"Rocket ship" redirects here. For other uses, see Rocket ship (disambiguation).
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Apollo/Saturn V, the largest and heaviest space vehicle brought into operational status as of May 2022[update].
A space vehicle is the combination of a spacecraft and its launch vehicle which carries it into space. The earliest space vehicles were expendable launch systems, using a single or multistage rocket to carry a relatively small spacecraft in proportion to the total vehicle size and mass.[1] An early exception to this, the Space Shuttle, consisted of a reusable orbital vehicle carrying crew and payload, supported by an expendable external propellant tank and two reusable solid-fuel booster rockets.
Reusable launch systems are currently being developed by private industry.
Early spacecraft or space vehicles were sometimes known as "spaceships",[2][3] a term which comes from science fiction to designate a hypothetical vehicle which travels beyond low Earth orbit and is 100% reusable, needing only to be refueled like an airplane.
^"Expendable Launch Vehicle Investigations – Space Flight Systems". Space Flight Systems. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 9 February 2016.
^The first human to fly in space, Russian Yuri Gagarin, referred to his Vostok space vehicle as a "mighty spaceship [that] will take me into the far-away expanses of the Universe" in a pre-flight press statement.Gagarin, Yuri (2001). Soviet Man in Space. ISBN 9780898754605.
^"ДО СКОРОЙ ВСТРЕЧИ!" (in Russian). Archived from the original on 1 April 2021.
A spacevehicle is the combination of a spacecraft and its launch vehicle which carries it into space. The earliest spacevehicles were expendable launch...
outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistage rocket, but the term is more general and also encompasses vehicles like the...
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United States space station in low Earth orbit in the early 1990s and then be replaced by a new vehicle. When the concept of the U.S. space station evolved...
A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed to fly in outer space and operate there. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications...
spacecraft for scientific measurements is often called a space probe or space observatory. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed...
rocket glider 1961 Vostok vehicle carried the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space 1969 Apollo Program first crewed vehicle landed on the moon 2010 The...
Stardust probe. Crewed spacevehicles must be slowed to subsonic speeds before parachutes or air brakes may be deployed. Such vehicles have high kinetic energies...
vehicle. However, it can also refer to a spacecraft that transports payload already in space to another location in outer space, such as in the Space...
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launch vehicles; and maintaining a major spaceport, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou (French Guiana), France. The main European launch vehicle Ariane...
was part of the discontinued Space Shuttle program. Operated from 1977 to 2011 by NASA, the U.S. space agency, this vehicle could carry astronauts and payloads...
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free-flying spacevehicles, while berthing refers to mating operations where an inactive vehicle is placed into the mating interface of another spacevehicle by...
International Space Station (ISS). The Space Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1,323 days. Space Shuttle components include the Orbiter Vehicle (OV) with...
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modified for the Space Shuttle program. Launch Complex 39 consists of three launch sub-complexes or "pads"—39A, 39B, and 39C—a Vehicle Assembly Building...
crewed space vehicles envisioned in 1969 to support extended operations beyond the Apollo program (NASA appropriated the name for its Space Shuttle Program...
negotiating the CRS contract. SpaceX originally intended to follow its light Falcon 1 launch vehicle with an intermediate capacity vehicle, the Falcon 5. The company...
spacecraft is the joining of two spacevehicles. This connection can be temporary, or partially permanent such as for space station modules. Docking specifically...
vehicle had three stages to Earth orbit, a fourth stage for Earth departure, and a fifth stage for lunar landing assist. The combined spacevehicle was...
The Space Launch System (SLS) is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle used by NASA. As the primary launch vehicle of the Artemis Moon...
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