An expendable launch system is a launch system that uses an expendable launch vehicle (ELV) to carry a payload into space. The vehicles used in expendable launch systems are designed to be used only once (i.e. they are "expended" during a single flight), and their components are not recovered for re-use after launch. The vehicle typically consists of several rocket stages, discarded one by one as the vehicle gains altitude and speed.
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Famous quotes containing the words expendable, launch and/or system:
“Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?”
—Derek Walcott (b. 1930)
“Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person’s self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient’s cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)