Flying without wings

"By the late 1950s a small group of National Air and Space Administration (NASA) engineers and pilots were designing oddly shaped, wingless aircraft known as lifting bodies. Their goal was to develop a vehicle that could survive the heat of reentry into the atmosphere, fly at subsonic speeds, and make controlled, horizontal landings, much like an airplane. But NASA, determined to beat the Soviets to the moon, adopted the more easily implemented Mercury capsules. The proponents of lifting bodies continued during the 1960s and 1970s to refine and test the concept. Their research eventually became central to the design of the space shuttle, which first flew in 1981."