Talk:List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches/Archive 4

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Formatting of the tables

It has been brought up that the small font sizes used in the tables doesn't look all that great, and I personally have to agree. I think we can make this font normal size, and the only change that is needed is putting a horizontal separation into two cells between 'Type' and 'booster' in the third column. The use of the small text seems to have started with this edit by RadioFan. I don't want to jump into making a change like this without consensus, as I haven't really contributed to constructing the tables much. What do you guys think? — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 06:12, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Small type is appropriate for smaller details. I'd rather suppress the booster IDs than make a separate cell for them. Same rationale for landing destinations (ground pad or drone ship). — JFG ^talk 23:34, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Current version but with uniform text size. Would this be a problem? We should get many more booster reuses in the future, I like the booster entry. Concerning sortability: I have no idea how this would work with the comment row, and I think the comment row is more important than a sort feature. --mfb (talk) 01:05, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

I definitely support retaining the booster info, but at the moment the third column looks a bit confusing. Perhaps a better title in the header bar for that third column (maybe some variation of 'Type and Booster', 'Type & Booster', 'Type and Booster#', or 'Type & Booster#' actually I think that some variant of 'Type and Booster ID' is probably the best plan). I am not that keen on reworking the tables to make the list sortable as I feel like we would lose many of the redeeming qualities of the current system (like separation by year) and not get much benefit back. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 05:41, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Sortable table

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I made a sortable table. I removed some columns for the test. The unsorted version looks exactly like the current table, the sorted version looks as you would expect it, the only downside is the split in the launch number. What do you think? Contrary to the suggestion on the nomination page, this means the table has to start with the column headers, it cannot start with the year. --mfb (talk) 15:36, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Sorting brings more problems, I don't see the upside to include it. — JFG ^talk 18:41, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Where do you see problems? Sorting by launch site, orbit, customer, success or similar things can be interesting. --mfb (talk) 19:05, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

All the years fall to the bottom when any sorting is activated, which can't be restored without reloading the page. Aỉlso, when you add some variation to the landing outcomes, they are sorted kind of at random (I experimented with your table, I hope you don't mind). Without splitting off a bunch of this info into additional columns for detailed sorting (which isn't advisable IMO), I don't see how this is going to work. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 19:16, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

We could put the years and headers in between if sorted by launch number, but then we can only put them at the bottom for one sorting of the other columns (e. g. put them as "ZZ" to appear at the bottom with ascending order), with the other one they would spam the top section. I still think the current version is an improvement. The table doesn't get wrong without these intermediate headers, it just gets more like a sorted list - but that is exactly what the user wants in this case. The landing results are sorted by alphabet. Drone ship, Gground pad, Ocean, Parachute. It is a test and development page, feel free to edit it of course. --mfb (talk) 20:39, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mfb: I tweaked your table to place year headers correctly when sorting by flight number. That leaves the year headers at the top of the table when sorting by any other field, but that's not worse than having them all at the bottom; ideally they should be hidden in that case. Then we still have the issue of flight numbers being repeated on two rows, I don't know how to avoid this. Well, we could expand the comment field to take the full width, so that the flight number is only on one row, but that would not look so good. — JFG ^talk 05:31, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Derivative version where the launch column does not get split any more. Downside: The launch number is not vertically centered, as technically the field is split now. I think I like the previous version better, but I thought I put it here. --mfb (talk) 09:09, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility/Data_tables_tutorial#Column_headers_in_sortable_tables:_bad_example, because the current experimental table reads a lot like this. There is an example of how to do sortable tables with a year heading, but we will have to remove the section headers and add an additional column for the year. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 09:41, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Like this? I'm not sure if that is better, and it makes the table even wider. Our table is much larger than the examples there. We would also lose the (very useful) TOC entry or get messy formatting. --mfb (talk) 13:20, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Right. I disagree with losing the TOC entries or clear year separators. — JFG ^talk 14:42, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we are going to be able to keep the year separators or the TOC entries and still have a single large sortable table. I also agree that these two things are more important than a sortable table. One option is to separate the single large table into several tables (one for each TOC entry) and then have each table be independently sortable. The advantage is that we can pretty much keep the current format with no changes (no downside really), but the disadvantage is that we can't sort all SpaceX launches in a single table (to pick out all of the mission failures for example). Spliting the tables in this way is actually reccomended in the manual of style. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 06:49, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mfb: That's a clever trick you did with cell borders: I like the outcome! This might sway me to supporting the sortable columns. Now we would need a full-length sample to better evaluate usability. I'm concerned that if we add the repeated header rows at each year break (as advised for accessibility), we will then see 5 or 6 sets of those headers piling up on each other when we sort on any column but the first one. — JFG ^talk 14:42, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I made a full-length table, I tried to include all discussed changes currently scattered over the three pages. Draft version (permanent link).

• Uses "Type and BoosterID"
• Uses the single-row header someone implemented recently (launch+landing outcome as regular columns)
• Does not use small text apart from "no attempt" (change that?)
• Has 2010-2013 below the first header row again, otherwise we will not get sorting.
• Does the border trick to avoid visual splitting of the first column.
• Takes into account flight 4 with the secondary payload formatting. I didn't do the border trick there as I think centering it in the unsorted view is more important
• Takes into account Amos-6 with n/a and sorts it as 28.1.
• Uses data-sort-value for payload masses. Sorting by payload puts the year headers between the missions with known payload mass and missions with unknown payload, can be changed if necessary.
• Uses the success/failure templates and centers the ocean and parachutes results manually.

Comments? --mfb (talk) 07:56, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Good progress, thanks. I have added a trick to preserve year headers when sorting by flight number / date, and move them to the bottom when sorting by anything else. Also gave them a white background for clarity: see the result. This is coming close to something usable, in terms of sorting. — JFG ^talk 08:57, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Good work, but there a few problems that might not even have solutions. If you try to sort by anything, all the column headers fall to the bottom (and there is no way to restore them without reloading the page). If you try sorting by landing outcome, they are instead sorted by landing method, then landing outcome (I suggested fixing this by listing the outcome first, i.e. "Failure - Drone ship"). Also, something weird where when you sort by anything except flight # in reverse order, all of the year headings float to the top and just sort of sit there awkwardly. Unless there is a way to make the intermediate headers and year headers disappear when sorting by anything except flight #, this method isn't going to work without being really messy. As I said above, we might need to split it into individual sortable tables per TOC listing (per year group) or else give up on having TOC listings and year divisions. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 10:20, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Sure, we are stretching the limits of Mediawiki here: this is not a database or a spreadsheet. We must accept the remaining issues, or give up on sorting. Landing outcome can be sorted as we wish by adding a sort key. — JFG ^talk 12:03, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Unless we can sort these issues, I'm not interested in having a table with large formatting issues where the headers and year bars float to the top/bottom. A good medium might be separating into multiple sortable tables that don't have these issues, otherwise we can just leave it as a single large unsorted table, it isn't a big deal and sorting doesn't add much. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 18:46, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Multiple tables would defeat the purpose of sorting. Let's leave things as they are. — JFG ^talk 19:55, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that is true. As much as I appreciate the effort that Mfb has gone to, I have to suggest that we don't waste any more editor effort or time trying to make this work when the Mediawiki software clearly wasn't designed for a table like this. The non-sortable table that we have currently is very serviceable and accessible, and being sortable was always a 'nice to have feature' rather than a necessity. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 00:37, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done - no sortable table for now. --mfb (talk) 06:07, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Small text / Version, Type

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• By the way, I just removed the small text from the launch lists (as requested in the FL review) as well as did a modification of the header of the 3rd column. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 09:30, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Oops, I erased your changes while doing a schedule update. Not sure we have consensus to remove small text yet, perhaps we should conduct a quick survey among editors? OK with your header change though; I'll apply it again. — JFG ^talk 09:40, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Well I created this section and started with this issue of the small text. mfb seemed behind it and no one else commented on it so I figured it was ok. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 09:45, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I guess I missed your comment above where you said you think the small text is useful... sorry. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 09:50, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I set the headers to "Version" and "Booster ID" because we never use "Type" in the prose. I prefer the more compact display for booster IDs, but I'm wiling to be convinced otherwise. — JFG ^talk 09:52, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@JFG: I actually considered 'version' when I was making this edit but used 'type' because I thought it helped with the whole Falcon Heavy vs Falcon 9 versions. As for the small text, now that we sorted the third column header, the small text is not needed and looks kind of messy IMO. EDIT: Also, I don't see the need at all for small text in the landing column. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 09:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

• @JFG: What is the advantage of having the small text? I can't see that it adds much and it seems to be applied a bit randomly. I think it looks pretty random with the small text, and generally I only see small text being used in tables for footnotes or other stuff like that. In this case we are using it for differentiation, which is unusual. I can see the case in using it for notes such as: (every two months) and (more details above) (and in fact in the later case I had left it small in my edit). We should be using "Version and booster ID" instead of just "Version Booster ID" because it reads confusingly the way we have it currently, even with using the small text for differentiation (I had used "Type and Booster ID" in my edit). If we do this, we don't need the small text for differentiation of the booster IDs (which is also an accessibility concern because when read by a screen reader "Version Booster ID" makes no sense). In the 'Landing outcome' section, the small text really only serves to differentiate between the outcome of the landing (Success/Failure) and the mode of landing (drone ship/parachutes/ground pad). Again, this isn't necessary, as "Drone ship failure" reads perfectly fine, but if we want to we could use the format "Success (drone ship)"/"Failure (parachutes)". Also, using the "Success (drone ship)" format is better if we decide to go for a sortable table as well, as it would sort by Success/Failure rather than by method (in the same way that the mission outcome would be sorted). I see no reason whatsoever why we use small text for "No attempt" in this column. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 06:36, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Standard-size text makes those small details stand out too much, and it forces the tables to be even wider than they already are. "No attempt" just happens to follow the convention of the {{n/a}} template in zillions of Wikipedia tables. Obviously we disagree on this; let's ask other editors for their preferences. — JFG ^talk 07:41, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I have adjusted the "Version / Booster ID" headers to include a "/" separator ("and" takes too much space). — JFG ^talk 07:44, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Good idea. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 07:56, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

JFG I wouldn't consider the difference between a drone ship landing and a ground pad landing to be a "small detail", and the booster IDs are pretty important too, as they are likely to be reused quite often moving forward. The width difference with the normal text does make those sections slightly wider, but this doesn't increase the width of the table, it just makes the 'Payload' section shrink a bit to compensate (where there is plenty of room to spare). — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 11:09, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I think smaller font makes the boosterID stand out more - it is different from the rest of the text. I support normal sized text everywhere. n/a can be smaller if the template thinks that is useful. I thought we wanted to call it Type, not Version? As the "/" would end the line, I suggest a comma there. "Type, <br/> BoosterID". --mfb (talk) 15:30, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that version looks good when differentiating between different types of falcon 9 rockets, but type is more correct to differentiate between the falcon 9 and the falcon heavy. I guess it depends whether we consider a falcon heavy to be a 'version'. I'll reserve judgement till JFG has his say. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 18:43, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

