Space Planes: The Past, Present and Future 

Click athleticgreens.com/sideprojects to get a 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D3K2 & 5travel packs FREE with your first purchase!

Let's make sure Simon never forgets the name "Enterprise", considering that was the name of the prototype space shuttle which was used for atmospheric testing of the design, so a space plane that was more plane than space-faring, sadly never retrofitted for actual use, but was named as such because of trekkies doing a mass write-in campaign to rename it from Constitution to Enterprise (and thus the fictional Enterprise NCC-1701 was given the class name of "Constitution Class"), and yes, I know, NEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDD!!!! :P

If we're counting suborbital spaceplanes like the SpaceShipTwo, the X-15 was actually the first spaceplane (and it arguably inspired SpaceShipTwo as well).

Why is Starliner included in a video about spaceplanes?

Forgot about DreamChaser and the Soviet BOR-4. Both definately much more a Space Plane than Starliner!

How is the Starliner a space plane? also Dreamchaser?

Dave Page, dude, what happened!? You missed the X-20 Dyna-Soar! And Starliner is a space capsule, not a space plane!

Simon… good gravy. You forgot the X-15.

Geese huh... Canadian Space Agency needs to look into this again.

Although Branson footed the bill for SS2, it was the brain-child of Burt Rutan of Scaled Composits.

2:40 - Chapter 1 - Original concept 3:20 - Chapter 2 - The space shuttles 4:50 - Chapter 3 - Troubles & retirement 6:05 - Chapter 4 - The soviet buran 7:30 - Chapter 5 - Virgin galactic spaceship 2 9:10 - Chapter 6 - CST 100 Starliner 9:55 - Chapter 7 - Radian 1 - Chapter 8 -

X-37B Space Shuttle what about this?

Starliner is a space plane? Looks like a standard capsule to me.

Another video to share with my 11 year old son. He, and I, love when you do space videos. (I like all your videos, he just obsessed with space). In a recent conversation my son said when he grows up, he wants to work in mission control. How awesome is that? Maybe you could do a video, "what happens in mission control?" Maybe a Side Projects, or TIFO video?

Bit of a miss on the Starliner section. Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) was successfully launched to the ISS on May 19, 2022 and landed back on Earth on May 25, 2022. Love all of your channels! I'm sure this one was probably in the can for a while and might've just missed the launch when script was written.

No mention of the British Skylon? Your researchers dropped the ball on this topic.

Did you put in Starliner to pad the run time?

So, just crunched the numbers, Simon. Between all of your channels, you (with potential for overlap) have 6,509 videos across all of your channels, and a total of 10,416,000 subscribers. I’m convinced you have a twin.

CST-100. That was a punchline without a joke.

SSTO is pretty hard and very inefficient , I can’t see Radian working without some pretty big advances despite what the marketing says

Has somebody been reading old issues of Omni magazine?

The Virgin rig was derived from an American one.

Simon completely skipped over the first space-plane, the North American X-15. Not an orbital craft, but set and holds the manned speed record (Mach 6.72 = 4,519mph = 7,274 kph_, and held the altitude record (353,200 ft = 107,700 m) for over 40 years.

Gonna get a bit nitpicky here but I think it is very important. Spaceship 2 is based on spaceship 1 that was designed and built by scaled composites, who were later bought out by Branson after they had won the xprize by being the first civilian craft to get to "space" (or something very similar to that, I can't remember the exact wording right now). Richard has had very little to do with it besides being a money/hype man and "improving" (eg meeting regulations) the vehicle so paying passengers can travel on it. Speaking of that, they found a whole bunch of things wrong with it after Branson's flight that they have to fix and it has since not flown, and probably won't ever again. They have also announced spacecraft 3, which will probably be just as big a bust as 2 was for a myraid of reasons. The vehicle was originally designed to be as light as possible with everything unnecessary stripped out and or dumbed down to the nth degree (the vehicle is literally controlled by cables and pulleys like in WWII aircraft. Not that it's a bad thing, I am just giving some prospective here). When you start making the systems more robust so you can sell it as reliable and safe to passengers, you lose the advantages the vehicle had. It's the old tale of the dragon eating it's tail, or as is said in the aerospace industry, it's the tyranny of the rocket equation. Edit - also spaceships 1 and 2 never really leave the atmosphere, they just travel to the edge of it. If they did leave the atmosphere they would need a system to deal with reentry heating, but they don't, so the vehicles are lacking one. Also why is Starliner in this video. In the first sentence you read, you literally call it a capsule. Last time I checked, a capsule is not a space plane. You should have also covered architectures such as Sierra Space's Dream Chaser, the military's Dyna-Soar, the Soviet Union's MiG-105. Those are space planes.

