Mothership
The mother ship is generally used to refer to sea , space and airships , which have the special property of being able to carry a smaller means of transport of the same or (less often) another type.
Mother ships in shipping
At sea, the term is mostly used to designate larger ships, in which an important part of the primary tasks of the ship is covered by smaller boats ( dinghies ) (formerly for example whaling boats , today for example the small agile daughter boats of sea rescue cruisers ). The factory ships operate according to the principle of the whaling mother ships . Most mother ship / daughter boat combinations in seafaring are based on the constant dependence of the smaller boats on the mother ship.
Aircraft mother ships such as B. the HMS Ark Royal and the SMH Santa Elena served as carriers for seaplanes , which put their aircraft on the water with the help of a crane or took off from a catapult and picked up again from the ship's crane after landing in water . Ships like the Schwabenland were used by Lufthansa in the 1930s .
To support and supply of smaller warships ( submarines , speed boats , minesweepers ) and as barges for their crews were from the German Navy called escorts used which had the features of mother ships: submarine tender , speedboat escort ship , Räumbootbegleitschiff .
The USS Patoka (AO-9) was equipped with an anchor mast for the large rigid airships of the US Navy in 1924 .
Motherships in space travel
In space travel, the mother ship is usually used to refer to the launch vehicle of a spaceship, which separates from the payload during the flight . In the American Apollo moon landing project , the term also referred to the service module that was blown off before re-entry into the earth's atmosphere .
Aviation mother ships
In aviation , the term mothership usually refers to airships that carry other aircraft (primarily airplanes , more rarely balloons and other airships ). The USS Akron and USS Macon were rigid airship aircraft carriers. The launch of weather balloons from an airship took place during the aeroarctic expedition from LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin . The balloons were launched downwards. They were weighed down with an extra weight that came off after a few seconds.
Applying the term to aircraft is unusual, although the same principle applies to piggyback pairings such as Boeing B-52 and X-15 , Sweno or Mistletoe .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duden definition of terms: Mothership , accessed on November 5, 2013.
- ↑ Japan ends current whaling - mother ship on the run in the eastern Pacific on radio-utopie.de, accessed August 1, 2017
- ↑ French Navy boards pirate mothership on faz.net, accessed August 1, 2017
- ↑ The risky return flight from Apollo 11 on welt.de, accessed August 1, 2017