"Version" is what all the flying rockets are called. Heavy hasn't flown yet, and we'll see if sources call it a "version", a "type" or something else after a few missions. I would probably be inclined to list the Heavy flights in a separate table anyway. Good idea for the comma to replace the slash in the header. — JFG ^talk 19:59, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with both Version and Type. Concerning text size for the booster: Looks like Insertcleverphrasehere and I prefer normal text size, while JFG prefers small text. PresN didn't like the different text size in the featured list discussion. --mfb (talk) 06:05, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mfb and Insertcleverphrasehere: I have now applied standard-size text to the booster IDs. I have shortened the table headers to say just "Booster" instead of "Booster ID", to gain space, as the footnote clarifies what this field means. I'd like to keep the smaller text for "Drone ship", "Ground pad" or "Ocean" landing targets, that makes the Success / Failure field more legible. Would you agree? — JFG ^talk 15:59, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Booster is nice. I don't see how the small text makes the landing outcome more legible. --mfb (talk) 16:21, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

The small text elegantly distinguishes the landing target ("Drone ship", "Ground pad") from the landing outcome ("Success", "Failure"). — JFG ^talk 18:44, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Picking a style

A (current)	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
Parachutes Failure	Parachutes Failure	Failure (parachutes)	Failure (parachutes)	Failure (parachutes)	Failure (parachutes)	Failure (parachutes)	Failure (parachutes)
Ocean Failure	Ocean Failure	Failure (ocean)	Failure (ocean)	Failure (ocean)	Failure (ocean)	Failure (ocean)	Failure (ocean)
Drone ship Failure	Drone ship Failure	Failure (drone ship)	Failure (drone ship)	Failure (drone ship)	Failure (drone ship)	Failure (drone ship)	Failure (drone ship)
Ocean Success	Ocean Success	Success (ocean)	Success (ocean)	Success (ocean)	Success (ocean)	Success (ocean)	Success (ocean)
Ground pad Success	Ground pad Success	Success (ground pad)	Success (ground pad)	Success (ground pad)	Success (ground pad)	Success (ground pad)	Success (ground pad)
Drone ship Success	Drone ship Success	Success (drone ship)	Success (drone ship)	Success (drone ship)	Success (drone ship)	Success (drone ship)	Success (drone ship)
No attempt	No attempt	No attempt	No attempt	—	No attempt	No attempt	No attempt
Drone ship N/A	Drone ship N/A	N/A (drone ship)	N/A (drone ship)	Planned (drone ship)	N/A (drone ship)	N/A (intended drone ship)	N/A (drone ship)

Which of the above options do you guys prefer? I prefer B I think, but if JFG is set on small text I also like D very much as it fits better with the other small text used in the table and doesn't look like a random use of small text to me (also I like starting with Success/Failure). I think 'No Attempt' should be normal size for options B and C But I'm not sure about for option D.^{(please comment)} Feel free to add additional options. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 22:43, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I like A or D. I'm neutral on the size of "No attempt". — JFG ^talk 23:58, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I like C and D. Looks like we can agree on D. I see "no attempt" in the same category as "success" and "failure", so I would use the normal font size for it. --mfb (talk) 03:27, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Great! I have now applied format D to the table. It looks good and the markup is also simpler. I have left the "No attempt" cells with their default small size for now. Please take a look. — JFG ^talk 04:35, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I did an edit with full size text for "No Attempt" to see what it would look like in the finished table, and I think I agree with mfb. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 10:42, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 12:11, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your test. I feel the standard-size text puts too much emphasis on the "No attempt" cells, which have no information to convey. Perhaps the solution would be simply to make them all "N/A"? The idea behind differentiating "Not applicable" from "No attempt" was to communicate to readers that a landing attempt was sometimes planned but precluded by the loss of the rocket. It we still want to make this distinction, I'd be tempted to reverse the statements:

• display a standard "N/A" cell when no landing was attempted (thus "landing outcome" is indeed "not applicable"), and
• for flights that failed before landing could be attempted, say "Planned (drone ship)".

I'm going to try this approach and let you comment. — JFG ^talk 16:27, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Here it is: proposal E above. The last line is for failed missions which had a landing planned. I think this looks good and is more informative than the current setup. — JFG ^talk 16:40, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

We use "planned" for future plans everywhere else in the article. A "planned" landing would appear like SpaceX tries to land this in the future. What is wrong with N/A? There was no landing attempt, no matter why. --mfb (talk) 19:25, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't like E for the same reasons as mfb. It is better not to use N/A everywhere: we use "No attempt" in the "Flights by landing outcome" chart and in the table it serves well to differentiate between flights that flew in expendable mode (with no intention of landing), and flights that were destroyed before they had a chance to land (which are not in the "Flights by landing outcome" chart at all. I suggest going back to the version before I made the text full size: option F above. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 20:15, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I prefer D over F, especially for the "no attempt" text. --mfb (talk) 07:55, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I also prefer D over F. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 09:03, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Why did you suggest going to F then? --mfb (talk) 13:42, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Attempt at compromise. I only barely prefer D to F anyway and it seems JFG is pretty set on the small text for 'No Attempt'. However, if you prefer D as well, I might as well go with my (slight) preference. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 18:09, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I believe that using a different color for planned attempts conveys more accurate information. We could change the word "Planned" to "Precluded" or "Cancelled" to avoid misinterpretation. — JFG ^talk 08:58, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

In both cases there was no attempt. For different reasons, but I don't think that is the important point. --mfb (talk) 17:10, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

In the case of current 'No attampt' listings, the rocket went to space and came back down, but for whatever reason SpaceX decided not to attempt a landing (i.e. lack of fuel, excess velocity, etc.) In the case of failed launches, there was not 'No attempt' at all. An attempt was not possible or 'Not applicable' to that launch because you can't land something that exploded or failed to launch in the first place. Remember that this is a Landing outcomes column. The outcome of successful launches that didn't land was that no landing was attempted and the rocked was crashed into the ocean. There is no landing outcome for a mission that failed to launch or exploded and I think that N/A is the most appropriate representation of that. To address potential confusion we could change the (drone ship) to (intended drone ship) (See Option G above). — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 19:05, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Makes sense. How about "Intended (drone ship) " then? — JFG ^talk 21:47, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

That would be a better word for option E, but I don't like the syntax there. It seems confusing to parse and 'Intended' doesn't really fit in the same category as the other terms used in full size text that it is replacing (Success/Failure/No attempt/Intended-- i.e. 'Intended' is not a landing outcome) whereas N/A fits better because a landing outcome really is 'not applicable' to these two missions. I much prefer option G to E, even though it uses an extra line. I'm also happy with D, which is also more succinct, but it depends if we think users are likely to get confused when reading the bottom cell of D, in which case we should go for G (which makes its point crystal clear IMO). — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 05:05, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with G. I would add a colon: "(intended: drone ship)" --mfb (talk) 05:25, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Seeing that D is in the article and doesn't look too bad, I'd be happy to keep that. However, I'm still of the opinion that a distinct color for these two cases would make sense (option H). The third line in G doesn't look appealing. — JFG ^talk 17:29, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Not a fan of the colour change personally (blue seems wrong, but I cant think of a better colour option) N/A should be grey, maybe a colour change for the 'No attempt' cells, but even then I think we are better off with both in grey as they share the fact that they were not either successful of failed landings. I recommend that we just keep it as it is (D). — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 05:00, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I also think both should have the same color. Looks like we can all agree on D, as it is in the article now? --mfb (talk) 11:03, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, D is fine. Let's close this section. — JFG ^talk 14:14, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Colours in landing outcome column

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I notice that the colours have been changed in the landing outcome column to more reflect the colours in the landing statistics chart. I really don't like this change and I think we should standardise the colours for all failures and all successes. I propose that all failures be given the same colour (the off red that is standard for the failure template) and that all successes be given the standard green except ocean landings. Ocean landings deserve a special colour (aquamarine is ok, but perhaps a yellow shade might work better?) and a letter note indicating that dispite a 'successful' landing, the booster was still destroyed. I'll implement a version of this and see what you guys think. Comments welcome. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 01:16, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

I like your version. Green = Booster recovered, red = whatever was planned failed, and aquamarine for a success where the booster was still destroyed. Very easy and it has the necessary information. Yellow looks like a partial success, I think the current color is better. --mfb (talk) 11:13, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

OK by me as well. — JFG ^talk 13:30, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Horizontal lines

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Does anyone know how to fix the missing horizontal lines? I experimented with removing some blank lines and that fixed some of them, but not all. Greg (talk) 18:05, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Where do you miss horizontal lines? --mfb (talk) 18:12, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

In the table of flights, right now, in the 1st column, there is no horizontal line between the date for CRS-13 and Falcon Heavy Demo. Also, there's no line at all between STP-2 and TelStar 18V. Greg (talk) 01:51, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I see lines there. Browser-specific problem? --mfb (talk) 08:27, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Greg: Are the lines still wrong? --mfb (talk) 03:42, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Browser-specific was a good guess, if I view in Firefox and Chrome in parallel, I see that FF is missing a few (and they move around as the page gets edited) while Chrome is always OK. Never mind! Greg (talk) 04:21, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Weird, if I check the table with Firefox it is fine. Doesn't seem to be a general problem. --mfb (talk) 10:51, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggestion: less green

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Compared to other launch lists, this is the only one using a green background for the whole line of each successful mission. I think this is bad for readability and I would suggest leaving the color background only in the two "Outcome" columns. We should also switch to the standard success/failure colors specified in {{Success}}, {{Failure}}, {{Partial}} and friends. What do my fellow editors think? — JFG ^talk 10:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 11:40, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree. --mfb (talk) 13:05, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done — JFG ^talk 19:02, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

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Suggestion: flags

For some time, the table had small flags showing the nationality of mission customers (see how it looked). This was useful to highlight the notable diversity of SpaceX customers worldwide, but some editors objected to flags unless they represent a government entity (see archived discussion). As we are discussing formatting towards earning a "featured list" label, I thought I'd put this suggestion on the table again. Comments welcome. — JFG ^talk 10:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

The flags look great, unfortunately, it doesn't appear that the reason for their removal has changed in the meantime. Multinational companies with tax haven countries listed as their country of origin would make the usage of flags for companies untenable. I can't really support the partial use of flags only for government entities either. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 11:44, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

As discussed in the 2016 thread, I could only identify one company which seems to be registered in a tax heaven: Asia Broadcast Satellite in Bermuda. I don't think we should suppress informative data about every SpaceX customer just because of this edge case. We could add a footnote to clarify. To the other point, nobody would assume that all clients are government entities. The spaceflight chronicle pages (2017 in spaceflight and friends) have made ample use of flags for many years with no objection. — JFG ^talk 14:46, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

If it can be done with minimal conflict about which flag is appropriate, I'll support it, as it does look nice. Since you brought up that example, Asia Broadcast Satellite, what would you do in this particular case? — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 18:33, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd keep Bermuda, because our article about them does not say anything else, and the company's web site lists several office locations worldwide, with headquarters in Bermuda. — JFG ^talk 19:07, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I personally don't see the harm in it, even if we have a few entries that are essentially just listing the flag of the company's tax haven location. In the vast majority of cases the flag will provide the reader useful information, and it looks rather nice. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 06:10, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. However, let's wait for input from other editors before doing the work. — JFG ^talk 07:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

No other feedback yet. I have added the flags and done some cleanup for accessibility (use plainlists instead of line breaks). Comments welcome. — JFG ^talk 18:27, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Darn, I missed this discussion. Too busy with real life.

