All Crewed Spaceplanes

Crewed spaceplanes are winged or lifting-body vehicles built to fly and glide through Earth's atmosphere like an aircraft while also functioning as a spacecraft beyond it, a hybrid shape that sets them apart from the blunt, wingless reentry capsules used by most crewed missions. Among the members of this atlas, the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar was a United States Air Force program to build a crewed spaceplane for reconnaissance, bombing and space-rescue missions before its 1963 cancellation; the purported Blackstar system was reported as a secret orbital spaceplane concept; and the rocket-powered North American X-15 flew as a hypersonic aircraft under the X-plane research series, reaching space altitude on several of its flights. All three trace to the same rocket-powered, winged design lineage that later, larger orbital spaceplanes such as the Space Shuttle also followed.