[SwiftyBug]

I have seen it before, but I'll admit I didn't know its name. In my language we call it the "space bus". Maybe my question sounded like I didn't even know what is the Space Shuttle because I'm not a native English speaker and couldn't think of a better way of asking "why does this spaceship look like a plane while others don't?".

[g3e0]

Ah I see, my apologies! For what it's worth, your English is so good that it didn't even cross my mind that you weren't a native speaker.

Yes the space shuttle was designed to be partially re-usable. The "plane" bit would come back down to Earth and land on a (very long) runway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOxZsbyjSb8