Its capsule was nearing completion and tests of its rocket engine were nearing full power for the climb to suborbital space, so Canadian Arrow was missing just one key component in its plan to develop a space tourism business: money.

Not anymore.

"We have found our Paul Allen," Canadian Arrow team leader Geoff Sheerin told United Press International.

The team is renaming its venture PlanetSpace, a 50-50 partnership with investor Chirinjeev Kathuria, an Indian-American physician-turned-businessman and aspiring politician.

Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, financed the development of SpaceShipOne, which last year won the $10 million X Prize for a pair of suborbital spaceflights aboard a privately developed, piloted ship. Allen and SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan now are teamed with British entrepreneur Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways and the Virgin Group, to parlay SpaceShipOne technology into a commercial passenger fleet of spaceliners.

Flights aboard the first Virgin Galactic craft are scheduled to begin in 2008 from California's Mojave Airport, home-base of Rutan's company Scaled Composites and the launch and landing site of SpaceShipOne. Ticket prices will be about $200,000.

Sheerin told reporters this week he expects the first commercial flights aboard the Canadian Arrow to take place within 24 months. A ticket to ride will cost about $250,000 and includes two weeks of training.

Kathuria is no stranger to commercial space projects. He was a founding director of a company formed to lease Russia's now-defunct Mir space station. MirCorp paid for one commercial mission by cosmonauts to Mir and arranged to fly the world's first fare-paying tourist, Dennis Tito, to the outpost.

Mir, however, was too far deteriorated for the company to refurbish with the funds it had managed to raise, and the station was removed from orbit by the Russian space agency in March 2001. Tito's flight later was rebooked aboard the International Space Station.

While Kathuria's exact investment in PlanetSpace was not announced, Sheerin said it was enough for his team to finish developing the spaceship and related support systems and begin passenger spaceflights.

"I'm excited about space commercialization and the desire of our species to explore," Kathuria said. "But at the end of the day, the key thing is to make this very profitable for us."

In addition to space ventures, Kathuria has an eye for turning medical, Internet and telecommunications technologies into successful businesses. He also has an appetite for politics; his first candidacy was last year for one of Illinois' U.S. Senate seats, and he recently announced a run for Illinois lieutenant governor in 2006.

Kathuria's investment in PlanetSpace is a huge vote of confidence in the Canadian Arrow, which is comprised of a reusable capsule hoisted into space by a reproduction of the German V-2 rocket engine.

After World War II, the V-2 engines were taken and further developed in the United States and the Soviet Union. The V-2 became the basis of both countries' space launch vehicles.

Sheerin and his team last week successfully test-fired the engine and attained close to the amount of thrust that would be needed to lift off and fly to suborbital altitude.

"We're not testing the engine to see if it works," Sheerin said. "We want to make sure it functions the same as the ones in the history books."

PlanetSpace's V-2 will carry a three-person capsule to an altitude of about 70 miles above the planet. From that height, travelers will experience several minutes of weightlessness and a view of Earth's curve set against the blackness of space before gravity pulls the capsule back through the atmosphere for a parachute landing in water.

The entire trip will take about 15 minutes. PlanetSpace has six astronauts-in-training who will ferry two paying passengers per ride.

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