Talk:SpaceX reusable launch system development program

BRD on recent deletion

Editor Winged Brick deleted a section, and left a rationale in the edit comment. I reverted in order to discuss the matter on the Talk page, per WP:BRD. My view: long-term stable section in a good article should be discussed on the Talk page, and consensus built, before such a large removal. Beyond that, I'll let Winged Brick articulate the rational for the deletion here, and other editors can weigh in on the merits. Cheers. N2e (talk) 20:44, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I figured it would be obvious. the section, "Popular Culture" implies that content is both popular and part of the culture. Two passing references to Buck Rogers do not qualify in any way for inclusion in pop culture. Even if they did, their inclusion in an article on a test program for a reusable launch system seem very difficult to connect with Buck Rogers. --Winged Brick (talk) 02:51, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I must agree with WB on this...section is (in my view) nothing more than trivia. — Huntster (t @ c) 05:09, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I'll put in my own thought on this now. I don't believe policy is such that this popular culture reference would be inappropriate given the two sources, or have to be removed. Having said that, my interest was mainly to get multiple-editor discussion and consensus on it, and I'll try to help that here. So let me address both aspects.

Wikipedia is written, and read, largely by younger people of a particular cultural and experiential background, and most of those people are little familiar with the multi-decade cultural norm in the early part of the 20th century that perceived these (mostly) future rockets to be of the type that, overwhelmingly, would land vertically. Moreover, Buck Rogers, although a fictional character, was a widely-known cultural reference in the newspaper age over several decades of that period. I have recently asked several 70 to 90 year old American's "what does the name "Buck Rogers" mean? Who was he?". This is anecdotal, so not determinative, but they have "known" who he was, from the comic strips that were in newspapers for decades prior to the 1960s. There are thousands of "popular culture" type references in Wikipedia today that have meaning to other fairly narrow demographic groups, and some have much less support in sources than these we are discussing. So my take is that if Wikipedia is written to be the "encyclopedia of human knowledge", and have a relatively-long-term use, and not be mere news articles, we editors must keep in mind that we write for a potential readership that is much wider than the cultural milieu that we tend to inhabit.

Having said all that, I don't think it is critical right now to have the broader cultural reference in this article. The two sources given back the statement, and refer to SpaceX and their reusable rocket projects, but they are each a bit oblique. If the material is removed for now, until better sources are located in the future, it won't harm the article (much, although it won't have the cultural reference for a group of our less-frequent readers). But I will support the consensus, whichever way it falls out. N2e (talk) 12:16, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

So, are we ready to delete the section again? Two for deletion; one abstain? I do understand that the term "Buck Rogers" means something in relation to pop culture in the early 20th century, but the application to this article is just silly. Two passing mentions in articles do not warrant inclusion here. In fact, inclusion here amounts to more popular culture notoriety (undeserved) than the two citations. I'm going to delete it tomorrow. --Winged Brick (talk) 19:42, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Test Four

The cited reference says that the booster flew *toward* a zero-velocity/zero-altitude touchdown, it doesn't say that the booster obtained it. Elon's interview at MIT did *not* include CRS-4 in his enumeration of successful landing attempts. In the same interview he mentioned that the legs (which were missing from CRS-4 for schedule reasons) reduced terminal velocity by half. Without a more precise source, we can't say whether or not the booster actually obtained a zero-velocity-at-zero-altitude touchdown. I tweaked the article to use the sourced Aviation Week wording instead (flew the a profile approaching zero-velocity/zero-altitude).

To be more bold, one might actually mention the fact that Elon did not include this flight in his enumeration of successful landing attempts, although the pre-landing profile captured by NASA is stated to be successful and accurate. See http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroastro-centennial-part-1-of-6-2014-10-24

See also http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35385.msg1277242#msg1277242 for some more discussion on this point by folks knowledgeable in the domain, who might be able to provide more specific sourced statements. C. Scott Ananian (talk) 19:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I had added that to flight 4 recently, only after re-reading the Aviation Week article and seeing the zero velocity at zero altitude locution mentioned. If you have checked that source carefully and believe the context was only speaking aspirationally, and not stating that it was achieved on the flight where the thermal imaging data was captured (which was how I had read it), then you should go ahead and edit the article to make it accurate to whatever is supported by the source. I'm certainly not trying to make it say any more than the source, and may have read it wrong when I made that edit. Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:41, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Discussing a couple of recent edits

Hey Appable, you recently attempted to clean up and reorganize some of the info about the series of test flights. The clean-up/reorg was needed, but I'm not sure about a few details of what you did. Could probably do a WP:BRD to discuss it, but I think some of it is useful, so let's just discuss.

