Tags: Space Shuttle.
Hermes was a proposed spaceplane designed by the French Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) in 1975 and later by the European Space Agency. It was superficially similar to the US X-20. France proposed in January 1985 to go through with Hermes development under the auspices of the ESA. Hermes was to have been part of a manned space flight program. It would have been launched using an Ariane 5.