Thanks for all of your videos, absolutely love them, fantastic!!

That’s a lot of stuff to drink / eat every morning. And all that internet surfing. Man, that’s a busy morning

This video wasn’t put together well. Why is starliner included? It’s not a spaceplane. Where’s the dreamchaser and X-37B? Two modern spaceplanes with one about to launch and one being in use. The Spaceship 2 was derived from an American design and is definitely not the brain child of Richard Branson. Also skylon? It’s arguably most important spaceplane being worked on is nowhere to be found despite its program being fairly large especially compared to Radian. There’s also no mention about how spaceplanes are for the most part less efficient than modern and historical rockets which is why the shuttle program was considered a failure by most. Idk who writes these scripts but they gotta up their game.

How long ago was this shot? Starliner docked to the ISS the 23rd of may

Looking at thumbnail pic.. Take your sideprojects money? No man, you've earned it!

The Virgin Space Ship was the brainchild of Burt Rutan, not Richard Branson, and built on the knowledge gained by the smaller Space Ship 1 which won the "X Prose" as the first civilian space craft.

An outpost on Mars within the next twenty years is less likely than an honest politician.

Wow these comments 😂 Enjoyed the video Simon, more space stuff would be appreciated :D

Why is Starliner a space-plane. It is not more or less a capsule than Apollo or Dragon. (apart from the fact that the second test had already taken place some weeks ago when this video was published). What is missing is Sierra Space‘s Dreamchaser, that is about to go into space (and to the ISS) in a few months (and apposed to the dreaded Starliner) really is a spaceplane!

Richard Branson was not the "brainchild" of Virgin Galactic as the craft was designed and built by Burt Rutan and his Scaled Composites well before Virgin Galactic was even founded. Branson surely provided funding in exchange for branding -- but can you call him it's brainchild? No.

Good video 👍

Speaking of missing space planes, there was the X-33 that was to be the prototype for the Venture Star single stage to orbit spaceplane. A launch complex was built at Edwards AFB including a MCC (probably all those consoles still wrapped in plastic like the NERVA control center). They even live streamed construction of the vehicle(s) in late 1990s, obviously not HD but very interesting. This is the one where composite fuel tank had problems, engineers found aluminum fuel tank will work and be lighter. But Dan Goldin insisted composite fuel tank, Lockheed requested more money which Dan refused to give to the program was cancelled. Shame though as it could have given some serious demonstrations of new rocket engine and high temp materials. Then there was the Orbital Space Plane program looking at concepts to replace the Shuttle. There were three candidates: A delta wing like Shuttle, a lifting body like M2F2, and a capsule like Apollo. But because the name is OSP, the selection had to be a plane. Overall it got mediocre attention and later cancelled. That Radian space plane is a scam. Face it you guys, nobody will ever avoid the tyranny of the rocket equation when applied to single stage to orbit. Especially a winged vehicle. Dale Myers immediately ruled out SSTO in 1970 when selecting Space Shuttle design. The X-29 was a cover for Copper Canyon, the best X-33 could do is single stage to Utah.

You missed 2: x-15 and the unmanned x-37… which is in space right now. Also, the starliner is a capsule, not a space plane.

Speaking of. I just read an article the other day about how the X-37B just broke the record for the longest orbital flight. Or something like that. Truth be told I only skimmed through it, as most people do. But can you blame me? I think if we took the time to fully read, comprehend and understand the implications of everything we saw in the news, we'd not only have no free time to do anything else, but we'd also probably become a nervous wreck given how negative news tends to be. But bad news sells better than good news. So that's what they tell us about.

Skip to 1:40 to escape asinine advertisement for grass-clipping tea.

Richard Branson is not an engineer. Please don't suggest he thought up the design of spacecraft. He didn't.

Horizontal to and landing spaceplanes have been the holy grail for the last 40 yrs. I was the director of the AF Military Spaceplane program in the late 1990s when it was a black project. You might recognize part of what we were up 😮to if you are familiar with the AF X-37 which is currently operational

Woah, woah, woah. Buran was not intended to be launched from a plane. You may be thinking of MAKS which was a smaller craft with an external tank that was intended to be launched from a plane. The Buran was ostensibly a Shuttle analogue, the only difference being different OMS fuel systems, and the movement of the external tank engines onto the tank rather than the spacecraft. One interesting feature intended for the Soviet design was to also employ jet engines to give it better cross range capabilities when landing, but those weren't implemented before the programme was scrapped. Just thought I'd mention this as I heard you say Buran was supposed to be launched from a plane. Not the case.

