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ESA Complete Spaceplane Test Flight; IXV Safely Returns To Earth
hypnosec writes The European Space Agency has successfully completed the first test flight of its Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV), as planned, wherein it saw the wingless spaceplane land in one piece in the Pacific Ocean. A Vega VV04 rocket took the IXV to an altitude of 340 km, from which it separated and continued up to 412 km. Reentering from this suborbital path, it recorded a vast amount of data from more than 300 advanced and conventional sensors. According to ESA the spaceplane few east around the globe during its descent and finally landed safely in the the Pacific Ocean west of the Galapagos Islands at about 15:20 GMT.
The term you are missing is "Lifting body" --- it has control foils and is able to steer in the air using them (as opposed to using thrusters as capsules must).
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you can have the altitude and still not be orbital. Orbital means you have the lateral velocity to never fall back down. the ISS is moving around the earth at 7.66mm/s which makes it fall around the earth in an orbit. This craft's velocity was close (7.5 km/s) but the flight profile was designed to be non orbital, while achieving speeds close enough to orbital to accurately test the re-entry procedures. its all about how fast you are going, and in what direction.
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In a couple of years NASA will have access to 2 operational manned vehicles. I don't think any other space agency in history has had two different manned launch vehicles operational at once.
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The "plane" in "airplane" or "spaceplane" refers to the shape of the lifting body (i.e. the wing, technically the bottom of the wing). Just like your hand forms part of a geometric plane when outside that car window, so does the bottom of the wing form part of a geometric plane. It is this plane which forces the air down, hence the term "air-plane".
Since this design generates lift by pushing the air down, it is a "something-plane".
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The US has several manned programs in "testing". There is NASA's own Orion, which has flown unmanned, and should be ready to carry people in about 6 years. Boeing and Bigelow have the CST-100, which has not flown yet - but is scheduled to be crewed in late 2017. Furthest along is probably SpaceX, with their Dragon V2, scheduled to be crewed in early 2017. The last two options are particularly exciting, since they promise to cut the cost of getting an astronaut to the space station by up to 2/3 compared to a Soyuz launch.
We are still recovering from the lack of development that occurred when NASA was using every dime to fly the space shuttle and construct the space station.
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