I continue to believe that national flags of national governments should only be used to represent government customers. They should not reflect the "Customer" of the many customers who are private companies. Private companies are not creatures of the nation-state they reside in.

As a compromise, I would not object to a different claim that is emphatically true: some nation-state flag is the symbol of the "Country that issued the launch license". So if the Column heading said "Launch-license country" instead of "Customer", that would be defensible. Alternatives might be "Nationality of launch license" or "Launch-license issuing authority".

Comments? N2e (talk) 14:32, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm kind of on the fence with this one. I think that it is clear that the flags should remain for government entities, and I think that it is useful to show the nationality flag of companies as it does indicate the diversity of customers. However I can see the argument that with some large multinational corporations, there isn't necessarily a clear nationality (there is always an official nationality, but this doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of the situation perfectly). I don't see the harm in some of them being of marginal usefulness though, so long as the vast majority are useful, so I guess I am slightly in favour of keeping the flags for all. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 23:24, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Flags were brought up again in the featured list discussion. As before: I don't care about the flags. --mfb (talk) 14:28, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Yep. Are my comments here an accurate reflection of what you guys think about adding the country names as text? If this issue is pushed as a fail-able criteria I think the best option is just to strip them out rather than include them as awkward and trivial text. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 21:47, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: I agree with your comments, and I replied at the Featured List thread. PS: You might consider changing your user name to reflect the CamelCase of your signature, that would make it easier to ping you. — JFG ^talk 22:27, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

 Done — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 22:33, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

• Removed I have removed the flags. There was not a strong consensus for inclusion at the start, and there is vocal opposition to the idea of flags alone without written country names, as well as opposition to flags for non-governmental entities. Does appear to be in violation of WP:MOSFLAG ("Accompany flags with country names", and MOSFLAG also says "If the use of flags in a list, table or infobox makes it unclear, ambiguous or controversial, it is better to remove the flags even if that makes the list, table or infobox inconsistent with others of the same type where no problems have arisen." There seems to be consensus that flags with country names as well is undue for a trivial aspect and not what we want. With no way to reconcile these issues, the best option is to remove the flags. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 05:59, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: I'm disappointed to see the flags out; they are informative to readers, and MOS should not be blindly followed. Given that we failed to reach consensus among commenting editors here, I would suggest taking this issue to an RfC, in order to gather wider input. — JFG ^talk 06:31, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

We can use the flags if we also add country names, but I don't really support that, and I don't think anyone else did either (including you?). MOSFLAG specifically forbids using flags without country names, so I don't think an RFC is going to get anywhere. You can start one if you want to, however I am pretty sure that you are the only one wanting to add the flags (without country names) at the moment. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 08:09, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

MOS:FLAG "forbids" nothing, it's a guideline, not a policy. There are plenty of pages which use flags to identify the nationality of companies, not just government entities: see 2017 in spaceflight, List of largest banks, List of manufacturers by motor vehicle production, etc. MOS:FLAG itself also says: In lists or tables, flag icons may be relevant when such representation of different subjects is pertinent to the purpose of the list or table itself. We must think of the best interest of readers: WP:Readers first. — JFG ^talk 08:23, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Accessibility

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• I am starting to understand what Pres was on about regarding our table being an accessibility nightmare. We have some major issues here which are not going to be easy to address.

First things first though. We need to change the 'Outcome -- Mission/Landing)' to be two single columns instead 'Mission outcome' and 'Landing outcome'. Using sub headers in the header bar makes it near impossible to apply scopes in a way that will make it possible to parse using a screen reader. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 05:04, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I have done this, I hope that this is ok. There really is no way of satisfying accessibility for screen readers with the split cell header that we had previously, even if it was slightly more appealing visually. Though I personally think it actually looks less cluttered and better this way anyway. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 05:38, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

That's good, thanks. — JFG ^talk 07:38, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

With the header bar made less complicated (per above) I managed to apply column scopes to the tables. waiting on a response from reviewers whether I have done it right and if further work is needed for accessibility. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 06:12, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I have added scoped row headers for increased accessibility. This does make the first row grey instead of white though. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 18:34, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

That looks good. I gave a white background to the year separators, that looks even better (and remains accessible). — JFG ^talk 20:14, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done --mfb (talk) 10:52, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Falcon 9 "Block 4" is part of Falcon 9 v1.2(Full Thrust)?

The recent Falcon 9 launch was reported to be a "block 4". Spacex has not said anything themselves about the CRS-12 flight being on a new revision of the rocket. Before this every major new version of the rocket was reported by Spacex(v1.1, v1.2(FT)). The FAA license from february 2017 for future flights of the dragon capsule from 39-A Clearly states that it only covers the "Falcon 9 Version 1.2 launch vehicle", since we have not seen a new license for Dragon launches from 39-A it can be assumed that the rocket that flew on CRS-12 was a v1.2 or "FT".

It sounds like the 'block 4' is an internal model number but fits as a variation of the FT. — InsertCleverPhraseHere ^{(or here)} 00:19, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

It's confusing because SpaceX completely revamped their numbering system yet again:P.

• Block 1 (use to be v1.0 ...which used to be Block 1 before it was retconned to be v1.0)
• Block 2 (use to be v1.1. Not to be confused with the Merlin-1C+ version of Block 2 (advertised as 10.35 tonne to LEO), which was an uprated version of the Block 1, rather than a near complete first stage redesign. That version of Block 2 only ever existed on their website, and was never built)
• Block 3 (use to be FT / v1.2)
• Block 4 (didn't really have a previous designation, but was sometimes referred to by various names like FT+ or v1.3 by fans. This model is the current model in flight (as of this flight), and incorporates many changes to Block 3 that were specifically requested by NASA (for Commercial Crew) and the USAF (for full certification). It has both a new first stage and new second stage, which first flew on a Block 3 core a little while ago. The fact that they're able to, and willing to, fly a Block 4 second stage on a Block 3 first stage makes this much more challenging for us to keep track of)
• Block 5 (final version of F9. Incorporates all Block 4 changes, plus reusability changes that were made after SpaceX began recovering Block 3 cores, starting with the OG2 mission)

The version system they use has been terrible for fans! Hopefully the new system makes things a little clearer. Maybe. — Gopher65_talk 03:07, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Do you have a source for this interpretation? Because it's been thrashed on Reddit and no one has a source for this particular interpretation and insiders deny that it's correct. Greg (talk) 01:56, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

In the absence of a proper versioning system by SpaceX, I think we should follow the block numbers they gave. That makes Block 4 a new version, and Block 5 will be another new version. X-37B will be another Block 4 launch (source). --mfb (talk) 15:43, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

See also comments in parallel discussion at Talk:Falcon 9#Is block 4 a part of v1.2 (Full Thrust)? Unclear what to do. — JFG ^talk 16:25, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Just checked the video, confirming that CRS-12 first stage was equipped with the old-style aluminum grid fins.[1] This may be a block 3 first stage with a block 4 second stage? — JFG ^talk 08:35, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

The grid fins seem to be independent of the block. The booster was block 4 according to sources. --mfb (talk) 13:15, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Contrary to the previous Iridium mission, B1041 has classic aluminum grid fins.[2] Indeed, this piece of equipment is independent of the block version. — JFG ^talk 22:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

What about official source from NASA which says: Launch Vehicle: Falcon 9 Full Thrust NASA SpaceX CRS-12 Piotrulos (talk) 20:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

The article currently considers it as subcategory of FT. --mfb (talk) 20:26, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

No more block 3 cores?

Apart from reflights of course. This reddit comment mentions a potential source. If we can confirm that, we can add "/B4" to more launches. --mfb (talk) 00:06, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Don't forget that B4 is just a transitional version. Any confirmation of when Block 5 starts? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 00:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

The first Dragon 2 flight is expected to be the maiden flight but I don't know where this was announced. What we know for sure: All Dragon 2 flights will use Block 5 (the only human-rated version). --mfb (talk) 09:11, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@Mfb: Our citation [256] by Chris Gebhardt spells it out: The Falcon 9 Block 5 (a name that isn’t official, with Elon Musk preferring to call it Falcon 9 2.5 if anything), is currently planned to debut in its fully integrated form on the Demo-1 launch.[3] — JFG ^talk 06:35, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Certainly manufacturing has moved on to Block 4 cores. However we can't guess which of the upcoming flights will have new boosters and which ones will re-use one of the numerous recovered Block 3 boosters, therefore we can't add "/B4" before^(haha) more precise launch/reuse announcements. — JFG ^talk 06:41, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Contrary to the previous Iridium mission, B1041 has classic aluminum grid fins.[4] — JFG ^talk 21:59, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I actually thought that they'd already finished up manufacturing Block 4, and have moved on to Block 5, but that could be a misunderstanding on my part. We've only seen... 1? fully Block 4 launch so far, AFAIK (first and second stage both B4). The second stages are all Block 4 at this point though. — Gopher65_talk 14:30, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

There have been three launches with a full Block 4 stack so far: CRS-12 with B1039, X-37B OTV-5 with B1040 and today's Iridium NEXT third batch with B1041. Prior to this, three missions had flown a Block 4 second stage on top of a Block 3 first stage: NROL-76 and Inmarsat-5 F4 in May 2017, and Intelsat 35e in July. The Intelsat 35e mission demonstrated performance improvement of the second stage, lofting the heaviest satellite of all Falcon 9 missions to GTO (6,761 kg). — JFG ^talk 20:51, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Flags?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There have been two discussions regarding the addition of flags to represent the nationality of customers for each mission:

• Talk:List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches#Suggestion: flags
• Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches/archive1#Flags

Here's a recent version with flags for reference.

