We don’t know about any of you, but last summer we got pretty excited about the race for the future — that of privately funded and manned space travel. The showdown for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which culminated in the victory of Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, was a welcome distraction from the daily grind. Instead of worrying about an endless inbox of unreturned e-mails, we worried about whether the The Da Vinci team had finally secured a launch license.

We’re not nerds, though. We swear.

If you have ever experienced a similar amount of space lust and have got a free lunch hour today, get yourself down to the National Air and Space Museum for the SpaceShipOne donation ceremony and unveiling, starting at noon. Eccentric billionaire and SpaceShipOne’s sole funder Paul Allen, as well as designer Rutan will be on hand with their craft as they hand the keys over to Museum Director Gen. Jack Dailey. If it was us, we’d be hard-pressed not to pull a little Ferris Bueller’s Day Off type action and take that baby out for a spin.

As we referenced before, the photo above was snapped and added to Flickr by clarissa in dc.