Nasa's just provided a nice shot of their two modified 747 that used to ferry the Space Shuttles in formation.This can be seen on their facebook page (no need to register) :

Quite a nice view of these aircrafts with those very specific modification done to be able to ferry the shuttle, I think it must have been quite a great task for Boeing to come with such airplanes that have a really completely different use than other 747. Cheers. Aurélien

Sad they'll never have the honor of carrying another shuttle on their backs. :(Hopefully they'll be able to ferry something new in the next 10 years. I'm hoping for next 5 years but I think that's too optimistic based on Congress almost defaulting.

good post. Can't wait to see what NASA has in it's future. Such a shame that Congress has had to come to such a poor solution regarding space exploration. The great Americanicon. Non the less more is to come from NASA.

Pardon me, instead of reducing science research and space exploration I would have cut a bunch of military sections instead. Call me a hippy...

yeah well I wished that for example for the human space exploration programs there could be some kind of world groupement, I mean, something like the ISS that would take the best of every country to make one nice an safe spacecraft to take man to the moon and farther. Something like the ISS program which I really like because a lot of countries are involved and it's some of the few kinds of thigns where man really works together. I'm sure it would be great and make it easier to have some international exploration programs :) But I don't believe this will become true before man establishes some kind of station to have people live there out of earth that it will happen.