As consensus is unclear, I am pinging all recent talk page participants and article editors for a quick survey. @22merlin, Almightycat, AlphaAdhito, Appable, Arado, Aremisasling, Chessrat, C-randles, Cvision, Dan100, Foggonda, Frmorrison, Gopher65, Greg Lindahl, Grounded Cosmonaut, Hoolooh, Huntster, Insertcleverphrasehere, Jacobkjaersgaardhansen, Jpkoester1, Lklundin, Lucaspq, Ludovic Landry, Martin Embeh, Merkhet, Mfb, N2e, Oberg.nick, Phillipsturtles, Piotrulos, PresN, RexxS, The Rambling Man, and Trappist the monk: Thanks for your input. — JFG ^talk 08:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Should we insert flags? (Yes/No)

• Yes – Informative to readers and shows the diversity of SpaceX customers. Whether payloads are commissioned by a national government or by a private company is irrelevant: the flag shows the national origin in both cases, just as in 2017 in spaceflight and prior chronicles. — JFG ^talk 08:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Yes – The more relevant information, the better. As for private versus government customers, maybe there is a way to convey this additional bit of information. Lklundin (talk) 09:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Comment – I'm fairly agnostic about the use of flags in this article, so I'm not concerned about whatever outcome is reached. However, I should make it clear that there is a project-wide consensus already in existence at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons #Flags. You will need to examine in particular "Flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, where the subject actually represents that country or nationality – such as military units or national sports teams. In lists or tables, flag icons may be relevant when such representation of different subjects is pertinent to the purpose of the list or table itself." But also please take note of the guidance in the section Accompany flags with country names: "The name of a flag's political entity should appear adjacent to the first use of the flag, as no reader is familiar with every flag, and many flags differ only in minor details." There is also an accessibility issue for colour blind readers when the icon alone is used without the country name. The Manual of Style is guidance that needs good reason not to follow and WP:CONLOCAL will apply. It may be that there is a good argument to be made that indicating the country of the customer in this list is "pertinent to the purpose of the list", but I've yet to see someone make that argument strongly. I hope all that helps. --RexxS (talk) 13:38, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Yes – I'm rather indifferent about this but I don't see why the flags shouldn't be there. More information is always better than less information. As for private versus government customers, in my opinion that is irrelevant in this case. The fact that the flags also look cool doesn't hurt either. Grounded Cosmonaut (talk) 14:03, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• No — I'm leaning against flags for two reasons:

1. This table is already too busy, and if we're going to add yet more columns to it, there is more important information that could be conveyed. As reuse of cores becomes more common, the table will naturally demand that more detailed information about use count/core, etc be added to it. In addition, there are many columns we could add that are of equal use (eg, useful, but minimally so) to the flags/nationality column(s). For instance, I've often come to this table wondering "how many flights have they had so far this year?", only to have to manually count the number (poor me, right? ;)). I considered adding a "flight count this year" column, because that would be useful for me, personally, but I decided against it for the reason given above: this table just can't handle any more columns or data in general (at least not without a major rework).
2. Flags don't properly convey who created a payload. All they say is where the business or government is located that *paid* for (part of) the launch. If Bulgaria's national telecom company contracted a sat, but Boeing built the propulsion system, OrbitalATK built the bus itself, and SpaceX launched the rocket, and the ownership and operation of the sat while on orbit is controlled by SES, which country should the flag belong to? Let's further say that the original company from Bulgaria is leasing 1/2 of the bandwidth on the sat, with the other half as of yet unsold by SES. The telecom is ultimately a minor player in the whole process. Then, what happens if that telecom company decides not to sell its 1/2 of the sat's bandwidth in its own country, because it can be sold at a higher price to a company from Argentina instead, and they don't actually sell to end customers in Bulgaria at all? Is it then an Argentinian satellite, because they're using most of the bandwidth, and are effectively controlling the sat? At this point the original Bulgarian company is just a minor go-between between SES and some telecom company in Argentina. In this scenario, who gets the flag? What happens if the satellite is an equal joint venture between four small European countries? Who gets the flag in the column? Four flags will distort the column's dynamic size and make the table less useful on devices with small screens, so that's not an option. My point is that satellite "ownership" is often very complicated, and shifts over time. Sometimes it shifts between when the sat is ordered and when it is launched, and sometimes after. — Gopher65_talk 14:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Gopher65: To look up the "flight count this year", you have the graphs in the "Launch statistics" section. — JFG ^talk 14:41, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I know that's there. It's just... not the same:(. I'm actually not too happy with any of the bar graphs. The whole idea of a bar graph is to present information in such a simple, clean way that you can tell exactly what it means with a single quick glance. Our bar graphs need to be studied to pull out any useful information from them, which completely defeats the purpose of the graphs in the first place. — Gopher65_talk 16:09, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Gopher65: The bar graphs look clear and straightforward to me. How would you suggest to improve them? — JFG ^talk 20:53, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Gopher65: You don't have to count individually, the flight numbers help. 29 to 42 inclusive are 42-29+1=14 launches this year, for example. --mfb (talk) 23:46, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

• No, the proposal isn't clear whether we are to be adding the country names as well (I am assuming not).

I've changed my view on this issue, as I think that the flags potentially introduce confusion for no good reason. I think that the table is too busy already to be adding the country names, and without the country names I think that the flags are just so much visual clutter. While some people may rigorously know all the flags around the world, there are too many that can be confused with each other, especially when viewed as very small (this Quote from JFG from the FL review is relevant: "Wait until somebody squints over Monaco, Singapore, Indonesia and Poland."). This is compounded by colourblindness and the fact that on mobile you can't hover over the flag to display the country name. There are other issues to do with accurately defining the country as well (Example: Asia Broadcast Satellite, a large international company headquartered in Bermuda, results in a useless Bermuda flag that just distracts and confuses readers). Ultimately all of this doesn't give me any reason to ignore the manual of style that says that we shouldn't use flags without country names, and gives me plenty of reasons why we should follow it.

I do not support adding the flags and country names, as this would add even more clutter to the table and the usefulness/space-needed ratio doesn't seem high enough to merit inclusion (though I feel that I am more likely to be convinced of this than being convinced about using the flags alone). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 17:39, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

For clarity, the flags proposal does not include country names. It has been established in the Featured List discussion that sight-impaired readers have access to country names via the automatic alt text appended to the flag by the standard {{flagicon}} template. — JFG ^talk 20:57, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@JFG: Indeed, those using screen-readers will hear the name of the country and are better served by the icon than sighted readers, but the accessibility issue is with colour blind visitors and old folks like me who can't see fine detail on the icons. Not all sight-impaired readers are blind. --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely, and that's why flags are clickable, plus on mouse- or trackpad-driven machines the country name is revealed by hovering. People who don't know some flags are generally happy to learn. — JFG ^talk 21:34, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Neither my tablet nor my phone have the ability to hover, and over half of all Wikipedia views are now on mobile devices. Our best work needs to cater for all of our readers, not just a subset. I'm happy to learn the difference between Monaco and Indonesia, but it still won't help me tell which icon is which, even on my 30" monitor, let alone the smaller screens. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:16, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Tablet and phone users will have to tap the flags or remain blissfully ignorant. Oy vey! — JFG ^talk 22:37, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

A far worse result is that someone does recognize the flag of Indonesia, but has no idea that the flag of Monaco is similar; they see the Monaco flag and think "oh hey, Indonesia is doing a lot of space stuff lately". Then they don't click on it to learn their mistake. As a result the reader has been misinformed due to ambiguity. Also, who wants to navigate to another page just to see what a tiny flag is? and how are they to know that the flags are clickable rather than just an icon? There are many problems with this. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 05:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• Comment – The impact of using or not using flags is small compared to the time used on the flag discussions. I don't think we'll reach a consensus here. --mfb (talk) 23:46, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

This was one of the reasons I decided that removing them was the best course of action, I couldn't see any way to reconcile the different opinions expressed in the above linked conversations, and the discussions had already had quite a few participants. Nevertheless, as a FL candidate, we really need to make sure that we get everything sorted with consensus, and at the very least we will have a cohesive discussion on the use of flags without country names that we can point to in future discussions on the topic. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 05:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• No - I simply see no value in adding them. All they do is make things a little more colourful; they do not add to the comprehension of the table data, because few people really recognise many of the world's flags and, as pointed out elsewhere, the technically correct flag does not always represent the country that is benefiting from the launch. I also do not think there is any good way to include the flags and still make the article compliant with MOS:FLAGS. Too many negatives, not enough positives. — Huntster (t @ c) 00:54, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• No - the table is already busy and assigning a flag to the payload does not fit this data. ~---frmorrison
• Comment – If the argument put forward for flags is to highlight to the reader the diversity of customers. Couldn't the article portray this diversity in a more meaningful way under the "launch statistics" section by having a simple government vs private launch chart? MarsToutatis ^talk 08:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
• Yes – SpaceX's launch manifest is packed with a lot of launches per year. With that, they have a wide variety of customers located in different countries around the world. Just as User:JFG said above, "Informative to readers and shows the diversity of SpaceX customers." I believe the flags will add to the information and stay relevant Phillipsturtles (talk) 21:13, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
• No - There might be multiple payloads from different customers on a single rocket (like 100 cubesats, for example). Some satellites are also shared between sevral customers. Customer might not be a national entity (like ESA). Merkhet (talk) 07:33, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
• No - The flags are not necessary nor useful, and the table is too busy. But the largest rationale in my mind is that flags provide a subtle but powerful POV, one that is as if we are but creatures the the nation state where the sat company or payload provide operates. This should not be. If it is a national government payload, fine, the flag at least meets accuracy and represents the entity that is paying for or providing the payload. But if some commercial company builds a sat, or pays for the launch of a payload, it is simply wrong and not WP:NPOV to represent those with national flags. (no matter how much more colorful it makes the table) Wikipedia does not condone national tribalism. Cheers. N2e (talk) 20:53, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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FH payload: Tesla Roadster

Yes, it sounds like a joke, but apparently it is real and it will give the Tesla Roadster the best 1 to 10000 km/h time of all cars. What "Mars orbit" means is a bit unclear. SpaceX doesn't have anything to enter Mars orbit, and "will be in deep space" suggests that the car won't stay at Mars. It seems to be a fly-by mission, but either way, the Falcon Heavy will just deliver it to TMI. --mfb (talk) 05:56, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Anyway this information is irrelevant for the Falcon Heavy Demo of January 2018. It has to be removed

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.199.110.28 (talk) 17:53, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Just to make sure I understand your comment correctly: You think payload and destination orbit of a flight are irrelevant for that flight? --mfb (talk) 05:36, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I laughed harder than I probably should have at this comment. :D — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 08:21, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Have some cake.

The list has been promoted to FL status! (bot to update soon I suspect). Thanks to everybody for all your hard work getting the quality of this list up to FL status. I don't think anyone could have done it alone with a list like this; it was a true team effort. Cheers and have a slice of cake to celebrate! — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 22:25, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Yummy! Thanks. — JFG ^talk 00:52, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, File:Wiki-cake 1.jpg has one piece taken out. We are missing File:Wiki-cake 2.jpg with a second piece taken out and so on. You'll have to imagine another piece gone. --mfb (talk) 07:09, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

So, how did you tell that only one piece has been taken out in File:Wiki-cake 1.jpg? ;) — Jacobkjaersgaardhansen (talk) 21:58, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

At the time I saw the image only JFG had taken a piece. ;) --mfb (talk) 23:54, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Iridium NEXT 31-40 water landing attempt?

