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In 1961, Yuri Gagarin was almost thrown into space and dragged back again inside a spherical vehicle known as Vostok 1, while a few weeks later American Alan Shepard followed suit in a similarly primitive capsule known as Freedom 7.

Following in the footsteps of the Wright Brothers' Wright Flyer, Henry Ford's Model T or the de Havilland Comet 1, these spacecraft were the first vehicles to usher in a new era of transportation - space travel.

And just like their siblings in other realms of transport, Vostok 1 and Freedom 7 would inspire a wealth of new designs and inventions as engineers across the globe rushed to fulfill the demand for new machines that would explore the stars - but among the handful of spacecraft that would be successful, there were a host of other designs that never made it off the ground.

The perhaps appropriately named Dyna-Soar, owing to its ultimate extinction, was just one of many designs for spacecraft that have materialised since the dawn of the space age in 1957. Dyna-Soar would have been a reusable spaceplane capable of attacking a target nearly anywhere in the world at the speed of an intercontinental ballistic missile, achieved by travelling into space and diving back to Earth again

At the dawn of the Space Age, in October 1957 when the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 ventured into orbit, it was the United States Air Force (USAF) who first considered one of a few options for a fanciful spacecraft akin to science fiction.

Their initial project was the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar ('Dynamic Soarer'), a reusable spaceplane with a single pilot that would be capable of launching into space and back again.

As a project of the USAF, however, this was not something designed for civilian exploration like Nasa's efforts that were to follow, but rather it was a military weapon that would be able to bomb distant targets with the speed of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The spaceplane, though, as it's name suggests, would have been capable of reaching space, and it was even thought to be able to orbit Earth.

Among the pilots that were considered to fly it, chosen in secret, was successful test pilot (and later first man on the moon) Neil Armstrong.

But the USAF soon ran into problems, namely there was no rocket that was deemed suitable to get the Dyna-Soar into orbit, and it lacked a clear goal – thus, on 10 December 1963, just as construction began, the project was scrapped.

No, this isn't Nasa's Space Shuttle - it's the Soviet Union's Buran shuttle, on the launchpad ahead of its sole flight in 1988, which bears a large number of similarities to its American counterpart. Its rumoured the Soviets wanted to emulate the exploits of the US, and designed a vehicle that would rival the Space Shuttle. Despite one unmanned flight, however, the Buran was ultimately scrapped

The research would prove invaluable in the creation of the Space Shuttle over a decade later, but the Dyna-Soar also inspired some similarly ambitious designs.

Indeed, one was the Soviet Union's own Space Shuttle clone that seemed to be an almost exact replica of America's newest space exploration vehicle.

Known as the Buran, development began in 1976 and it was intended to offer almost identical capabilities to the 'real' Space Shuttle.

It launched on a booster rocket, known as Energia, could perform operations in orbit and was also reusable (aside from the booster that launched it).

The Buran would complete one unmanned flight in 1988 before the programme was scrapped following the dissolution of the USSR in 1993.

And, even more tragically, the sole spacecraft that took flight was destroyed in 2002 when the hanger it was stored in collapsed.

The USAF's Air Launched Sortie Vehicle, conceived in the early 1980s, was intended as a mini-shuttle that could launch to and from anywhere in the world with ease. The purpose of it, much like the modern secretive X-37 spaceplane, was not widely known, and it was scrapped before the concept took off

Another attempt at a Space Shuttle that never made full operation was the USAF's Air Launched Sortie Vehicle (ALSV).

This small reusable spaceplane, not too dissimilar to the X-37 that is in operation today, would have been capable of launching from anywhere in the world atop a mothership in the form of a Boeing 747.

A small booster would have carried it to orbit before the ASLV returned to land at an airfield on Earth – but again, this was a design that would never see the manufacturing floor.

It wasn't just American and the Soviet Union who were interested in fantastical feats of space exploration though - in 1975 the French space agency (CNES) designed a space shuttle known as Hermes.

Development began with Esa in 1985, with the vehicle intended to launch atop an Ariane 5 rocket. It would carry a crew of three and almost the entire spaceplane would be reusable, save for a small Resource Module at the rear that would be shed before re-entry.

