexico , he said . About 80,000 people have placed their names on the waiting list for seats on SpaceShipTwo and its successors . `` What we want to be able to do is bring space travel down to a price range where hundreds of thousands of people would be able to experience space , and they never dreamed that [ they ] could , '' Branson said . He said he hopes the technology will lead to a new form of Earth travel , jetting people across oceans and continents faster through suborbital routes . `` We would love at some stage , obviously subject to government approval , to take the engineers and start looking at shrinking the world , '' Branson said . The spacecraft was based on the technology and carbon-composite construction developed for SpaceShipOne , which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for the first privately funded human flight to the edge of space . The reusable spacecraft is a joint effort by aviation designer Burt Rutan 's Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic , a space tourism venture that is a subsidiary of Branson 's Virgin Group .
Billionaire astronaut Richard Hughes unveils himself . Current and prospective space - ride tourists get a chance at publicity . Virgin Galactic has deposits from 300 people toward $ 200,000 tickets . Branson says the first flight into space will launch in 2020 in New Mexico .