Hello mfb,

This is in regards to the Iridium NEXT 31-40 flight. Several sources indicated that this booster performed a water landing attempt. In addition to that, on the SpaceX webcast you can hear callouts for stage one entry burn and landing burns which indicates there was some type of ocean landing (callouts start at around t+6 minutes 43 seconds and final splashdown callout at t+9 minutes 22 seconds). Thanks Phillipsturtles (talk) 04:42, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

My guess is SpaceX was conducting landing attempt for a testing purpose/ obtaining more data rather than letting the stage just burn up. The reason I say this is that their twitter account confirmed that they had no intention of recovering the first stage to make room for block 5. --Eng. M.Bandara-Talk 05:04, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Are you saying that they didn't recover it because they have too many old model Falcon 9 cores in storage? If we can verify that they did a water landing because they didn't want to recover the booster, that would be a good thing to add. the entry for this one is currently confusing. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 05:44, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Angel Cupid clarified that this was an ocean landing; thanks. — JFG ^talk 10:02, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Can we replace the ″alien invasion″ by something more serious? E.g. space.com. I‘ll do it later unless someone else takes care of it before. --mfb (talk) 22:10, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

I replaced the description. -- Phillipsturtles (talk) 03:37, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

FH launch date (update #4645)

According to Musk: All Falcon Heavy cores should be at the Cape in two to three months, so launch should happen a month after that - that would be in 3-4 months, or mid September to October. I don't see how they want to get their second launch pad running and the modifications at 39A done in 3-4 months, but that is a different topic. What about "NET September"? --mfb (talk) 20:49, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

All future launch dates are NET, and that's explained in the text; no need to repeat this. Recently I found a source pushing the second Heavy mission to NET December, so that finally looks consistent. My crystall ball says Falcon Heavy will only make one flight this year; the launch manifest of paid missions has been the company's top priority. Even re-using all the available first stages, they won't be able to fly all planned missions this year. But they will fly a lot, probably about 20, that's more than any other LSP in the world. — JFG ^talk 06:43, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

 Done – I have tightened the estimated launch date based on Elon's new tweet.[5] — JFG ^talk 07:17, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Update: One of the side cores has been spotted at the Cape. Nothing to change in the article for now. --mfb (talk) 12:03, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

We now have a Sept 9 launch from KSC LC39A, with possibly GovSat1/SES16 from SLC40 in Sept then KoreaSat in 4th Q per nasaspaceflight forum [6] so if there is 60 days work after Sept 9 that makes late Nov or Dec. Too much like OR to use that but if we know the Sept flights, should we be making it NET 'Oct 2017' now? Can a forum ever be considered enough of a RS to allow [7] as a ref for moving up GovSat1 / SES 16 to September? crandles (talk) 19:52, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I think even the 39A assignment of these launches is a bit weak, now speculating further based on them? I don't think that is a good idea. --mfb (talk) 20:59, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Interesting detective work, but that's WP:SYNTH (and we can't cite forums anyway). Better wait for some announcement, both regarding Heavy and launch pads. Note that the 60 days of work on 39A may start immediately while the range is offline for a month: 30 days now, then process three launches between August 10 and September 9, then 30 days again after SES-11, and Heavy can still be launched in October. — JFG ^talk 00:57, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know (= according to unreliable sources), SpaceX doesn't have two teams to work on both pads in parallel. They will probably prioritize 40. --mfb (talk) 09:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Spaceflight101 now says '2017 late'. Is that a change on July 9th or was it saying that before? (Rumours are that SLC40 work will finish in Sept.) I dislike 'Sept-Oct' currently in article as it seems to imply it won't be Nov or later and even if not implying that, NET Sept-Oct is really NET Sept. We don't have a ref for Sept-Oct nor for Sept. 'Late 2017' seems plausible, not unduly optimistic and we have a ref for it so why not change to that? crandles (talk) 10:10, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that's new and realistic. "Sept-Oct" was inferred from an Elon remark early June; in the meantime we've got a better sense of the launch manifest for August and September, ArabSat and STP-2 were officially pushed to 2018, and most sources point to a later launch for the Heavy demo. September is essentially ruled out. I would say just "Q4". — JFG ^talk 11:19, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

 Done – I made this update and some others stemming from sf101 changes, notably CRS missions 13–15 have been pushed back one slot. That leaves a gap between CRS-12 and the end of 2017, possibly linked to rumors that the Dragon 2 test flight could still occur this year. Not holding my breath, though… More realistically NASA accepted to bump a mission in order to give SpaceX some breathing room for other customers whose satellites are ready to go and late to launch. — JFG ^talk 11:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Update: Cygnus CRS OA-9E was moved forward from 2018 to November 2017, replacing the SpaceX CRS-13 slot. NASA is smart to have several cargo suppliers! — JFG ^talk 07:48, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

The Cygnus article doesn't know about that yet. Why is this in the FH launch date section? --mfb (talk) 15:38, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Does Musk's instagram count as reliable source? "Falcon Heavy maiden launch this November". --mfb (talk) 03:24, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

We've used his Twitter sometimes; I'll pick that one up. (We don't need the tacky rendering…) — JFG ^talk 05:23, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Not a reliable source, but KSC's Visitor Complex thinks the preliminary launch date is November 28th. Reported here. I don't think they just made this up, so SpaceX probably has some internal plan already. --mfb (talk) 14:53, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Launch Photography is now saying SES-11 from LC-39A in Early October but maybe the 'planned for pad 39A' still has some wriggle room? If it is 39A not 40 I assume that would be bad news for FH launch date. crandles (talk) 22:36, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

October 2 launch from 39A, afterwards the pad gets upgraded, the October 14 launch of Koreasat will be from pad 40. Estimated 2 months of upgrades starting October 2nd make an end of November launch optimistic but not impossible. Tweet, and the launch schedule has the corresponding update as well. SFN sees the December launches from pad 40 as well, but let's see. They still have to install the Crew Access Arm in early 2018, moving all launches (apart from FH demo) to 40 would make sense. --mfb (talk) 13:05, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

And we have a date! Sort of. Let's see if "End of December" works out, the timeline looks realistic now. --mfb (talk) 03:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Still January - just for information here, the article has an older but better source. --mfb (talk) 23:04, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

NET Jan 25, and static fire tomorrow. --mfb (talk) 21:28, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

30 Jan? static fire no earlier than Friday. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}

I would prefer going back to January (TBD). --mfb (talk) 03:09, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Why remain vague? The most recent source says "Launch scheduled for 31 Jan 18 at 0:00 GMT", that's exactly what we should write (even if it turns out to be further delayed). Will amend accordingly. — JFG ^talk 05:19, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

to be fair on Mfb, the source changed from 30 to 31 since I added the link a few hours ago... — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 05:33, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Less than 3 hours after SES-16? I'm calling it now: That won't happen. As long as the sources change so often, with so inconsistent launch dates, I don't think it makes sense to put a fixed date here.

I wholeheartedly agree; we might as well bump Heavy to February already, but that would be WP:OR... Hopefully, some of the usual sources will provide us with a more realistic estimate soonish. — JFG ^talk 12:04, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I removed the launch time for now.[8] — JFG ^talk 12:07, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

February 6th! 18:30-21:30 UTC. Hopefully the last update. --mfb (talk) 03:25, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Zuma mission outcome

It has been reported that Zuma is lost, potentially after failing to separate properly from the upper stage. SpaceX says "as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally", but we should keep an eye on the situation. --mfb (talk) 03:04, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like somebody screwed up but that it wasn't SpaceX. Good catch though, well worth keeping an eye on. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 03:34, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of changing it to "Unclear" until more information comes out on whose fault it is. At minimum a footnote stating that the satellite is not entirely healthy is in order. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:37, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Just wait until the tinfoil hat brigade shows up saying that it being 'lost' is exactly what they want you to think. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 03:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I think that's one of the more plausible modern conspiracy theories. That said, no actual sourcing for that yet. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I think writing "Unknown" or "Unclear" would be good until more information surfaces. There are conflicting reports where some it was the vehicle and others say it was the payload. We shouldn't assume either is correct unless a better source surfaces. Lacking an actual confirmation, the status is currently unknown. Keavon (talk) 04:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I've changed it to Unknown, pending additional data. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Still showing as 'Failure', I've changed it to Unknown for now. Chris Jefferies (talk) 16:30, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Let's keep it as 'Unknown' until it is all clarified, if it ever happens. I also changed the text in parens to "possible payload separation failure". Meithan (talk) 16:41, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Couldn't find the link for the original statement but here is a link to the copy. SpaceX COO states that every part of the Falcon 9 performed nominally which, assuming that's a fact, means that the payload must've sperarated. https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/950731607693983744 It is still possible however that Zuma was DOA. Mostmadmonkey (talk) 16:47, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

"SpaceX COO states that every part of the Falcon 9 performed nominally which, assuming that's a fact, means that the payload must've sperarated." That's not true since the payload adapter was provided by the customer (Northrop Grumman). Falcon 9 could've performed just as expected all the way to SECO, at which point their part of the mission is over since in this case payload separation was all up to the customer. Matte427 (talk) 17:17, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Stage 2 reached the right orbit. Currently everything point towards a PAF failure or a sat failure. Both weren't supplied by SpaceX, SpaceX was contraced to deliver the PAF and sat into the right orbit. This has been done, so the mission from SpaceX's standpoint was a succes, and that's what this page is about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.106.66.39 (talk) 17:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I think "Unknown" is still needed, as long as we have only SpaceX themselves claiming that their F9 performed nominally, i.e. an unduly self-serving claim (see WP:SELFPUB) and as long as we have no WP:RS that SpaceX were not responsible for the payload separation, which makes that information WP:OR. Keep in mind that this talk page is not for deducing whether or not the F9 performed nominally. Lklundin (talk) 18:02, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

SpaceX denies Falcon rocket caused Zuma mission failure--Юе Артеміс (talk) 18:54, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

"It's certainly possible that SpaceX's Falcon 9 successfully lofted Zuma to orbit, but that Zuma failed to deploy or operate properly after deployment." [9] --Юе Артеміс (talk) 19:04, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

The consensus on this Talk page is clearly to leave the outcome of the Zuma launch as 'Unknown' until the situation is clear. But I see 87.150.120.109 has put it back to 'Failure' again. Perhaps a well-meaning newbie, or perhaps someone with an agenda. Maybe someone who hasn't already restored it to the consensus view would consider doing so. If 87.150.120.109 changes it for a third time we might be able to ask for a temporary block on the IP address. Chris Jefferies (talk) 19:21, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Endorse restoring 'Unknown'. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 19:27, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

• Quote from Gwynne Shotwell COO of SPaceX: “For clarity: after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night,” she said. “If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately. Information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false.” [10] Based on this, I think we can say mission success but a parenthesis saying that the payload status is unknown is probably still advisable. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 22:54, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe put that the launch was a success but the payload status is unknown. Mission success would include deployment of working satellite in correct orbit.

