wrote:

"In 1961, an American astronaut reached space for the first time and soared
through the heavens in a gumdrop-shaped capsule.

Since then, people have flown to the moon, created space planes and designed
rockets that return to Earth for precision landings. But when astronauts lift off
next year from U.S. soil for the first time in six years, their vehicle of choice
will be another capsule."

See:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...htmlstory.html




How do the benefits of capsules and spaceplanes compare?


Capsules have lower dry mass for the cargo they carry, since you're
not carrying along all that lifting structure. I was rather
disappointed to see SpaceX back away from a powered landing on land
for the Dragon V2, since that would have addressed one of the
advantages of spaceplanes in that they don't require 'recovery forces'
to fish them out of the water. Small spaceplanes tend to be more
'reusable' than capsules. However, the fiasco that was the Space
Shuttle backed everyone away from the idea of spaceplanes.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw