Sir Richard Branson’s barnstorming suborbital spaceliner is coming together on various floors at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

Not only is his company, Virgin Galactic, working on passenger space travel, but the group has also been chatting it up with billionaire module mogul, Robert Bigelow, about use of his expanding space modules to create Virgin Galactic orbiting hotels.

So says Alex Tai, Chief Operating Officer for Virgin Galactic, speaking here today at the National Space Society’s 26th annual International Space Development Conference.

Tai had some other tidbits. For one, test flights of the SpaceShipTwo — the passenger carrying ship — will start next year. That test period may well last between 12 and 18 months, Tai said.

If test flights uncover no glitches, the vehicle may be ready for operational flight by late 2009. “Safety is our guiding star,” Tai added, saying that snags could push operational status of the vehicle into mid-2010, if needbe.

“The vehicles are all coming together very well,” Tai noted, spotlighting both the SpaceShipTwo design as well as its carrier/drop aircraft, the huge White Knight 2.

Each flight of the SpaceShipTwo is likely to fly to the edge of space some six passengers and two pilots, Tai added. The first year of suborbital runs are projected to haul some 500 people into space, he said.

By the way, that initial price tag per seat is $200,000. But with more innovation that cost could drop to $100,000, perhaps lower, in later years, Tai suggested.