A mother ship (or mothership) is a vehicle (e.g. ship, aircraft or spacecraft) that serves or carries one or more smaller vehicles. Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental aircraft to altitudes where they can conduct their research (such as the B-52 carrying the X-15), or ships that carry small submarines to an area of ocean to be explored (such as the Atlantis II carrying the Alvin). The mother ship may also recover the smaller craft, or may go its own way after releasing it.
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Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or ship:
“Always the same old story—
Father Time and Mother Earth,
A marriage on the rocks.”
—James Merrill (b. 1926)
“The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)