Aircraft designer Burt Rutan has started a company to build commercial spacecraft, as he promised to do at this year's Intel Developer Forum, and has picked Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group as a partner. 

The Spaceship Company will be jointly owned by Virgin Galactic and Rutan's materials company, Scaled Composites, that has received significant investment from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

It will develop the Space Ship Two and White Knight Two systems that will form the basis for a fleet of sub-orbital spacecraft. 

"This will truly herald an era of personal spaceflight first described by the visionary science fiction writers of the 1940s and 1950s," said Rutan.

"Richard [Branson] and I share a vision that commercially viable and safe space tourism will provide the foundation for the human colonisation of space.

"I am looking forward (actually looking way up!) to working with Richard on this next exciting phase."

Scaled Composites made the original Space Ship One which won the $10m Ansari X Prize for successfully launching into space twice.

The company also designed the GlobalFlyer which became the first jet to circumnavigate the earth without stopping.