1. I think the table of contents is getting rather too many levels, and levels on too low a detail, with your movement of the faux headers to headers. I don't feel strongly about this if you feel the opposite, but I just note that not every subsection is terribly beneficial to readers to be listed in the TOC, and I have observed in the past that many other articles I've run use faux headers for the very lowest level, seemingly with the intent to keep them from showing up in the TOC. I've never even looked up wiki-guidelines on the matter; just leaving an observation here on that item. But do step back and take a look at the current TOC after your edits; I'm thinking it's a bit ugly, and too much detail in the TOC.
2. The main mission—transporting cargo to some planned orbital trajectory—is the only mission that is associated with the "mission name" (e.g., CRS-n, or AsiaSat-n, etc.), SpaceX has always been rather clear that any testing they might do on an expended (trash, if not otherwise used) booster stage—i.e. a suborbital test flight—is in no way a part of the main mission. This is quite different from almost all other previous spaceflights where, say, some national provider like the NASA or ESA or the US DOD owns every part of the launch and mission once the launch vehicle leaves the ground. SpaceX is just selling a space transport service, and NASA etc. just has no say in what SpaceX does with their booster after a successful stage sep. Moreover, SpaceX is funding all of the incremental costs of any test flights they do.

Therefore, I don't believe it is appropriate to conflate the test flights SpaceX may or may not do on some launches with the primary mission name. They are, rather, merely tests that happen on a particular Falcon 9 v1.1 launch. I think this is especially true at the section header level. We just don't have source support that these tests are explicitly associated with the main mission of whomever SpaceX is selling each payload to. They are merely coincidental tests that SpaceX does following some uses of their expendable booster when they think they can advance their own development objectives for the reusable technology. This item seems a bit more important to me, and I really believe we give the reader the wrong impression with the mission names as primary descriptors for each controlled-descent test flight.

I'm not sure of the solution. Now that there have been so many of these controlled-descent test flights, about a half-dozen in the past 18 months, maybe adding a table summarizing the main info might be in order, and if we did that, maybe get rid of the header distinction between "ocean over water tests" and "floating platform attempted landings"; we could perhaps just show which type it is in a column of the table. Or maybe even (eventually, if not now) moving the details of flight tests (clearly notable since covered by so much media) to a separate article, since this article is a Wikipedia good article. This is what was done with the "SpaceShipTwo" vs. "VMS Eve" article. The details of flight tests are associated with a particular (notable) vehicle, but left out of the main article. In a similar way, perhaps we might want to consider leaving the detail out of the main technology development article (getting rather long in any case; its nearly 100,000 bytes) and put the test details in a separate (and non-"good article"). Or something else?

Those were my two main thoughts. What do you, or others reading this page, think about this? N2e (talk) 20:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for writing this up. After looking at the table of contents, it does seem to be a bit crowded at this point. As you suggested below, a table summarizing the information would probably be the best solution. There could be a summary that SpaceX has done both "ocean" and "floating platform" landing tests on this article, with a main article link that extensively covers both landing tests extensively. Besides, the headers are getting really messy on this article even with the faux-headers, so it would be best to do a split. Given the many flights planned and the recent announcement of the F9 v1.2 (I have no idea what they'll call it, but the upgraded performance Falcon) it's likely that the test flight section will only grow larger. It might be best to move immediately to a new page as the test flights ramp up, as delaying would only add to the work required to split the article.

If it was split, would it be worth including Grasshopper and F9v1.1 Dev-1 flights (about 13 flights in total) alongside the Falcon 9 post-mission tests to form a SpaceX prototype vehicle flight testing page? Or instead just a Falcon 9 booster post-mission, controlled-descent tests page?

For thoughts on the primary mission naming scheme on the section headers: SpaceX publishes mission names and names such as "Falcon 9 Flight 13". After looking at the article, it might give the wrong impression to refer to them by mission names. But at the same time, the issue I had with the older scheme (based on chronological order of test flights) was that it wasn't a common way to refer to the vehicles. SpaceX seems to publish both a mission name (Orbcomm OG2 Mission 1) and a vehicle name (Falcon 9 Flight 10). While there's no evidence that the mission is related to the test, it's common sense that the vehicle is related to the test. Because of that, I'd support modification of the headers to reflect the vehicle names.

Thanks for having this discussion and proposing methods of resolving article clutter.Appable (talk) 20:55, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Appable, all that sounds good to me. As mentioned, I really didn't like the mission name conflation; but agree that the Falcon 9 Flight 16 (for example) descriptor works. I'm also fine with splitting off the test flights now, as the detail is over-weighting this article, but still the info is notable.