- Mostmadmonkey (talk) 07:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Support - This seems like a good call based on the information currently available. The payload status detail can be removed later when (or if) US government officials confirm that the problem was with non-SpaceX hardware. Chris Jefferies (talk) 07:57, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Comment - If we are going to label the launch as a success (from SpaceX's side based on Gwynne Shotwell's statement above) can we please keep the article internally consistent. Currently the lede, statistics section and launch table are displaying diverging mission outcome statements. MarsToutatis ^talk 12:38, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 13:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Currently says "However, unconfirmed reports indicate that the Zuma spacecraft may have been lost following the successful launch to orbit.[239]". It may well have been lost following successful launch to orbit but there seems a reasonable possibility detailed within the source that Falcon 9 may have worked correctly but customer's payload adaptor failed so it never separated. Should we present both as possibilities perhaps ""However, unconfirmed reports indicate that the Zuma spacecraft may have been lost either following the successful launch to orbit or by customer's payload adaptor failing to release the satellite.[239]" crandles (talk) 15:34, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done source supports this addition. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 18:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Payload is lost, so the launch is definitely a failure. Who to blame, is not subject of the launch outcome. It is ridiculous to list as a successful launch. Payload separation was unsucessfull payload destroyed with second stage. It is exactly the same as IRNSS-1H case last summer. Kalpet (talk) 17:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Kalpet, there is a lot of misinformation and rumours out there at the moment, and a lot of bad reporting that happened right after this was released. The quotes by Shotwell above confirm that SpaceX was not at fault for the destruction of the satellite. We actually don't know that the payload was destroyed with the second stage or that separation was unsuccessful. The verge source currently in the article points out both as unconfirmed rumours, and gives reasonable assertions that the satellite might still be up there but dead in the water. In any case, if the "Falcon 9 did everything correctly" per Shotwell, then the mission's launch to orbit was a success. This means that something went wrong with Zuma or the customers' payload adaptor, not with the Falcon 9. Conversely, in the case of IRNSS-1H, the fairing failed to open (part of the rocked), so the rocket most definitely failed in its mission, so the two are not parallel cases. To my mind, the 'mission' does not refer to the satellite's mission, but the Falcon 9's, and the Falcon 9 completed its mission (this is a "list of Falcon 9 launches" after all). That's how I see it, though I understand there is wiggle room here if the definition of 'mission' is instead defined to mean the satelite's mission of getting to orbit and deploying successfully. I'd like to get some other editor's opinions on this: when we say 'mission outcome' what do we mean? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 18:49, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

I think it's fairly understood, but unwritten here. Mission outcome in two parts: A) did the payload complete it's initial boost to space, and were MECO, stage separation, and lighting of second stage achieved? B) was the payload delivered to its intended orbit. If A is not achieved, it is a complete failure, since B is precluded. If A and B are both achieved, it's a complete success. If A is achieved and B is not, it is a partial failure. In this case, we don't know B for sure, but A was definitely a confirmed success. So I would agree with how it is displayed now; a 'partial success' is pretty accurate. Just kinda grinds with how we characterize Orbcomm-OG2 ('partial failure'). My only other note: let's make sure this is changed in the bar graph too, it still is coloured as a complete success. --Natural R_X 21:06, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done Per JFG's edit to 'partial success' I have done modifications to the lede and to the launch statistics graphs. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 22:06, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. For consistency, I have also called CRS-1 a "partial success": at least, the Dragon performed its stated mission to the ISS, whereas Zuma was apparently lost in the blame game, so if the latter is considered a partial success, so the former must be too. — JFG ^talk 09:00, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, it is better now, but still. It is not clear yet, why the launch was a failure. It's seems that the payload destroyed (But in the NORAD database, it is still marked as on orbit), which is definitely a failure. Who to blame is not clear. SpaceX told us that they are not responsible, but that's not an independent source on this topic. Even if the payload adapter is manufactured by a third party, which is not confirmed yet, that does not mean that it was the problem. There is a lot of other factors. For example: Excessive, beyond design g forces or vibration can damage the separation mechanism. Failure in the fairing release mechanism too can cause such problems (like IRNSS-1H). Lost communications between the rocket and the payload adapter can be a cause too, and so on. So currently we cannot tell what was the cause of the problem and it was the Falcon 9 or the payload adapter or something completely else. One thing seems sure only, that the launch was a failure. It is normal, that the company trying to avoid the responsibility, but - i think - for an encyclopedia we need an independent confirmation before we can accept their point. Kalpet (talk) 13:28, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

A recent situation that's possibly like this was the Soyuz launch in July 2017 where some of the secondary payloads were released in the wrong orbit (definitely the rocket-maker-provided payload adapter system at fault) and an abnormally large number of the secondaries were dead on orbit. This second part is likely somehow caused by the rocket, but everyone's still arguing about it. This page List_of_R-7_launches_(2015–2019) rather unfortunately calls that mission "success". Still, if the Zuma adapter was made by the satellite maker, and SpaceX's rocket didn't shake it to death in violation of the promised g-loads and other parts of the payload environment specification, it's not a rocket failure. Greg (talk) 22:04, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately we are faced with some difficulties here. Personally, I'm not happy with the wording 'Partial success' or 'Partial failure'. We need to define in the article what we mean by success or failure; as far as I can see we don't do that (though I have only done a cursory search for such a definition. I propose something like the following: In this article, launch success means that the payload is delivered to the intended orbit as specified by the customer. Launch failure means that the payload failed to reach the correct orbit due to an issue with SpaceX hardware or error. Unclear means that the outcome is doubtful or disputed and details will be provided in the article. Any explanation could link to other articles, in this case to the article on Zuma. Chris Jefferies (talk) 09:55, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, guys, but the satellite has been confirmed lost by an U.S. official to ABC News. We have no reason to doubt this information. That's a total mission failure in any meaningful sense of the term, no matter how well the launcher performed. Furthermore, there is no longer any orbital component from any launch on January 8th, 2018 in the NASA's NSSDCA Master Catalog (International COSPAR ID) (just check it yourselves.) If you want to differentiate between vehicle launch performance and mission outcome, a new column should be added. MaeseLeon (talk) 13:06, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Sources

No new column is needed. We may need to clarify the definition, but within the scope of this article, mission success is defined by the success of the launch vehicle. Whether or not a payload turns our to be defective is outside the scope of this article. Lklundin (talk) 14:12, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, a new column would be overkill, but we should say what we mean by the terms success and failure. I propose adding brief definitions and marking the launch a success. Any further thoughts on this? By the way, that same ABC News article quotes Gwynne Shotwell as saying, 'The data reviewed so far indicates that no design, operational, or other changes are needed' and further quotes SpaceX as saying, 'The Zuma indent won't impact the schedule of SpaceX's upcoming launches, including the maiden flight of Falcon Heavy'. Chris Jefferies (talk) 14:26, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

The problem is that, to the average reader, if "Mission outcome" doesn't read "Failure", they will think that the launch was somehow successful ---meaning that the sat is in orbit and working, which is obviously false. However, I'm OK with the addition "not SpaceX fault" or "payload" or whatever, that's fair. MaeseLeon (talk) 14:37, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

It is indeed a difficult situation. Readers can look at statements from various officials in the citations, and make up their mind. We likely won't get any more information from official government channels, apart from the anonymous tipper to ABC News asserting total loss, but we also can't discount SpaceX's assertion that everything went well. Flipping the article from "success" to "failure" every couple hours, depending on which editor comes along, is definitely not the best option either. — JFG ^talk 15:18, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't recommend flipping either, that's why I made a comment but left the article alone :-) But nor am I happy with the current situation. I do have another thought about a possible solution, however. How about changing the column heading from Mission outcome to Launcher performance or something like that. The whole point of this list is to inform readers interested in Falcon 9 flights, not readers interested in payloads. It would be helpful in a rare case like Zuma to add Payload may have been lost. We already link to the payload articles for anyone who wants to know more. More thoughts anyone? Chris Jefferies (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Article stability

Let us please all take a moment and stop flipping the Zuma outcome between "success" and "failure". Here is what we know so far:

• SpaceX claims their rocket operated nominally and "did everything right" but they don't comment further on what happened to the satellite.
• An unnamed "U.S. official" told ABC News that Zuma was de-orbited together with the rocket's upper stage.
• Northrop Grumman does not comment.
• NORAD has assigned COSPAR ID 2018-001A and a SATCAT number 43098 to payload "USA-280 (ZUMA)", indicating that something was detected as orbiting, albeit with orbital data hidden, as is customary for classified U.S. payloads.
• NORAD has not assigned any tracking ID to the Falcon 9 upper stage, which is also customary when upper stages are routinely de-orbited shortly after launch.
• Amateur satellite observers are waiting until Zuma's initial orbit crosses their locations to try and spot something.
• Various pundits and armchair space buffs are speculating over causes for the issue, and for the conflicting reports.

The best we can do as Wikipedians is to state the known facts and attribute conflicting comments to the people who made them. Current citations do a rather good job of this, but I'd like to collect opinions from my fellow editors on the level of detail we should go to. Article should remain stable while we wait for new information, and while we decide how to best describe events. Comments welcome. — JFG ^talk 15:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I have protected this article for 12 hours to stop this edit warring. @Aérospatial: please discuss the issues here with JFG. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 15:49, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

JFG Agree. Need to stick with the confirmed facts. Unconfirmed claims and speculations cannot be presented as facts. Kalpet (talk) 17:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

You said that the upper stage reached orbit but what you forgot to add is that the payload adapter was also built by Northrop Grumman, so even in the unlikely event that the payload failed to separate from the upper stage and was de-orbited with it this would still in no way related to the performance of the Falcon 9. You should know all of this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aérospatial (talk • contribs) 17:04, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Partial success & revisionism in history

On 7th January flight №4 (CRS-1/Orbcomm-OG2) was listed as Partial Failure, which is typical, well-established classification for launches on this type. And then someone came up with "partial success", whatever that means, and put it into the article without reflection or discussion, now I see this "Partial success" in Zuma mission, while 2018 in spaceflight has it marked as a partial failure.

There is no such thing as "partial success". Launches fall into 3 categories: Success, Partial Failure and a Failure. Don't try to make up categories to fit your feelings, and do not revise history of previous launches. SkywalkerPL (talk) 16:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, let's be consistent. But I also do not agree that Zuma should be classified as a "partial success" or "partial failure". It should remain as "Unknown" because no mission outcome was confirmed by SpaceX or the customer, as per usual. Or it should be "Success" because one on-record statement is Gwynne Shotwell's remark that the Falcon 9 performed nominally. This depends on whether we are classifying outcome by rocket performance or payload performance. CRS-1/Orbcomm-OG2 was a partial failure specifically because an engine cut out leading to a performance shortfall and the loss of the Orbcomm satellites. From credible available public information, we know that Falcon 9 performed its part nominally. If a non-classified commercial satellite were to launch into its intended orbit but never boot up, I believe that should be a successful outcome for the rocket. Is there precedent where a similar mission has died before deployment? Keavon (talk) 05:30, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Launch vs payload vs mission

The last SpaceX' Falcon 9 launch was a total success because the launcher performed nominally, the obvious mistake made on this page is that someone named a column "Mission outcome" instead of "Outcome" like all other launchers have, thus linking the performance of the payload with the performance of the launcher, which is ridiculous and unprecedented. See here the list of launches from other launchers :
List of Atlas launches (2010–2019)

• List of Thor and Delta launches (2010–19)
• Antares (rocket), etc...

As you can see they all have an "Outcome" column and not a "Mission Outcome" column. For example, the payload USA-193 failed immediately after launch on 2006-12-14, yet on its launcher page the Delta II rocket list the launch as a success because you don't link the mission of a payload with the performance of its launcher.

