List of rocket planes
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Rocket planes or rocket aircraft can be subdivided by the few rocket powered aircraft to have existed. Some early attempts at flights used engines that might be considered the first 'rocket' powered aircraft. By the time rocket engines were more refined, jet engines had taken over much the roles they might have filled with aircraft. Since most rocket powered planes have limited fuel capacity they also tend to have to function as gliders. The many experimental rocket aircraft have contributed a great deal to aviation. Rocket powered aircraft have a reasonbly bright future in the form of space planes such as those made for the ANSARI X PRIZE. In high-speed ultra fast flight they are experiencing some competition from ramjets however, and in human spaceflight they will always have competition from capsule designs.
The main categories of rocket planes to have existed are experimental, fighter-interceptor, and space plane.
This is an incomplete listing, loosely chronological, of some aircraft that used rocket propulsion:
- Lippisch Ente
- Opel RAK.1
- DFS 194 rocket powered glider test plane
- Me 163 rocket powered fighter (reasonably extensive use in WW2)
- Me 263 also seen Ju 248, development of Me163
- DFS 228 rocket powered reconnaissance plane
- Bachem Ba 349 'Natter' manned surface-to-air missile
- Ohka air-launched kamikaze aircraft
- Mitsubishi J8M
- Mikoyan-Gurevich I-270 (did not enter operation service, some test flights)
- DFS 228 (never flew under power)
- DFS 346 approached supersonic speeds
- Bisnovat 5 Russian design based from earlier captured DFS 346, cancelled (never flew under power)
- Bell X-1 First plane to break the sound barrier in controlled, level flight.
- Bell X-2
- Douglas D-588-II Skyrocket (US)
- X-15 conducted numerous supersonic and hypersonic flights
- X-20 Dyna-Soar (project cancelled before first flight)
- Space Shuttle (US)
- Shuttle Buran (USSR) (1-orbital flight)
- Venture Star, X-33
- SpaceShipOne
- ANSARI X PRIZE
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