Could the Spaceplane Rise Again?

The dream of flying all the way into space began when the first aircraft flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. Less than 70 years later, we had a thoroughly realistic example of what that might look like. 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.