Launch Vehicles

Rockets and launch systems engineered to carry payloads from Earth's surface to space, spanning expendable and reusable orbital-class boosters and their upper stages, from the earliest orbital rockets through today's reusable commercial launchers. Covers named launch vehicle families and their generations and variants across every spacefaring agency and company -- Saturn V, the Space Shuttle as a launch system, Soyuz, Ariane, Atlas, Delta, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Long March, and their national and commercial counterparts. Belongs here: named launch vehicle families, their major variants and generations, and notable booster or upper-stage systems considered in their own right. Does not belong here: the satellites, crewed capsules, space stations and robotic probes those rockets carry to orbit, which stay under Spacecraft even though that category's own text also mentions launch rockets in passing -- Launch Vehicles is the dedicated, more specific home for the rockets themselves; the named missions and programs a vehicle flew, which belong under Missions and Programs; and the astronauts and agencies involved, which belong under Astronauts and Cosmonauts and Space Agencies and Companies.