Important to mention the X-15 spaceplane and the soviet "Spiral" as well. Neither was capable of orbit, but they're similar to Virgin Galactic's current flights!

Also, no mention of the Boeing X-37? Or of Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser? Never really heard of Radian One by comparison.

I hate to break it to you, but the Boeing Starliner is not a spaceplane.

🙌🏻 I’m Friedrich Zander’s great (great?) nephew!

Strange video. A bunch of space planes missed, but you include Starliner which isn't a space plane.

Simon have you failed your fellow countrymen??? Why did you not mention Skylon and the Sabre engine??? How about a video on Skylon and the Sabre engine?

With 2 stages to orbit basically mastered, it's only a matter of time and money for single stage. Using a rocket or magnetically propelled sled or some sort of mothership would still be considered 2 stages. Whatever craft accomplishes single stage to orbit would need to launch, reach orbit and land completely under it's own power.

Last time I was this early, the Space Shuttle was still flying.

Wait, why is Starliner in this video? Also Radian One isn't particularly exciting, as it'll (apparently) be an exclusively rocket-powered SSTO, meaning it'll be very limited in its potential payload capacity. Some upcoming space planes that are really exciting though would be the Dream Chaser from Sierra Space or the Aurora from the german company Polaris Raumflugzeuge, and perhaps Stratolaunchs Black Ice in the future among others.

I love how in order to stay healthy you have to pay out the a** and drink bog water. What was wrong with taking a pill again?

Where's Star Raker? Well all right, it was cancelled a long time ago, but the plans were just _so awesome..._ that maybe it should be saved for Megaprojects. XD I loved the video anyway. :)

What about SpaceX? Its current rockets are reusable, flying all the time, and reentry up to the point of actually landing is far more aircraft like then that capsule

And why are we talking about the Orion capsule that’s not a spaceplane

There is an entire published spaceplane history you are missing. Silbervoegel, the Ferry Rocket, BoMi, RoBo, X-15, High L/D, High Lift/Glide, HYWARDS, Winged Gemini, ASSET, PRIME, FDL-5, FDL-6, FDL-7, HL10, X-20, Isinglass, X-24, Hyper III, Star Raker, X-30 NASP, X-33, X-34, and X-38. There are more, but I'll leave you this list for your personal study.

One potential benefit to an operational spaceplane. Even if it could only carry a pilot and say 6 passengers. It would require a lot less infrastructure than even a system like Starship. Research a proposal called Black Horse. Small spaceplane takes off from a runway with a partial fuel load. Meets up withan airborne tanker. Tops off and heads for orbit.

👍

Still a very cool project (the shuttle).

1:45 - Johannes Kepler wrote Somnium in 1608 (published 1634 by his son) - in which creatures from the moon interacts with people from earth...

NASA had a space plane unmanned in orbit for 2 years

1:56 interesting fact, the roman people had "sci fi" storys of ships sailing to the moon.

Good god, that AG1 stuff looks like a runny tummy!

More coffee!

Starliner is a capsule not a space plane, and you totally forgot sierra nevada's dream chaser, which is a liftingbody. And you also forgot the x-37 which has been into space and back again several times.

Did Simon just skip on the X-15, the DYNASOAR X-20, the British HOTOL, X-30 Spaceplane, not to mention Skylon.

Who flew first? See the documentary. Maybe you should look into it

No Dream Chaser love?

Um left out, X-15, Skylon, x37b and SpaceX dragon capsule (since you included Boeing)

