The HL-42 was a proposed scaled-up version of the HL-20 re-usable crewed spaceplane design, which had been developed from 1983 to 1991 at NASA's Langley Research Center but never flown. Like the HL-20 ("Horizontal Lander 20"), the HL-42 would have been launched into low earth orbit mounted on top of a two-stage expendable rocket. At the end of the mission it would have re-entered and glided to a runway landing.