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The US Army Air Force and the US Navy designed several experimental winged 'rocket' airplanes in the late 1940’s ... Later rocket planes became known as X rocket planes (X = experimental) - the most famous being the X-15. Werner von Braun was among the leading German-American scientists working on this project since the late 1940's. From that time, von Braun developed the basis of deep space travel and the US space program which has not changed to this day! About 1950 von Braun envisioned using experimental rocket planes as 'Space Shuttles' that ferried men and materials to build orbiting space stations far above the earth...
...Emphasis on the space program got sidetracked. The real US space program was the X-15 rocket which it would refine until it became a space shuttle that could take men and heavy loads into space, but funding for that project was put on the back burner as more funds were spent on ballistic missiles with cargos on top of them.
...The X-15 was followed by the X-16, X-20 and X-22 rocket planes, and the X-24, the last of the X-rockets. This last of the experimental rocket planes was still a manned winged plane. These tests were said to have been going on throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. The next step was the space shuttle which was the intended culmination of all the X-rocket planes and the US space effort.
...In the late '50s and early '60s the US sent one Explorer after another trying to prevent the electronics from burning out in the van Allen radiation belts. The Russians also sent probes. Both countries made a combined total of 30 to 40 attemptsto pass these belts. Historical text books state that Russia was first to break the van Allen radiation barrier with their probe. However, the books I read never explained what processes and protection were finally fabricated that gave the crafts the protection they needed to pass through the radiation belts. According to my friend Rob, no one ever got a probe through the radiation belts. No Explorer probe, nor the Apollo crafts, nor any Pioneer, Mariner, Viking, Voyager, nor any other deep space craft ever penetrated the van Allen radiation belts.
...The mission of the shuttle was to travel several thousand miles or further carrying cargo to build an orbiting space station at as high an altitude as possible. The main purpose of the space station was to serve as a research lab for further investigation of the van Allen radiation belts and how to get past them. Part of the purpose of the space station was to act as an orbiting launch pad and re-fueling station.
Once the first space station was complete, space shuttles between Earth and the first station would continue to carry loads, but a new type of shuttle would be built which did not have to travel into the Earth's atmosphere and therefore had no wings. This shuttle would launch from the first space station at several thousand miles elevation and travel to a much higher orbit.
The next level of shuttles would construct a second space station at a higher orbit. Thus, the first ground level shuttles would be ferrying loads from Earth to the first station, and another shuttle would ferry loads to the next station. The second space station would be located at the edge of the radiation belts with the purpose of finding holes in them or some other way through. After that was done, another space station could be built further out at 50,000 miles, or on the other side of the radiation belts. This space program that I saw was a plan to reach the Moon by building about seven space stations as a stairway to heaven - a tower of Babel that led to the moon.