Don't really care much whether it is the one scope (broader) or the other (narrower, just the high-altitude, high-velocity controlled-descent flights). However, perhaps for symmetry, both names might start with "Falcon 9"; e.g., Falcon 9 prototype vehicle flight testing rather than SpaceX prototype vehicle flight testing. But your alternative is also fine with me, too: Falcon 9 booster post-mission, controlled-descent tests. As further food for thought, we generally have very little news coverage of the Grasshopper and F9R Dev vehicle flights that have occurred in Texas; and I would think we won't get much when the New Mexico flights with F9R Dev2 get started, either. So pretty much all the info we have is already covered in the (relatively sparse) tables in the Grasshopper and F9R Dev articles. We have much more publically-released info on the booster controlled-descent tests that happen after some orbital missions.

I'll step back and let you re-make the changes to get away from the mission-name conflation issue that occured with the recent edits. You might want to do that first, here in this article, before doing any split. Let me know if you want more comment from me. N2e (talk) 01:55, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I've moved all mission names to vehicle names. Looking at it with vehicle names, it seems like a split is very much needed to avoid overcrowding this article. Does anyone have an opinion on whether a split should be done, and what the scope of the split article should be? Appable (talk) 03:43, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd certainly support a split of the detailed summaries of each (obviously notable) test flights into a separate article. Thanks for making the changes to eliminate the impression that these privately-funded test flights were a part of the original "mission" flights, as opposed to merely happening subsequent to their lofting since that is what makes the booster available for testing on a descent and landing test. N2e (talk) 22:30, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey appable, here's one more idea for an article name for the split article: Falcon 9 ocean booster landing tests. I set up a redirect with that name a long time ago, and I looked today and saw that name has already been getting a few tens of hits per day, with several hundred hits around the time of launches that have these tests on the agenda by SpaceX. Maybe that name would work better than the (also descriptive, but very long) Falcon 9 booster post-mission, controlled-descent tests. I'm fine with either one though N2e (talk) 11:27, 19 April 2015 (UTC).

Article was split

For the record: Because this article was getting too large, and per the discussion in the Talk page section immediately above this one ("Discussing a couple of recent edits"), the article was split on 2015-04-23T23:30:12‎ by User:Appable, removing "34,456 Bytes", with the following edit comment by Appable: (Splitting article, this article was getting massive. See talk page of this article for details, additionally see the main article Falcon 9 ocean booster landing tests, which includes all of the removed content.)

Thanks to Appable for doing the work! N2e (talk) 03:42, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the summary in the talk page. If you'd like to read more on the split, there's a discussion on it right above. Thanks N2e and all the contributors for your work on this article and the comprehensive coverage of each landing test! Content there was great.

Incidentally, the lead section on the new main article Falcon 9 ocean booster landing tests sounds like a section header, and I personally don't think it shows notability as well as it should. I'll try to work on it over the next few days, but please add any content or streamline content so that it feels less obviously "split". Appable (talk) 03:48, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Sources on the 7th controlled-descent test

Looks like SpaceX is discussing publically some parts of the 7th controlled-descent test on Falcon 9 Flight 17, which landed, (maybe a landing leg broke off; unclear), booster tipped over, and the tank broke open and a deflagration (kaboom) ensued. See the video SpaceX released on 15 April and is now in the article.

Other sources could be useful for improving the article. I'll start adding the sources I find here:

• Defense News interview with Shotwell, 15 April. N2e (talk) 00:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
• Fine-tuning Falcon 9 landing focuses on throttle valve response, 19 April. <== and another one. N2e (talk) 21:54, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Disagreement between Intro and History

The first paragraph of the Introduction states that "the project's long-term objectives include returning a launch vehicle first stage to the launch site in minutes and to return a second stage to the launch pad" - this is at odds with the last paragraph of the History section which states that "by late 2014, SpaceX suspended or abandoned the plan to recover and reuse the Falcon 9 second stage". — Preceding unsigned comment added by JHarvey418 (talk • contribs) 18:19, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Good observation. We should probably clean up the text. But I think the contradiction dissapears when one recalls that this SpaceX technology development program is not specific to just the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The company has decided not to pursue Falcon 9 second-stage reuse; they absolutely have a long-term goal of second-stage reuse also as a part of this tech dev program. It would appear, based on company statements to date, that the second-stage reuse will get additional development effort when the MCT launch vehicle development get's underway with more than the skeleton crew of current design resources. Cheers. N2e (talk) 19:20, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Relevance of New Shepard launch

Apologies in advance as I'm a new editor, but I'm not sure the New Shepard launch, currently mentioned under History, is relevant to this article. Musk himself tweeted that the recovery of a booster from a suborbital flight is a much different goal than the recovery of the Falcon 9 orbital stages and it doesn't seem to affect SpaceX's program. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to put New Shepard under a "See Also" heading? Gnugnug (talk) 09:56, 2 December 2015 (UTC)