Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) is an expendable launch system program of the United States Air Force (USAF), intended to assure access to space for Department of Defense and other United States government payloads. The program, which began in the 1990s with the goal of making government space launches more affordable and reliable, resulted in the development of two launch systems, Delta IV and Atlas V. These two launch systems are the primary methods for launching U.S. military satellites. The USAF plans to use the EELV family of launch vehicles until at least 2030. Follow-on technologies, including a Reusable Booster System are being considered.
Read more about Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle: Development, Design, Launch Services Contracts, Human-rating
Famous quotes containing the words evolved, expendable, launch and/or vehicle:
“As humans have a prior right to existence over dogs by virtue of being more highly evolved and having a superior consciousness, so women have a prior right to existence over men. The elimination of any male is, therefore, a righteous and good act, an act highly beneficial to women as well as an act of mercy.”
—Valerie Solanas (b. 1940)
“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)
“I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made ... and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You utilitarians, you too love everything useful only as a vehicle of your inclinations—you too really find the noise of its wheels intolerable?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)