In September 2020, China appears to have launched its own Boeing-like reusable space plane and may have as many as seven crewed and non-crewed spaceplane projects in development. The dream of the graceful spaceplane is still live, even if the ambition for their actual role may have shrunk. Only the small, unmanned Boeing remains in service. In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a large spaceplane maneuvers effortlessly in time with Strauss's Blue Danube waltz to dock with a huge spinning space station.ĭespite many plans, prototypes, and experimental flights since, only two spaceplanes have ever entered service, the Space Shuttle and the top-secret Boeing X-37B.
Less than 70 years later, we had a thoroughly realistic example of what that might look like. The dream of flying all the way into space began when the first aircraft flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.
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