Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo blew apart after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the explosion.

One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was taken by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.

The crash area was about 120 miles north of downtown Los Angeles and 20 miles from the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the flight originated.

"Space is hard, and today was a tough day," Virgin Galactic CEO and president George Whitesides said. "The future rests in many ways on hard, hard days like this."

The accident occurred just as it seemed commercial space flights were near, after a period of development that lasted far longer than hundreds of prospective passengers had expected.

When Virgin Group licensed the technology from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who put $26 million into SpaceShipOne, Branson envisioned operating flights by 2007. In interviews last month, he talked about the first flight being next spring with his son.

"It's a real setback to the idea that lots of people are going to be taking joyrides into the fringes of outer space any time soon," said John Logsdon, retired space policy director at George Washington University. "There were a lot of people who believed that the technology to carry people is safely at hand."

Friday's flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mothership or functioned as a glider after release.

At 60 feet long, SpaceShipTwo featured two large windows for each of up to six passengers, one on the side and one overhead.

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Space tourism craft explodes on flight