It is even more absurd in regard to classified payloads because nobody knows their nature, their mission and the status of their mission, thus if we use the "Mission outcome" terminology none of these launches would ever have been listed as a success because we have no idea wether these missions succeeded or failed. Also, what if a commercial communication satellite designed to operate for 15 years fail on orbit after one, five or ten years? Should we go back to the launcher page of this payload and flip the "mission outcome" success into a "mission outcome" failure? No, because no launcher has a "mission outcome" column related to its multiple payloads.
Believe me, everybody knows this in the aerospace industry, even member JFG ! Aérospatial (talk) 16:48, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Aérospatial On the contrary, it was a failure. There is no reliable source what went wrong. There is a speculation that payload separation was unsuccessful. But that doesn't mean that the root cause was the payload adapter. Lot of other possibilities exists, most of them actually launcher malfunctions. For example: Excessive, beyond design g forces or vibration can damage the separation mechanism. Failure in the fairing release mechanism too can cause such problems (like IRNSS-1H). Lost communications between the rocket and the payload adapter can be a cause too, and so on. Without the results of the investigation you cannot tell what went wrong. But the payload did not released to the expected orbit, so the launch was a failure. So as of now the only confirmed fact is that, the launch was a failure. Kalpet (talk) 17:08, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree. Every time there is a launch failure it is marked as failures long before root cause and the exact company to blame was established. I see no reason to make an exception for SpaceX. SkywalkerPL (talk) 17:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

 Disagree It was not a successful launch, as discussed by several people here. However I agree with the need for column change, though simple Outcome might be confusing with Landing Outcome. Also: please, stick to the facts instead of running into highly emotional tone ("total success", "ridiculous and unprecedented", "even more absurd", etc. etc.). Feel free to correct column name, but it's not the subject of a disputes on this talk page, everyone think of it as a launch failure/partial failure/success and do not combine performance of the satellite with the launch. SkywalkerPL (talk) 17:10, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I support changing the column heading to Outcome. It makes sense to use common practice across similar lists, would others agree that it is then appropriate to mark Flight 46 as Success? Chris Jefferies (talk) 17:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, column name should be changed, perhaps not to Outcome as it would make it confusing with Landing Outcome. But changing column name does not change the outcome of the launch. Column name is just a cosmetics, not a fundamental subject of the discussions here. SkywalkerPL (talk) 17:18, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I rather agree that changing the column header would be good for clarity. "Launch outcome"? It would be most specific as to what the column is referring to. — Huntster (t @ c) 17:16, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

A couple years ago, this table received two "outcome" columns, one for the launch, one for the landing. Other rockets have just an "outcome" column because they don't land… I agree that we should rename the first one "Launch outcome" instead of "Mission outcome". That would still not solve our issue about how to describe this mission, because if the "failed to detach" story is true, similar events have been clearly designated as "launch failures". Still, that will cut down any talk of "spacecraft failure" which would be after the launch has placed the craft into the intended orbit, and is usually designated a "launch success". Now, if you believe Shotwell's statement, this is a launch success, and if you believe the "unnamed government official", it's a launch failure. If you believe both or neither, I still think "partial success" or "outcome unclear" is the way to go. — JFG ^talk 18:23, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Partial success implies a limited success, though. Statements about Zuma seem to either imply a total LV failure or a completely successful LV with a possible satellite issue. I think "unknown" or "unclear" emphasizes this confusion more effectively. Appable (talk | contributions) 18:43, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree that 'partial success' is not right regardless of what happened. "Now, if you believe Shotwell's statement, this is a launch success, and if you believe the "unnamed government official", it's a launch failure." --well, I think it clear who we believe here. we don't even know who this "unnamed government official" is, or what expertise they have with rocketry and who was at fault. Shotwell on the other hand knows what she is talking about. We should therefore use 'Success' for the 'Launch outcome'. Perhaps with a disclaimer '(payload lost due to customer hardware)' or something similar. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 19:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Corrected: Shotwell is a "she". To the point: her statement is ambiguous enough that it may well be compatible with the "satellite sunk in the ocean" story. That would be the case if payload separation was under Northrop's responsibility (which is pure speculation unless I missed an authoritative source for this part). — JFG ^talk 19:46, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction. How about we list it as 'Rocket success, satellite failure'? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 19:56, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

No independent confirmation supporting rocket success. I think it is not our task to settle the debate between NG an SpaceX. Kalpet (talk) 21:35, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

No independent or dependent confirmation supporting rocket failure. Dependent confirmation supporting rocket success : Shotwell's statement. Visual picture supporting rocket success : the upper stage in orbit over Africa 2 hours 15 minutes (1.5 orbit) after launch. Several clues supporting rocket success : the upper stage re-entered Earth's atmosphere in its designated re-entry zone in the southern Indian Ocean (google Sat Track Cam Leiden Blogpost Fuel Dump of Zuma's Falcon 9 Upper Stage) + any failure related to the payload adapter built by Northrop Gruman would not count as a rocket failure + all Falcon 9 launch campaigns remain on track, which would be madness if there was a rocket failure last sunday. It is indeed not our task to suggest a rocket failure when almost everything indicate a rocket success. Aérospatial (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:02, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry Kalpet but your theories don't turn a launch success into a launch failure, they are just your own personal theories. You said yourself that "unconfirmed claims and speculations cannot be presented as facts". We know for a fact that the payload reached orbit because we have pictures of the upper stage venting in orbit over Africa prior to its planned reentry. So even in a worst case scenario involving a failure of the payload to separate from the upper stage, since we also know for a fact that the payload adapter was built by Northrop Grumman and not by SpaceX, the failure would be on NG and its payload, not on SpaceX' launcher. We also know for a fact that Shotwell said Falcon 9 performed nominally, if that was not the case who coud imagine Northrop Grumman remaining silent, thus taking unfairly the blame? Finally we also know for a fact that the next Falcon 9 launch campaigns remain on track, there is also no way that would be the case if there was a launcher failure last sunday. You should know all of this.
This will eventually be considered as a launch success, so why wasting all this time? Aérospatial (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:12, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

There is no satellite on intended orbit, so there is no launch success. The operation was successful, but the patient died. And that's a fact. Anything beyond that is only speculation. You think that this failure is not SpaceX related, but you have absolutely no proof to support your *theory*. What I say, that it is not known what was the root cause of the failure. It is only your theory, that it is not SpaceX to blame, but you have absolutely no confirmation. No offense, just an gentle suggestion. You seems to have strong emotions related to this topic, so please consider, is it really good idea for you to edit this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kalpet (talk • contribs) 21:27, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

"Strong emotions"? What does that mean? And what about yourself? If for you "there was a successful operation but the patient died" then you obviously have a serious problem. Can you tell us what was the intended orbit? I indeed don't know what was the root cause of the failure but Gwynne Shotwell's statement + the fact that we saw the upper stage in orbit + the fact that the payload adapter was built by Northrop Gruman + the fact that the next Falcon 9 launch campaigns remains unaffected are FAR MORE than "a theory of mine". YOU on the contrary have absolutely nothing to prove that the launcher is at fault except some totally unproven theories. If all the clues that indicate a nominal launch are misleading and if Shotwell lied when she made her statement then it's up to YOU to prove your theories and a Falcon 9 launch failure. Good luck with that. Aérospatial (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:03, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't see that noting this launch was a failure also means it was SpaceX's fault. The purpose of the launch was to successfully insert and separate the satellite into the proper orbit. Accounts seems to suggest that separation failed. Whether that was Northrop Grumman's fault or SpaceX's fault is inconsequential; the launch did not meet its objective. It's wrong to say that we're blaming SpaceX for the failure by accurately recording this launch as a failure to successfully deploy the satellite into its target orbit. Appable (talk | contributions) 00:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not saying that you're blaming SpaceX but Wikipedia is for random "uninformed" users, it is obvious that falsely noting this launch as a failure will mean for them that it was SpaceX's fault, thus misleading them about the reliability of the launcher. Did you notice that this is a wiki page about the SpaceX Falcon launchers, not about the missions? Since when can you record a launch where a launcher performed 100% nominally as a launch failure? And again, since the payload adapter was built by the customer and was a part of the payload itself then from the launcher's perspective the purpose of the launch was only to successfully insert the payload into the proper orbit, which it did. In this particular case the payload separation was not SpaceX' problem and was not a requirement for the definition of a successfull launch. Thus it is inaccurate to record this launch as a failure and if you want to mention the failure to successfully deploy the satellite then do it in the "Payload" column because this is Northrop Grumman's payload failure, not SpaceX' launcher failure. Aérospatial (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:38, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

All sources agree that the launch was unsuccessful, even SpaceX itself, as they not listed in their Launch Manifest as successful. Only in Wikipedia. The debate about who to blame is not changing the fact that the Zuma launch was a failure. It is not working that way that it is a success as it is proved otherwise. WP:V Launch providers usually have final responsibility for tip-to-tail readiness before a rocket lifts off. "Launch success" is not equal with "it is not SpaceX to blame" On the other hand you have absolutely no proof that it is not SpaceX fault. Only speculations, and SpaceX not so impartial denial. Presented as facts to the "uninformed" users. WP:NPOV There is no source at all that listed this launch as a success. Except Wikipedia. WP:V Think about it. Kalpet (talk) 14:56, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

You realize the Forbes article you cited was an editorial piece by a consultant, and specifically one "receives funding from many of the nation’s leading defense contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and United Technologies." I.e. from SpaceX main competition. That seems like a less than neutral point of view.Fcrary (talk) 19:36, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

So you tell me, that SpaceX own report are reliable, but the competition is not reliable. WP:NPOV The cause is debated, only one point is widely accepted. The launch was a failure. Even SpaceX not list it as a successful launch. Only WP. Kalpet (talk) 12:42, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

It is not listed in their manifest at all. Due to non disclosure, they might not be able to say anything about the outcome, regardless of how it went. So even if the launch had been a perfect success for the payload, they might have done the exact same thing and left the listing blank. SpaceX's Shotwell has gone on record, and the statement is attributed. Furthermore, they actually have the information to back up their claim, where this guy was just speculating (which a personal background that incentives him the speculate negatively). Nothing to see here. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 12:47, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

It lists only successful launches. Titled 'COMPLETED MISSIONS'. It is even lists the highly secret X-37B launch too. What is not listed is the failed missions like Amos-6 and CRS-7. All successful launches listed. So your theory, which is actually original research, is not fit. So still, all sources agree, that the launch was a failure, SpaceX never disputed the fact of the failure, they only said, that it is not them to blame for the failure. Can you please cite a source that explicitly states that the launch was a "success"? Kalpet (talk) 15:46, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I think you need to read a bit more of other people's comments here and take them in. It seems you are a little too caught up in your own thoughts mate. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 18:23, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Good advice, try to listen to it please. You have no source at all. I asked you, and you failed to cite any. So here you are, reporting success, contrary to the whole media. You have this personal theory about the success of the rocket if only a third party part malfunctioned (speculation). So this success report is based only speculation, and faith in the vendor. In the mean time the congress started a probe against SpaceX and NASA about this "successful" launch. Seems they did not read the wiki. Kalpet (talk) 07:51, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

That is not an accurate strawman of me that you are holding up. I have specifically stated that the report of success is based on SpaceX's statement to that effect and the media reporting that followed it (it is cited in the article and I have cited it on this page, see below). Reports in reliable sources following Shotwell's statement do not express doubt as to its validity, therefore we should not either. If you want to define 'success' as a successful and functional satellite in orbit, then you might be correct, but you will remain in the minority here as that is not how the consensus has decided to define it in this case. The reports of a failed SpaceX launch were the early reports, later reports with more information are always better than earlier reports based on more speculation, so we should give them more WP:WEIGHT as a result. SPaceX's launch was a success, the satellite's mission was a failure (maybe). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 09:58, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Please shown me the word 'successful' in SpaceX press release. You cannot. On the other hand, Shotwell is the COO of SpaceX so that's not impartial. But wiki needs to impartial isn't it? Why it is so important that the Payload adapter is manufactured by Northrup, or RUAG as usual? Does it matter? It was SpaceX who integrated and tested it. Did the quality control. As usual, because SpaceX does not producing payload adapters, they buy it from RUAG, and thy are part of the rocket. Please don't stop there. :) Let's change the 2015 explosion to success, because it was not SpaceX who manufactured the struts. This launch outcome is debated, launch is presumed a failure. That's the correct, impartial assessment. Can you show me any news outlet who still reported this launch as a definitive success? Kalpet (talk) 19:52, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

