High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 was a manned test vehicle to explore low-speed handling and landing. It was a visible result of a Soviet project to create an orbital spaceplane. This was originally conceived in response to the American X-20 Dyna-Soar military space project and may have been influenced by contemporary manned lifting body research being conducted by NASA`s Flight Research Center in California. The MiG 105 was nicknamed "Lapot" Russian: лапоть, or bast shoe (the word is also used as a slang for "shoe") for the shape of its nose.