Talk:SpaceX reusable launch system development program

SpaceX reusable launch system development program has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 18, 2014	Good article nominee	Listed
April 1, 2017	Good article reassessment	Kept

Current status: Good article

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A fact from SpaceX reusable launch system development program appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 May 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that SpaceX is working on bringing orbital rockets back to the launchpad and landing them on landing legs?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2014/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/SpaceX reusable launch system development program.

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Source

This video of Musk news conference following the second successful landing of a booster (first one was Dec 2015, on land), and the first one on a droneship, explains a bit about the test philosophy, and why do it on an active orbital mission rather than as most government-funded missions to date where the test flight itself would be a single planned dedicated mission. Musk Discusses CRS-8 Successes with Media, 8 April 2016, at 19:20-21:50. Would be a good source to potentially improve the article. N2e (talk) 02:44, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fairing

SpaceX is working on fairing reusability. I may add a mention of that. --Pmsyyz (talk) 16:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And they achieved a recovery on the 30 March 2017 launch. It is now mentioned in the article, and sourced. N2e (talk) 04:55, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Deeper and more analytical secondary sources

Now that it's been over a day since the successful launch and flight of a "flight-proven" booster stage, the deeper and more serious pieces of space media journalism are being posted.

this one has a good bit of sourced info on costs, flight rates, etc. https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacexs-reusability-effort-faces-one-more-big-challenge.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/03/spacex-historic-falcon-9-re-flight-ses-10/ N2e (talk) 05:48, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Community reassessment

SpaceX reusable launch system development program

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Kept There are no requirements for citations every section and bullet points are allowed. No major neutrality concerns so closing this as keeping its good article status. AIRcorn (talk) 03:27, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings! I came across this page recently, and it looks like the article could use some work to get back to meeting the GA criteria. Specifically, there are sections that are completely uncited, a section that using bulleted entries when it could be prose (not following MoS), and it does not seem very neutral (calling a section routine procedure after one reflown booster?).

I would correct all these myself, but it looks like a very large project and I am honestly not interested in putting that level of effort in. I can contribute in reviewing and doing some of the changes required however. Kees08 (talk) 17:59, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notice. We can work to add citations, there are plenty of good sources available. Regarding "routine procedure", we are talking about the first-stage landings, which have indeed become standard and routine. You are correct to note that relaunching boosters is not routine yet, but the article does not say that. — JFG ^talk 19:46, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good, let's at least get some citations in that section and maybe clarify it a little. Both SpaceX and other citations would be good, in an effort to level out the POV. I can go through the whole article and pick out specific things, but I think you generally know what needs improved, so if you want you can just ping me when the major issues are addressed and I can go through it in detail after that. Whatever works for me. Kees08 (talk) 20:29, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@JFG: Wanted to check in on this, would you like me to start tagging the article or bring up the issues here? Probably should get this going soon. Thanks! Kees08 (Talk) 18:44, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I had forgotten about this process. Do let me know what you think should be improved, and I'll take a look asap. — JFG ^talk 23:57, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Biggest one is to increase the number of statements with citations. I can tag a bunch with citation needed tags if you need. I can give a full, proper review as well, though it would help me out a lot if the statements in the article were supported with citations. Kees08 (Talk) 00:15, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, don't bother tagging, I'll take a pass over the weekend. — JFG ^talk 00:38, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kees08, thanks for your community review, and thanks JFG for being active and offering to help bring the article back to GA criteria. I just saw this Talk Page section today and seem to have not been aware of this. I did a lot of work to get this article to GA status back in the day, and the SpaceX dev program on this has been rather dynamic so lots of stuff is changing in the real world all the time the past 3+ years so it can be challenging to keep the article in sycn.

How can I help. It looks like JFG was going to work the set of items identified on 15 Dec. Did that happen? Does Kees08 think its fixed now? Might you be willing to tag the specific areas you see remaining so that we can keep the re-GA cleanup process moving forward? N2e (talk) 11:22, 2 January 2018 (UTC) Sorry about this, I will try to get to it again soon. Kees08 (Talk) 00:33, 4 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Rename article?

Given that the system has now been used for a real mission, is it perhaps time to rename this article to "SpaceX reusable launch system"? Certainly, development is continuing, as SpaceX works to reduce costs and turnaround times, and to make even more parts of the system resusable, but the system is now no longer purely in an R&D phase; it exists, and is operational. -- The Anome (talk) 09:08, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

SpaceX has indeed reached a key milestone in their drive towards full reusability, but that's not a reason to rename this article, which documents their R&D process. The resulting operational system is described at Falcon 9 Full Thrust, Falcon 9 Block 5, Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship, Landing Zone 1, SpaceX and probably other pages. Meanwhile R&D activities continue: half a fairing was recovered, there is work to enable fast "refuel and relaunch" turnaround, and just this weekend Musk mused about trying to enable recovery of the second stage. Plus some ITS work would come here too. All in all, more reasons to keep the page as a description of reusability R&D efforts. — JFG ^talk 02:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with JFG. This article is an encyclopedic description of the overall development program to achieve this significant advancement in human technology. Took years, broad vision, and the overall technology advancement here is much larger than any particular reusable launch system. This is about a set of multiple technologies--in engines; materials science; guidance, navigation and control; hypersonic ==> subsonic atmospheric flight controls; business; private incentives; competition; interdisciplanary systems development; etc.--being used on multiple reusable launch systems: Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and the Interplanetary Transport System. Not even all of the technologies used/tried/engineered/iterated and experimented with even made it to the final system in use in F9 today, let alone what will be developed for the next-generation interplanetary launch vehicles and spacecraft.

Having said that, there may one day be room (or need) for an article on some particular current reusable launch system, that would not have all the encyclopedic breadth of this article. That's fine, when the need arises. But this article's scope would be misrepresented by re-titling it as proposed. N2e (talk) 19:53, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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