Current space vehicles clearly cannot. Only the Space Shuttle survives past one use, and that's only if you ignore the various parts that fall off (intentionally!) on the way up.
You could be forgiven for thinking that space is therefore an impossibly expensive place to get to. But this need not be the case. Launch to orbit requires accelerating to Mach 26, and so it uses a lot of propellant - about 10 tons per passenger. But there's no technical reason why reusable launch vehicles couldn't come to be operated routinely, just like aircraft. The only reason why this hasn't been done yet is that launch vehicle development has been left to government space agencies. And they have had neither the priority nor the will to achieve it - they don't use even 2% of their budgets (of $25 billion per year) to study the design of launch vehicles suitable for passenger service!
So it may well turn out to be private enterprise that is the solution - plenty of ideas for reusable launch vehicles exist, and with incentives like the X-Prize, there's going to be fierce competition to see who can be first.
Space Vehicles presents some of the ideas that could change the meaning of "Space" from being a remote place where government staff carry out "missions" to being a weekend destination, just a few minutes' flight away.
Here are some key documents from the archive to get you started:
In order for people to be able to travel economically to space, for space tourism and for other purposes, we need reusable launch vehicles. All commercial transport industries use reusable vehicles - and so will the commercial space transport industry. Luckily research aimed at developing low-cost reusable launch vehicles has increased recently - though total funding is still barely 2% (!) of government funding for space activities.
The following is a list of projects under way today and some significant projects of the past. Some are aimed initially at sub-orbital flights - a much easier target than getting to orbit, as demonstrated by SpaceShipOne. Others are designs for orbital vehicles. Ultimately, the only ones of importance are the piloted, passenger-carrying vehicles.
Winner of the $10m Ansari X-Prize, this suborbital passenger-carrying spaceplane was designed by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, famous for graphite composites, and also the integrating contractor for the former Roton. Following their successful bid to win the X-Prize, Scaled Composites are now turning their eyes to the next step: the development of a commecially viable passenger-carrying suborbital space vehicle.
SpaceShipOne features a rubber-nitrous oxide hybrid rocket engine and cold gas attitude control thrusters; a graphite/epoxy primary structure; 3-place, sea-level, shirt-sleeve cabin environment; a low maintenance thermal protection system; and a unique feathered reentry system.
The spaceplane is carried under the belly of Scaled Composites' White Knight carrier aircraft. The White Knight is a piloted, twin-turbojet research aircraft derived from the Proteus intended for high-altitude missions. Its first flight was on August 1, 2002. It provides a high-altitude airborne launch of SpaceShipOne. The White Knight is also equipped to flight-qualify all the SpaceShipOne systems, except rocket propulsion. The aircraft's cockpit, avionics, life support systems, pneumatics, trim servos, data system, and electrical system components are identical to those installed in SpaceShipOne.
The White Knight drops SpaceShipOne at 50,000 ft. SpaceShipOne then climbs nearly vertically under power at a 3-4g acceleration. The hybrid engine burns out at Mach 3.5, 65 seconds after ignition. The spaceplane coasts to approximately 100 km. (328,000 ft.) before free-falling back to earth. Pilot and passengers experience microgravity above the atmosphere for 3.5 minutes.
Before reentry, the pilot raises SpaceShipOne's twin tails to vertical. This feathering approach stabilizes the spaceplane without need of pilot input. Reentry deceleration is up to 5gs. After reentry, the pilot returns the twin tails to horizon