At the Natural History Museum in New York City this morning, gazillionaire Richard Branson and aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan have just unveiled the design for SpaceShipTwo, the follow-up to Rutan’s X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne, which, you may remember, was the first privately built, manned, and reusable vehicle to reach outer space. That’s a photo of the new spacecraft up there, slung between the twin fuselages of the White Knight 2 launch vehicle that will carry it aloft; click to embiggen and have a good, close look at the future. The White Knight 2 is said to have the same wingspan as a B-29 bomber, while SpaceShipTwo is large enough for passengers to get up and walk around during their suborbital tourist flights. The dual vehicle will fly for Branson’s Virgin Galactic and there are reportedly already 100 wanna-be astronauts on the waiting list.

It’s unlikely the fares for this thing will ever drop low enough for anyone other than venture capitalists and trust-fund babies to take a ride, but it’s still pretty exciting. Even as we’re reading that government-funded manned space missions may never happen, the private sector is forging ahead with its eyes on the stars. We may get there yet. If nothing else, this vehicle could open up the possibility of fast sub-orbital passenger flights around the world. Imagine flying from Los Angeles to Sydney in only a couple of hours (or less) instead of the better part of two days…

Further details here.