Payload

Sometimes payload also refers to the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight.

[1] In a commercial context (i.e., an airline or air freight carrier), payload may refer only to revenue-generating cargo or paying passengers.

For a rocket, the payload can be a satellite, space probe, or spacecraft carrying humans, animals, or cargo.

For a ballistic missile, the payload is one or more warheads and related systems; their total weight is referred to as the throw-weight.

The diagonal line after the range-at-maximum-payload point shows how reducing the payload allows increasing the fuel (and range) when taking off with the maximum take-off weight.

To ensure this the payload, such as a warhead or satellite, is designed to withstand certain amounts of various types of "punishment" on the way to its destination.

Electrical, chemical, or biological payloads can be damaged by extreme temperatures (hot or cold), rapid changes in temperature or pressure, contact with fast moving air streams causing ionization, and radiation exposure from cosmic rays, the van Allen belt, or solar wind.