Richard Branson has big plans for Virgin Galactic beyond space planes

MOJAVE, California -- On Friday, Sir Richard Branson unveiled Virgin Galactic's newest space plane named Unity with much fanfare: Branson stood up in the sunroof of a Land Rover as the car rolled the ship into the hangar here at the Mojave Air and Space Port. 

Virgin Galactic hopes that this suborbital SpaceShipTwo will be the first in a fleet of commercially operated space planes that will bring paying customers to the edge of space and back again.

But Branson has even bigger plans for Virgin Galactic in the future.

"Why shouldn't we go on to maybe creating a ... one astronaut two people orbital vehicle?" Branson said during a press briefing. "We will start to do that."

He also suggested that Virgin Galactic may have a role to play when the International Space Station is retired in 2024.

"Since the Space Station has only got a few years to run, why shouldn't we be involved in helping replace the Space Station and see what we can do on that?" Branson added.

Branson thinks that Virgin Galactic could also possibly help defend Earth from potentially dangerous asteroids some time down the line, and even use some kind of craft to help clean up space junk in orbit. 

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And as if that weren't enough, the billionaire also believes that Virgin Galactic may do something in the future to bring wireless Internet to more people around the world.

"That could transform peoples' lives," Branson said.

Virgin Galactic and Branson have a long way to go before they get there, however.

The company's spaceship rollout today marks the start of Virgin Galactic's second act as a private spaceflight outfit. The first SpaceShipTwo -- named Enterprise -- disintegrated during a failure in 2014, killing one pilot and leaving the other with serious injuries. 

Unity will now be put through its paces as a space vehicle. 

Before it ever takes to the skies, engineers on the ground will need to verify the space plane's systems, after that, it will start its first tests in the air. 

Eventually, Virgin Galactic hopes that SpaceShipTwo will fly to suborbital space, bringing paying space tourists up about 100 kilometers above the planet, allowing them to experience weightlessness and see the blue Earth against the blackness of space. 

Virgin Galactic isn't the only company aiming for these great heights. 

XCOR Aerospace is also developing a new suborbital space plane, and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is currently testing its New Shepard space system to fly people to space and back in a capsule.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Boeing are both planning to start flying astronauts to the Space Station under a contract with NASA. Those flights should begin sometime in 2017 if everything sticks to schedule. 

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