The sleek, bullet-shaped spacecraft is about the size of a large business jet _ with wide windows and seats for six well-heeled passengers to take a thrill ride into space.

It's billed as the world's first commercial spaceship, designed to be carried aloft by an exotic jet before firing its rocket engine to climb beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

In a Hollywood-style rollout, Virgin Galactic on Monday took the cloak off SpaceShipTwo, which had been under secret development for two years in the Mojave Desert. The company plans to sell suborbital space rides for $200,000 a ticket, offering passengers 2 1/2-hour flights that include about five minutes of weightlessness.

Blaring music and a laser show heralded the rollout of SpaceShipTwo as it glided down a runway mated to its mothership and came to a stop before a throng of wannabe astronauts, dignitaries and VIPs who shivered in the desert cold for the splashy unveil.

"Isn't this the sexist spaceship ever?" said British billionaire and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson, who partnered with famed aviation designer Burt Rutan on the venture.

The stubby-winged spaceship possesses a slender fuselage that narrows at the nose and tail. Once in space, its unique twin tail booms can pivot upward to increase drag and allow the spaceship to plunge like a shuttlecock back into the atmosphere.

SpaceShipTwo's debut marks the first public appearance of a commercial passenger spacecraft. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson were on hand to christen it "VSS Enterprise" by breaking champagne bottles on the craft's nose.

Branson hopes to begin passenger flights out of New Mexico sometime in 2011 after a series of rigorous safety tests. The entrepreneur said he, his family and Rutan will be the first to fly on SpaceShipTwo.

SpaceShipTwo is based on Rutan's design of a prototype called SpaceShipOne. In 2004, SpaceShipOne captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize by becoming the first privately manned craft to reach space.

Since that historic feat, engineers from Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC have been laboring in the Mojave Desert on a larger design suitable for commercial use.

Rutan, who has always stressed safety, said his goal is to make his private spaceflight venture safer than government space programs and on par with the early commercial airliners.

Some 300 clients have paid the $200,000 ticket or placed a deposit, according to Virgin Galactic.

The last time there was this level of hoopla in the high desert was a little more than a year ago when Branson and Rutan trotted out to great fanfare the twin-fuselage mothership, White Knight Two, that will carry SpaceShipTwo.