*Repost* I think the technology to make a personal spaceships is there, it's merely a manner of me building it all into a big Corporation.. but basically I've been working to develop speech to text technology which is an AI program that will listen to, and then based on instructions, and data that I've programmed into it that teaches it how to engineer, people can be like "hey, I want a ship thats shaped like an eagle," and it will pour a mold of an Eagle, Cast steel into it, add the appropriate type of propulsion system in there, assemble it all together... and you'll have an eagle shaped spacecraft. Part of the technology is that I had to invent Motors capable of spaceflight and come up with techniques like AI programs and stuff that are able to fly like with avionics technology, I've even come up with targeting systems like the C-RAM, but the technology is there. And honestly I saw something last night up in the night sky it's probably like a personal plane and it's probably like a couple thousand dollars to make it. It was a helicopter, with a magnetic propeller motor, that is undetectable to radar, camera, and IR signature, so you can go joyride over Russia without a worry. It's cast steel, and the motor I helped create is so powerful, it can't really be shot down. And it's probably like 2000$ I keep costs low with simple manufacturing techniques, and I use AI programs instead of sweatshop labor. I've also been helping to manufacture weapons and ammunition with the same, technology. Can also be used to make medicinal chemicals, plant, harvest, extract, purify, and package. It has to follow the laws tho But it is obviously capable for the civilians to access the technology, especially in this country. Some day, we will all have this 3D printer technologies to us, and everyone will be allowed access, the level of technology you can access will be determined by the level of security clearance you have, which is given out by the country of origin of the end user. That way it can be a global opportunity... like a public water fountain. It's up to the person using the machine to know how to create, although maybe some options will be available, so you don't have to engineer at all if you don't want, just buy someone else's design, and a percentage of the profits would go to the creator of that design. I think my nuclear rockets are mostly propelled by magnetic Flux by the way, so a lot of the radiation just stays inside, and the radiation that escapes is a less dangerous type of radiation than would come from Uranium... or Chernobyl for that matter, which was dangerous because of irradiated dust, not necessarily the radioactivity of uranium itself. In the right system, the radiation slowly degrades into smaller Particles, which are less and less dangerous. The dangerous radioactive part is the early part of the reaction, which should be insulated, until the radiation breaks down into smaller particles.. at this point, it begins to "deplete" the uranium... I mostly use neodymium rather than uranium, which can be a fissile reaction, but it is much safer. Recently I have wondered if uranium that is depleted, could be recharged.. with some high power laser or something...

Was AG1 inspired on Iron Man 2? 🤔

The earliest work of fiction with outer space, aliens and interplanetary warfare was written by a greek named Lucian of Samosata in the 2º century CE, but there were no planes, though.

So… what does AG1 actually taste like?

Robert zubrin has argued this concept for decades.

Do you have a cold? Get some rest! (As I don't take my own advice)

How did Starliner make the cut and not the Sierra Space Dream Chaser space plane?

Simon what about the XB-37B or the dream chaser (soon)

Skylon? HOTOL? Star-Raker? Bueller?

What about British Aerospaces HOTOL project from the 80's

I'm pretty sure future space planes will be widely used in Space tourism.

Crew Dragon?

Space, Space, Space im in Space, SPAAaaaAAAaaAAaCE -some confused sphere

Rockets are a great way to get cargo to orbit. But for people it's much safer using a hybid engine space plane. Regular jet engines for lower atmosphere, Scramjets for high altitude then switch to rockets to hit space. That was if anything goes wrong you can always glide back and turn on another engine. In a rocket once that thing kicks off your riding a controlled explosion until it goes out. Branson has the right idea, but his ship is little more than a concept, he needs to build bigger and more robust, not some metal-paper plane.

The Starliner is not a spaceplane , its a capsule You should have talked about the dream chaser instead , which actually is a spaceplane also no mention of the X-37B ? The only currrently opperational orbital spaceplane ?

Makes sense to have a space plane! Chemical rockets are great but they need over millions pounds worth of fuel just to get out of atmosphere and lit bit more fuel return back earth

What about the X-15? , or the DreamChaser?, or the DynoSoar? and wtf was starliner included?.. it No has wings ! ..lol

What about X-15 and the Kármán line? It happen twice and you (or your writer) didn't mention it. I expect better.

AG1 is 100% the kind of product that Simon would tear apart and make fun of on brain blaze...

Nice one Nomis 👌

Skylon??? HOTOL???

there is no y in Buran, it's not Norwegian....lol Björn???

Great video, but why no mention of Elon Musk and his successful space endeavours?

1:40

We need to save the planet, QUICK make loads of massive rockets!

Very poor research for this vid.

What about the old scifi idea of intercontinental commercial travel (like London to Sydney)? You didn’t mention anything about using space as a shortcut from earth to earth destinations,

Starliner is not a space plane.

Where's the x-15, dawn aerospace and tenacity??????? ALSO NO X-20, X-33!?!?! or dynasaur

x-37b space plane?

why the hell is Starliner in this list? that’s a freakin’ capsule... while the X-15, SpaceShipOne (the precursor for VG’s SpaceShipTwo), Sierra space’s Dreamchaser, and even the X-37B - the Shuttle’s secretive unmanned mini-me - which has made multiple long duration flights already (one is in orbit as we speak), is pretty much forgotten or ignored... great topic but I am pretty disappointed nonetheless...