Verified answer

It can't reach that far. The engines' power can only get the aircraft to maybe 40.000 feet and besides that there is not enough space for fuel that would be needed to fly higher. It's a total different design to a space shuttle.

Oh geeze...this is gonna be tough to answer...

Basically, the engines on a an airliner you travel on today (the 737 for example) need oxygen to run. The higher you go in the atmosphere, the lower pressure leads to less amount of oxygen per volume of air. Eventually, there will be a point where this is just not enough oxygen and the engines say 'Nope, were done.' And they get really quiet. Also, the air molecules are so spread apart, they could never hold up an aircraft at that height. Also, going back to the oxygen deal, humans need it too! The airplanes you travel on are not airtight! They have leaks in them (don't worry, we put them there for a reason). If we attempted to go to space with leaks, we are gonna lose oxygen very quickly. One final thought as well. Up to a specific altitude, temperature gets cooler with greater height, but then the higher you go, the hotter it gets! Pretty crazy huh? Aircraft aluminum would never stand the extreme cold (and extreme heat!) during the climb. So no, regular commercial aircraft would never be able to get there (sorry Superman Returns). Does that say there will never be any commercial flight into space....I will leave that open for everyone to think of that...

I hope this has helped. Feel free to message me anytime for any aviation related question.

I like the idea of rockets as well, but there just not practical any more unless someone could build a single stage to orbit rocket that was fully reusable, then maybe more people would embrace them but until then space planes are the new style of the future, but just like everything else space planes can go out of style as well and then it's back to good old rockets.

It would only make it to about 35,000 to 41,000 feet.

The problem is that airplanes need air. Air allows the wings to produce lift and the oxygen in the air is needed to mix with the fuel to power the thrust.

The higher you go, the less air there is. At a certain point, there are not enough air molecules to keep the plane aloft and the engines running.

Rockets carry their own supply of oxygen in one of the fuel tanks. This gets mixed together with a solid rocket fuel to produce thrust.

And, since rockets don't require lift, they don't need air to produce it.

Also, as 'just the way' points out, airplanes do not have the heat-resistant coating that allows rockets to handle the incredible temperatures caused by friction during re-entry.

Though it isn't gold (it's a high-tech insulator made of ceramic) she is correct.

Commercial airplane engines (Turbofan, turboprop, turbojet, etc.) require air (including the oxygen in it) to operate. It's the mixing of air and fuel that creates the thrust that propels the airplane. The higher you are from the earth the less air there is. Most of these engines start becoming inefficient at around 35,000 to 40,000, there's just not enough air to fuel the engine. That's why there are few planes that operate above 40 to 45,000.

Most vehicles that go into space are propelled by rocket engines, these engines use either liquid or solid oxygen and don't require the air.

There are two main reasons why airplanes can't go into outer space: (1) they depend on their wings to stay above the ground, and the wings only work if they are surrounded by air; and (2) the engines of the airplanes require air to operate. There's no air in outer space.

They have to have air to make them go so they couldn't preform once they are atmosphere.

It would stall and the people would all die onboard before it got that high

They need to be coated in this gold stuff, airplanes couldn't handle the coating. And without it, the plane blows up :D