Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar

The Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar was an American experimental spaceplane program developed for the United States Air Force from the late 1950s, intended to produce a piloted, winged vehicle that could be boosted into space atop a rocket, maneuver in a suborbital or orbital trajectory, and then glide back to a conventional runway landing like an airplane. The name Dyna-Soar was a contraction of dynamic soaring, describing the planned method by which the vehicle would skip along the upper atmosphere to extend its range. The program was cancelled in 1963 before any piloted flight took place, but its research into reusable, winged spacecraft design directly influenced later American human spaceflight vehicles, most notably the Space Shuttle.