Mr Rutan is the brain behind SpaceShipOne, which in June became the first privately funded spaceship, reaching the edge of space on a sub-orbital hop.

ECONOMIST: Sir Richard Branson aims for the moon

It comes a week after Iran said it had successfully sent a monkey to an altitude of some 120 km (75 miles) for a sub-orbital flight.

BBC: Iran's President Ahmadinejad offers to go into space

U.K.-based airline Virgin Atlantic has announced that any of its 700 pilots can now apply to fly passengers on SpaceShipTwo, the flagship craft for the world's first sub-orbital space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic .

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President John F Kennedy's speech at Rice University in 1961, which laid down the gauntlet for a landing on the Moon, seemed a daunting challenge at the time, especially when the US had only sent Alan Shepard on a 20-minute sub-orbital flight.

BBC: Neil Armstrong: 'Diffident' emissary of mankind