Largest reusable spacecraft

The largest reusable spacecraft is the Space Shuttle Orbiter, which had an empty mass of 78,844 kg (173,821 lb) and a fully-loaded launch mass of 110,000 kg (242,508 lb). This gigantic spaceplane measured 37 m (121 ft) in length and had a wingspan of 24 (79 ft). The space shuttle's first flight was on 12 April 1981, and the five shuttles produced would go on to fly 135 missions before the termination of the program on 21 July 2011.

The space shuttle orbiter was not able to fly into space on its own. To launch it was attached to a 46.9-m (153-ft 9.6-in) external tank, which held the fuel used by the shuttle orbiter's rocket engines – 629,340 kg (1,387,457 lb) of liquid oxygen and 106,261 kg (234,265 lb) of liquid hydrogen. The power of these engines were augmented by two 45.46-m-tall (149-ft 2-in) solid-fuel rocket boosters. The external tank and the boosters were jettisoned during the launch process, and only the shuttle orbiter itself went into space.