A launch vehicle is a rocket-powered craft used to transport payloads like satellites or crewed spacecraft from Earth into outer space, typically operating from a launch pad and relying on chemical propellants such as liquid hydrogen, kerosene, or solid fuel. To reach orbit, these vehicles must achieve an altitude of about 150 km and a horizontal velocity of roughly 7,814 m/s, and they are classified by NASA into categories ranging from small-lift (under 2,000 kg, like the Vega) to super-heavy lift (over 50,000 kg, like the Saturn V). While most launch vehicles are expendable and break apart on reentry, reusable designs like the SpaceX Falcon 9 recover their first stage, and the Space Shuttle famously reused its boosters, orbiter, and engines—though not its external fuel tank. Launch platforms are highly versatile, located on land, fixed or mobile ocean platforms (like Sea Launch), submarines, or even in the air, and are operated by entities such as the European Space Agency (Ariane V) and United Launch Alliance (Delta IV and Atlas V). Because of the extreme physics involved, launch vehicles are almost always multistage rockets, and even smaller sounding rockets—like the modified SS-520 that orbited a 4 kg payload in 2018—demonstrate the broad range of these technologies.