Rocket-powered aircraft

alt=|thumb|upright|A Soyuz-FG rocket launches from "[[Gagarin's Start" (Site 1/5), Baikonur Cosmodrome ]] A rocket (from , and so named for its shape) is an elongated flying vehicle that uses a rocket engine to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Unlike jet engines, rockets are fuelled entirely by propellant which they carry, without the need for oxygen from air; consequently a rocket can fly in the vacuum of space, indeed rocket engines operate more efficiently outside the atmosphere.

first and only operational spaceplane in the Soviet Buran programme

1959 experimental aircraft model by North American Aviation and NASA

1946 experimental aircraft model by Bell

rocket interceptor developed by Messerschmitt late in World War II

family of American uncrewed military air and space vehicles

SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to / using a hybrid rocket motor. The design features a unique "feathering" atmospheric reentry system where the rear half of the wing and the twin tail booms folds 70 degrees upward along a hinge running the length of the wing; this increases drag while retaining stability. SpaceShipOne completed the first crewed private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mother ship was name

The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is a retired air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic.

1945 prototype fighter aircraft by Bachem

1945 attack aircraft

aircraft which uses a rocket engine for propulsion

1952 research aircraft by Bell

single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane

experimental rocket plane

1969 experimental aircraft by Martin Marietta

Ottoman aviator

Soviet reusable spaceplane programme

Silbervogel (German for "silver bird") was a design for a liquid-propellant rocket-powered sub-orbital bomber produced by Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt in the late 1930s for The Third Reich. It is also known as the RaBo ('''' – "rocket bomber"). It was one of a number of designs considered for the Amerikabomber project, which started in the spring of 1942, being focused solely on trans-Atlantic-range piston-engined strategic bombers such as the Messerschmitt Me 264 and the Junkers Ju 390, the only two airframe types which were actually built and flown for the competition. When Walter Dornberger

uncrewed re-usable spaceplane technology demonstrator for the VentureStar

1945 interceptor aircraft series by Mitsubishi

airplane

German WWII aircraft

1942 fighter aircraft prototype by Bereznyak-Isayev

experimental aircraft model

spacecraft

German research aircraft, 1948

Soviet fighter aircraft

American commercial sub-orbitable space ship

German rocket-powered aircraft prototype

German reconnaissance aircraft prototype

research vehicles used to simulate Moon landings during the Apollo program

thumb|VentureStar releasing a spacecraft VentureStar was a single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch system proposed by Lockheed Martin and funded by the U.S. government. The goal was to replace the Space Shuttle by developing a re-usable spaceplane that could launch satellites into orbit at 1/10 of the cost. While the requirement was for an uncrewed launcher, it was expected to carry passengers as cargo. The VentureStar would have had a wingspan of , a length of , and would have weighed roughly 1,000 tonnes (2.2 million lb).

supersonic target drone produced by Raytheon for the US Navy

lifting body prototype

French mixed-power interceptor aircraft

type of aircraft

Cancelled American spacecraft

lifting body prototype

planned suborbital, air-launched spaceplane

type of aircraft

multinational hypersonic passenger aircraft development program

company

1942 British supersonic jet project

type of aircraft

NASA cancelled spaceplane project

lifting body prototype, rebuilt from the crashed M2-F2

type of aircraft

type of aircraft

rocket plane designed and built by Julius Hatry

type of aircraft

1950s British cancelled interceptor aircraft project

rocket-powered late-World War II aircraft design

proposed rocket interceptor for the Japanese Army at the end of World War II

type of aircraft

French test aircraft

type of Target drone

type of aircraft

cancelled military aircraft project

soviet spaceplane project