why do they have to use a rocket to get to the space station, couldn't they use a sort of plane by now.?

There have been planes built as far back as the 1970s that have taken the pilot to the edge of the credible atmosphere, and a few years ago another aircraft was designed that can carry six passengers to an altitude much higher than what the space shuttle can attain. During the flight, the passengers would be weightless for 5-10 minutes. Last I heard, the company designing this craft was trying to sell passenger tickets for $200,000. However, neither this plane nor any of the earlier versions would never achieve orbit. They would simply go up to their maximum altitude, and head right back down and land. They would not be able to lift nearly enough fuel to attain orbit....Show more

Well first off the plane's wings still needs an atmosphere to be useful. And in orbit there is no atmosphere.

The wings on a space shuttle were used to slow the space shuttle down during reentry and glides itself back down.

But even the space shuttle still needed rockets to achieve the orbit speed needed to catch up to the space station. Simple jet engines can't cut it right now, especially with no oxygen in space. Even if they carried their oxygen, they still need lots of fuel, meaning lots of oxygen, and both seriously weighs down the ship....Show more

Rockets are better equipped to handle the high heat for getting to and from space. Planes, since they have to be so light to get thrust, can't handle the weight of the outerskin of a rocket that protects is from the heat and besides, jets are faster than planes. Rockets are also faster since they have boosters. They can hit Mach 3.2 much faster than a fighter jet....Show more

Even if you had a rocket plane the power needed to get the plane to the same altitude as the rocket is more because some of the power is wasted on tangential motion thats motion along the ground....Show more

Nope. The usable atmosphere only goes so high; planes can get up really high - about 120,000 feet in one case - but... That's a little short of the 1,584,000 feet that the space station orbits at...
So, they need rockets....Show more