the.com/spaceplane
A plane that gets bored of the sky and leaves the atmosphere entirely.
means An aircraft-spacecraft hybrid that can fly like a plane (often taking off or landing on a runway) while also reaching or passing the edge of space.
from A straightforward 20th-century compound of 'space' and 'plane,' coined as engineers began designing vehicles — like rocket planes and shuttle concepts — that blurred the line between aviation and spaceflight; the word simply names the hybrid as plainly as the thing itself behaves.
- reentry trick
- glides home like a plane, not a fireball brick
- pioneer
- North American X-15 flew to space in 1963
- reuse logic
- built to fly again Tuesday, not vaporize Thursday
- modern example
- Boeing X-37B orbits secretly for years at a time