Cool and Cooler - space travel

Very high geekdom with this two-fer. Sir Richard Branson's company Virgin is bankrolling Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites to build space vehicles. They already had a stunning success with SpaceShipOne and the White Knight carrying vehicle, winning the Ansari X Prize. And now, Flight Global has conceptual pics of the SpaceShipTwo and White Knight II as well as photos of the construction:

PICTURES: Virgin Galactic unveils Dyna-Soar style SpaceShipTwo design and twin-fuselage White Knight II configuration
Virgin Galactic has unveiled a SpaceShipTwo (SS2) design, created by Scaled Composites, that harks back to the NASA/USAF Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar glider of the 1960s, while Scaled's carrier aircraft, White Knight II (WK2) has been given a twin-fuselage configuration.

To be launched on a Lockheed Martin Titan III rocket, Dyna-Soar was for hypersonic flight research but the programme was cancelled before the first vehicle was completed. Some of its subsystems were used in later X-15 flight research and Dyna-Soar became a testbed for advanced technologies that contributed to projects, including the Space Shuttle.

The second part of the two-fer is what makes this project so incredibly kick-ass and NON-National Arrows and Spears Administration is this second link to ZD Net:

Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo; Plans open architecture spaceship
Virgin Galactic on Wednesday unveiled designs for SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightTwo, two vehicles that are designed to usher in private spaceflight. The technology behind the system will have an open architecture �like Linux,� said officials.

In an event at the American Museum at Natural History in New York (see gallery right), Virgin Galactic unveiled the first product of venture to manufacture a reusable spacecraft and its launch craft. In July 2005, Burt Rutan, President of Scaled Composites and Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group of companies, formed a company to manufacture and design SpaceShipTwo, a suborbital craft, and WhiteKnightTwo, a launch system.

�Our vision of White Knight 2 would be part of a much longer development program. Have open architecture like Linux to allow other people to develop new vehicles and revolutionize new industrial uses of space,� said Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic, Virgin�s spaceline.

Whitehorn clarified the open architecture point a bit: He said that if interested parties come to Virgin and Scaled Composites they can use key points such as WhiteKnightTwo�s wing to build new aircraft. �We will work with people that come to work with us to do new things with the WhiteKnightTwo. If people come to us we�ll work with them.�

Just WOW! NASA was good for its time but it is very top-heavy. Time to let the dinosaurs finish their time on earth and let these new primates start trying things out... I would love to do a flight on one of these craft -- even suborbital but a couple turns around the planet would be awesome... The hair on my arm is standing up as I type this -- this may actually be in our grasp sometime...