HOTOL

HOTOL ( Horizontal Take-Off and Landing Satellite Launcher ) was a project from 1984, a British -body aircraft, which should start with horizontal air-breathing engines. Model was originally designed by Eugen Sänger and later named after this spaceplane study, where the Junkers firm had worked from 1961 to 1974. HOTOL should be 62 meters long, have a wingspan of 19.7 meters, weigh 196 tons and can carry a payload of seven tonnes to a low earth orbit. The European Space Agency (ESA) preferred the much simpler project Hermes.

Some of the developers of HOTOL founded the company Reaction Engines, and developed a successor called Skylon with a new engine and modern materials that will very inexpensive to transport up to twelve tons of payload to the ISS or in orbit.