This sort of thing comes round every few years. Never gonna happen in this financial market.

Look how much concord overran budget. This would be the same. Virtually impossible to judge costs due to unknowns. Nice dream though.

This is closer to reality though...
http://www.virgingalactic.com/

Weird. Never seen a craft do that before.

I assume this stops some of the friction involved on re-entry.

Found this discription of Spaceshipone on the encyclopedia astronautica:

The unique configuration allowed aircraft-like qualities for boost, glide, and landing. Rutan wanted to avoid the use of fly-by-wire stability augmentation systems normally required to handle the instability inherent in transonic aircraft. He originally planned to use petal-like drag brakes, to be followed by a vertical parachute recovery. But finally he decided to use pneumatic actuators to pop-up the wing and tail boom in a 'shuttlecock' configuration. This provided for a stable high-drag re-entry, which required no control inputs from the pilot. After the aircraft had slowed to 160 kph, the wings and tail would return to their normal position, and the pilot would fly the aircraft in a 185 kph glide in descending circles to the airfield.

Pretty darned clever really