LOS ANGELES — As a female voice says "Welcome to space," six passengers in skintight spacesuits unbuckle their seatbelts and somersault in zero gravity, occasionally peeking back at Earth through the private spaceship's large portholes.

Virgin Galactic showed off this animated video promoting the weightless joys of commercial space travel at a trade show for experimental aircraft last month. But the excitement was overshadowed three days later when a deadly flash explosion rocked a Mojave Desert facility where top-secret tests were under way for Virgin's yet-unbuilt spaceship.

The accident at the remote site run by famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan rattled the fledgling space tourism industry, which has enjoyed a honeymoon period since 2004 when Rutan launched SpaceShipOne, the first private manned rocket, into space.

It also offered insight into how two pioneering companies that forged an unlikely partnership two years ago to fly civilians to space reacted to the tragedy. In a reversal of roles, Richard Branson's publicity-seeking Virgin Galactic kept a low profile while its usually silent partner, Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC, took to the Internet to mourn its workers who died.

Some space experts believe Virgin Galactic is following the right strategy because the accident was of an industrial nature and not directly related to spaceflight. But eventually customers and the public will demand answers, they say.

Virgin Galactic did privately contact its prized customers, known as founders, who have paid the full $200,000 to be among the first to experience four minutes of weightlessness.

Stephen Attenborough, Virgin Galactic's astronaut liaison, reassured the founders in an e-mail that the accident's impact on the first commercial spaceflights — expected in late 2009 or 2010 — will be "minimal" and that it was "business as usual."

In a phone interview, Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn said it is not the company's place to comment because the blast occurred in Rutan's backyard. He added that four new customers have signed up since the mishap and none of the astronauts-in-waiting has asked for a refund.

"It hasn't affected Virgin Galactic as a business at all," Whitehorn said. "It hasn't put a stop to anything."

Three technicians died and three others were critically injured while performing a routine cold-flow test of nitrous oxide that did not involve a rocket firing. The company, which has done the test numerous times before without a problem, uses the chemical as an oxidizer in its spaceship's hybrid rocket motor.

California occupational safety regulators are investigating the July 26 explosion and have six months to complete a report.