Branson's vision for space travel – named after his mum

They look more like contraptions from the pages of a Dan Dare comic than the products of a hi-tech aviation company, but a revolutionary aircraft and rocket ship that will launch the new era of space tourism were unveiled yesterday.

Virgin Galactic, the arm of Sir Richard Branson's trains-to-mobile phones empire that charges "astronauts" $200,000 (£100,000) to experience five minutes of weightlessness, will begin testing its White Knight mothership this summer ahead of a possible first space flight next year.

The construction of the mothership and SpaceShipTwo – the Virgin rocket that will carry six passengers at a time on two-hour trips into sub-orbital space – brings considerably closer the advent of ordinary (albeit super-wealthy) individuals travelling to what was once the domain of astronauts. Both machines are due to be completed this year in a heavily-guarded hangar in California's Mojave Desert.

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Sir Richard is one of a group of tycoons who, fired by childhood memories of the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, are funding projects to send people and cargo into the cosmos. Among his competitors are Elon Musk, founder of the money transfer website PayPal, who will test his rocket in March, and Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas hotelier who dreams of building an inflatable plastic space station by 2012.

Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, said: "We want this year to be the year of the spaceship. We have an opportunity to transform the way state space agencies and governments have so far chosen to utilise space. Essentially, they are still launching big versions of the Second World War V2 rocket. Our technology will do a similar job at a fraction of the cost – both financial and to the environment."

In the meantime, the task of testing the White Knight, which will be named Eve after Sir Richard's mother, continues as designers seek to push forward the boundaries of aviation using ultra-light carbon composite materials – essentially strong plastics. Scaled Composites, the company building the craft, suffered a setback last year when three employees were killed by an explosion during fuel testing for SpaceShipTwo.

Once it is finished, the mothership – a twin-hulled design peppered with large circular windows to maximise views of space – will be largest aircraft built entirely from composite materials. With a wingspan of 140ft, it is similar in size to a Boeing 767 passenger jet.

It will carry SpaceShipTwo between the two hulls, climbing to an altitude of more than 50,000ft before releasing the rocketship, which will then fire its solid-fuel engine to soar 110km above Earth.

Its six passengers will experience five minutes of weightlessness, floating around a cabin designed to give occupants more than 7ft of headroom. The ship will re-enter Earth's atmosphere using movable wings, which will minimise the risk of the craft breaking up.

Virgin Galactic expects to carry 500 passengers in its first year and 50,000 over 10 years, reducing costs to as little as £10,000 per flight. The White Knight, powered by four ultra-efficient jet engines perhaps run on biofuel, will be developed to carry unmanned rockets that will launch satellites into low orbits. Virgin is also talking to the Met Office about developing small satellites that could monitor climate change, including whether pledges to slow rainforest destruction are being maintained.

Virgin Galactic, which is investing £125m in the project, is also building a "spaceport" training centre and terminal in New Mexico for its customers. They range from the leading environmentalist Professor James Lovelock to Alan Watts, an electrician who was invited to buy a ticket with two million air miles he collected on his credit card. Mr Watts, 52, along with many of the 200 other people who have already paid for their trips, was in the audience in New York yesterday as the final designs were unveiled.

Mr Watts, of Harrow, north-west London, said he amassed his air miles over more than a decade from "air travel and some shopping trips by my wife". He added: "When I was first approached [to fly into space], I thought I was being wound up. My wife and I were going to use the air miles to travel around the world when I retired. But my family persuaded me to go and I think it is one of the best decisions I ever made.

"I never had any great ambitions to go into space but it was an opportunity that just came along. Now I really can't wait."

Another participant in the British contingent of would-be space travellers, the second-largest group of Virgin Galactic clients after Americans, is Trevor Beattie, 49, the advertising executive renowned for his campaigns for French Connection and Wonderbra. He said yesterday: "I think the designs are absolutely sensational. It is all very Thunderbirds – this is what all thought the future would look like when we were kids. And here it is for real. I have no doubt it will be as safe as any other form of travel."

Burt Rutan, the engineer who founded Scaled Composites, is revered in aviation circles for his ground-breaking designs. He claims Virgin's spacecraft will be as safe as the first commercial airliners which went into service in the 1920s.