It was quite the event - a magic Mojave Monday where heat and wind waft through the airspace that future public space travelers will fly through on their way to space.

While the July 28 unveiling of the Scaled Composites WhiteKnightTwo — the super-carrier plane that will haul SpaceShipTwo skyward for its high-altitude release — was cause for celebration by both Scaled and Virgin Galactic, there were quite a few notices of intent also being floated.

For one, Burt Rutan and his Scaled team clearly see the WhiteKnightTwo — and beefed up follow-on vehicles — as lofting not only satellites into orbit, but also as a staging craft for flyback boosters, as well as hurling people into orbit, right there from the Mojave Air and Space Port.

When WhiteKnightTwo takes to the air it will be evaluating a number of SpaceShipTwo items - from avionics to passenger cabin features and actuators, Rutan told me.

“We will, in many ways, be testing the systems for SpaceShipTwo when we fly WhiteKnightTwo. It’s a systems testbed,” Rutan emphasized.

Meanwhile, the still shrouded in secrecy SpaceShipTwo is roomy enough to carry 11, Rutan explained - but nobody would want a center seat on the early, and expensive, “pay per view” suborbital treks.

After all, there’s got to be elbow room for passengers to get those bags of gourmet and specially sauteed peanuts open!