By 1992, however, the attempts at overcoming the challenges of building such a vehicle proved problematic, and Hermes was soon consigned to the bin.

Esa's Hermes spacecraft was an ambitious effort from an agency that to this day is yet to design any sort of vehicle that could take humans into space. Nonetheless it, too, was deemed as being the 'holy-grail' of spacecraft in that it would be reusable and thus affordable, taking astronauts to and from Earth orbit on a regular basis

Another ambitious project was the Rockwell X-30, part of the continuing effort by the US to create a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle that had no expendable components.

It was first derived by American company Rockwell International in the 1980s, with its main goal being to enable a crew of two to enter space and perform experiments.

But a rather loftier goal set for the X-30 was for it to become a passenger liner that could take people from Washington to Tokyo in two hours , leading President Ronald Reagan to refer to it as the 'new Orient Express'.

The spaceplane would have accelerated to 25 times the speed of sound to achieve low-Earth orbit, before dropping down back into the atmosphere to land at its destination.

The project was eventually terminated, however, due to major technical concerns and budget cuts.

The Rockwell X-30, artist's illustration shown, would have been a passenger liner that used a scramjet-inspired design to reach speeds of 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometres) per hour. It would have been 160 feet (50 metres) long with a wingspan of 74 feet (23 metres). It was scrapped due to technical concerns, particularly how to keep the crew safe at such high speeds

A more recent dream for a revolutionary spacecraft was the Kankoh-Maru, a concept created by the Japanese Rocket Society in 2005.

The egg-shaped vehicle would have apparently been capable of taking dozens of people into orbit before returning to Earth.

If it sounds ridiculous, that's because it was - the project was soon quietly cancelled when it was realised that such a vehicle would be all but impossible to build.

The Kankoh-maru, artist's illustration shown, was to be a huge passenger-carrying vehicle that would take paying customers into space. The single-stage-to-orbit vehicle would have been 77 feet (24 metres) high with a diameter of 59 feet (18 metres). The Japanese spacecraft was quietly cancelled, though, when the technical difficulties were realised

All of these spacecraft so far bear an obvious similarity - they were vehicles intended to take astronauts solely into Earth orbit for either lengthy or brief ventures into space.

But there was one design that promised oh-so-much more when it was dreamed up in the days of Apollo, when most regard3ed the moon missions as just a minor stepping stone to the ventures into deep space that were sure to follow.

Nerva, which stands for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application, was not a spacecraft per-se but rather an engine for one that promised to take humans beyond the moon to Mars.

It was the first proof that nuclear thermal rocket engines were feasible, an engine far superior to the kerosene and liquid oxygen fuels employed by other spacecraft like Apollo.

Together with the Saturn V rocket, Nerva was envisaged as the final cog that would make manned missions to Mars as early as the 1970s possible.

Perhaps the most innovative development that never flew was Nerva (schematic drawing shown), a nuclear thermal rocket engine that would have been the vital cog to enable manned missions to Mars, and also help to build lunar bases. Sadly the programme was scrapped, although there are hopes its design could inspire future efforts to travel to Mars

That all changed with the Nixon Administration – with the Apollo missions struggling for support (three later missions – Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were cancelled) Nixon scrapped both Apollo and ultimately the Saturn V rocket in favour of building a space station in Earth orbit, Skylab, and eventually a reusable spacecraft that was intended to reduce the cost of going to space – the Space Shuttle.

And, sadly, despite numerous tests proving how successful such an engine could be, Nerva was finished off in 1972.

Nasa had planned to use Nerva to visit Mars by 1978 and create a lunar base by 1981, but with its cancellation those dreams were gone.

Perhaps now, as Nasa once more prepares to dream of missions to Mars, the research into the revolutionary Nerva engine will make such missions possible.

And even then, the designs of the other spacecraft that never flew serve as a reminder that, even though we may not have reached the lofty goals expected of space exploration so far, there has been no shortage of engineers and scientists shooting for the stars.