China’s First Spaceplanes: A Look Into the Early History of the Chinese Crewed Space Program

As the American space shuttle dominated the skies, spaceplanes were the hottest trend in crewed spacecraft design in the 1980s. The Soviet Union followed suit with the construction of the more capable Buran shuttles, Europe’s Hermes spaceplane was on paper, and Japan had the HOPE program in proposal. China, at the time a developing power in the global space sector, had ambitions to send their own people to the stars. They favored the idea of a reusable spacecraft as a means of doing so.