The secrecy of the mission prevents compliance to your rhetoric. With the same token, not even the government has stated that the launch was a failure, why should we? Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:54, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Consensus on column titles

Looks like we already have consensus to change the columns titled "Mission outcome" to "Launch outcome" in the headers of various yearly launch tables. No consensus yet how to describe the Zuma launch outcome. — JFG ^talk 19:17, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support Haha, I just had an edit conflict because we simultaneously both drafted the same proposal, that's a bit funny. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 19:34, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support per above. I'm still conflicted on Flight 47's status though. From the rocket's perspective (per Shotwell), it did everything correctly. If NG borked the payload adapter, that's not the rocket's fault. Sigh, what to do. — Huntster (t @ c) 20:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

​​How about we put the column listing as 'Rocket success, payload failure'? That doesn't quite solve our issue of whether to call it a 'Partial success' or a 'Success' in the launch statistics graphs, but I think it is the clearest concise way to describe outcome of the launch under 'Launch Outcome'. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:52, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Is there precedent for a rocket deploying a commercial satellite into an intended orbit, but never hearing from the satellite? In that case the launch would be successful but the customer messed up. SpaceX states that its rocket performed exactly correctly, so by elimination, the customer messed up and the launch was successful. Keavon (talk) 05:25, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support and support for treating Zuma as special case like Amos. Make the statistics about clear outcomes only, discuss the special cases separately. --mfb (talk) 20:52, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support since Spacex is a launch provider and not responsible for ensuring that the launched hardware performs correctly this seems to me a necessary step in classifying Zuma (and future satellite failures) properly. Grey Wanderer (talk) 23:37, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support the column title change to 'Launch outcome'. I also support 'Rocket success, payload failure' for the Flight 47 listing. Chris Jefferies (talk) 23:53, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support the column title change to 'Launch outcome'. Support 'success' for the Flight 47 listing since the launch outcome is about the launcher as its name indicates, nothing that is non related to the launcher should ever take place in the 'Launch outcome" column. Support mentionning the payload failure in the 'Payload' column. Again, this is a page about the Falcon launchers, not about the payloads or their missions. As for USA 193 which failed when it reached orbit the Delta II launches wiki page show the launch as a success, the failure of the payload is indicated in the remarks as it should be. 100% pure logic. And I did find the ultimate reference in the matter, Gunter : "With the launch adaptor not provided by SpaceX, this was likely a payload and not a launch vehicle failure". That should end this charade once and for all. Aérospatial (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:32, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

New reports

The following two recent reports may be of interest:

• Eric Berger of Ars Technica weighs two theories of the failure (SpaceX vs Northrop), but strongly asserts that whatever the cause, Zuma has been confirmed lost by his sources.
• Matt Desch, Iridium CEO, squarely places blame on Northrop, while arguing that an opinion piece by a "National Security writer" is deliberately misleading and wrong. Read the whole thread.

That gives us two more hints that the payload was indeed lost (unless you buy into a clever Misty-style deflection tactic to hide a stealth payload). Still doesn't help us much to call this a success or failure for the rocket. — JFG ^talk 23:49, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I think that it is becoming clear that this was a rocket launch success and a satellite failure. NG's adapter is likely the point of failure, but we might not ever be certain of this point. The early reports of SpaceX being at fault are fake news. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 00:19, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I fully understand this line of reasoning, however I also have noticed that prior launches where the payload failed to separate are usually considered launch failures, irrespective of who/what is to blame for the root cause of the loss. At this stage, I remain unable to support either "success" or "failure"; only "partial success" or "partial failure" makes sense, together with a robust explanation in prose. — JFG ^talk 00:44, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Do we have 100% confirmation that the adapter was NG? If so, for this launch we should consider SpaceX delivering the payload adapter to orbit, not delivering the payload itself to orbit. In any case 'Rocket success, payload failure' addresses the issue. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 00:50, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes we do have 100% confirmation that the adapter was built by Northrop Grumman. Aérospatial (talk)

Which WP:RS said that? The information would be useful to document for WP:V purposes. — JFG ^talk 01:19, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, will the source that you gave yourself suffice? Eric Berger of Ars Technica wrote "it seems more likely that the mechanism built by Northrop Grumman to release the satellite failed to operate properly", or in this previous article : "It is important to note that the payload adapter, which connected the Zuma payload and its fairing to the rest of the rocket, was supplied by Northrop Grumman, rather than by SpaceX".
Or Gunter maybe? : "The payload adaptor for the launch vehicle was also provided by Northrop Grumman". Gunter also add : "With the launch adaptor not provided by SpaceX, this was likely a payload and not a launch vehicle failure." Do you know who Gunter is?

That's plenty of good sources, thanks. Yes, I know Mr. Krebs, he is reliable. — JFG ^talk 09:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

You don't understand this right : prior launches where the payload failed to separate are usually considered launch failures when the payload adapter is a part of the launcher. In this case the payload and the payload adapter were built by Northrop Grumman, making the payload adapter a part of the payload itself and in no way a part of the launcher. Are you able to support "success" now or do I have to explain something else? Aérospatial (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:11, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I might be wrong, but do you have a conflict of interest with regards to this topic? "Able to report success" isn't the goal. The goal is to be accurate to what reliable sources say, not necessarily what the truth is. If reliable sources say that we don't know, then we don't know and we have to report it as such, even if we have strong suspicions about what the truth of the matter is. In this case I agree that we should consider the payload adapter as part of the payload for this mission, as it was not made by SpaceX. In this case we might be able to report success, but we should not attempt to be misleading to our readers. Something obviously failed here, it doesn't seem that it was the rocket. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 02:22, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

No I don't have any conflict of interest, I'm from Belgium ! Maybe my words aren't well chosen but it wasn't the rocket, that's all I wanted to say. Aérospatial (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:46, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Sources

Just to add to the confusion, how would a problem with a kick stage be classified? Someone said the definition of success was delivering the payload to the desired orbit.

The SpaceX users guide for the Falcon specifies that the customer can provide an additional kick stage. This is especially useful for planetary missions, and at least one CONTOUR launching on a Delta II, was lost when the customer-provided kick stage failed.

So, if getting to the desired orbit is the criteria for a successful launch, and that involves a customer-provided kick stage, would a failure of the kick stage constitute a launch failure? That wouldn't make sense to me. Fcrary (talk) 21:28, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

No, I don't think so.​ In this case the Falcon 9 launch would not be delivering it to the final orbit, but instead delivering it to a transfer orbit of some description, at which point the kick stage becomes a separate mission entirely that is not part of the launch, but might be defined as part of the satellite's overall mission to reach the correct orbit and begin operations. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 12:52, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I suppose that was my point. We can't use successful delivery to the final orbit as a launch success criteria. Successful delivery to some intermediate state, agreed upon by the launch provider and the customer, makes sense to me. Fcrary (talk) 23:17, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Adapter as part of the payload?

The adapter being built, designed, and provided by Northrop Grumman is confirmed by WIRED.[[11]] Given this, should we consider the payload adapter to be part of the payload itself? I propose that we change "Zuma" in the 'Payload' column to: "Zuma and its payload adapter built and provided by Northrop Grumman". While it is a bit wordy, we need to properly define where the rocket ends, and the payload begins. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 02:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

We don't have sources to suggest what past payloads have used their own payload adapters versus a SpaceX-provided adapter. I don't think it's possible to consistently apply this definition of payloads to past missions, so I wouldn't support it. Regarding this particular launch, we don't know how the Northrop Grumman adapter was treated. Perhaps it was SpaceX's responsibility to test and ensure its functionality despite it being customer-supplied (the payload user guide does note integration of a customer-supplied adapter is a standard service, so it is plausible that it is SpaceX's responsibility). Perhaps it was Northrop Grumman's. The point is that we really don't know and we're getting into territory that we simply cannot support with reliable sources. As a classified mission, we likely never will be able to.

I don't know a good definition in lieu of this, though. Perhaps we can say satellite separation in the correct orbit? That's my best idea of a completely clear definition. Appable (talk | contributions) 04:21, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Not done: The page's protection level has changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

The payload adapter is an integral part of the last stage of the rocket. It is NEVER deployed to final orbit, and it is not separated from the last stage. It is connected to the stage by permanent joint. It's only purpose to hold the payload, and separate when the rocket reach the intended orbit. So payload adapter is part of the upper stage. Kalpet (talk) 16:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Are you saying that SpaceX didn't build the upper stage? They certainly didn't build the payload adapter themselves, and they didn't contract out to have someone else build it. If you define the payload adapter as part of the upper stage, then you're saying the upper stage (for this launch) was a joint SpaceX/Northrop Grumman vehicle. Is that really what you mean? Fcrary (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

The Falcon-9 have a lot of third party parts. For example the Helium COPV supporting struts in the upper stage, most of the electronics and so on. If - it is not confirmed yet - the payload adapter is manufactured by Northrup then it is a same third party part as the all other, still part of the SpaceX upper stage. Kalpet (talk) 08:18, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

I just looked over the Falcon 9 User's Guide (rev 2, October 21, 2015), and it is quite clear about an analogous case. For multi-spacecraft launches (e.g. Orbcomm or Iridium) the deployment systems, as well as the related structure, are very definitely part of the payload and the customer's responsibility. There is an option to have SpaceX take care of this, but unless the customer pays for that option, it's part of the payload. I'm not sure how you can reconcile that with saying the customer-provided deployment mechanism for a single-spacecraft launch is part of the second stage. Fcrary (talk) 21:17, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Could you provide a page number from the Falcon 9 User's Guide for future reference. Eucalyptine (talk) 04:35, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Again, responsibility is a completely different thing from launch success. But still even the US congress want's to know what happened to Zuma. Maybe they can ask you, or check in wikipedia.  ;) Kalpet (talk) 13:24, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

We had 2 choices, report your thoughts, or use SpaceX official statement. BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:51, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Only thing I can find in the PUG regarding multi-payload systems "Falcon 9 can accommodate a broad range of dispenser systems including multi-payload systems, dual- payload attach fittings and mission-unique adapters. SpaceX can develop and provide such adapters and dispensers if desired, as a nonstandard service, or can integrate third-party systems. Please contact SpaceX with your mission-unique requirements." I don't think that implies anything about whose responsibility the adapter is if provided by a third party.

Not particularly relevant, but in Iridium's case, it would certainly be SpaceX's fault as they manufacture the Iridium payload adapter. Appable (talk | contributions) 17:38, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I was thinking of the start of the paragraph before the one you quoted. "Falcon 9 can launch multiple satellites on a single mission, with the customer responsible for the integration of the multiple payloads." Maybe I'm reading too much into that, but to me it implies the customer is responsible for the deployment system. To answer the earlier question, this is from section 3.8, on page 17.

Thanks for clarifying. I read as SpaceX will consider a multiple payload as a single mission - i.e. they will integrate the stack (and possibly take responsibility), but they will not take responsibility for any issues from the customer-provided deployment to the multiple satellites. I don't think it's the strongest evidence, but I do agree that it's likely SpaceX won't take responsibility for anything happening past their side of the rocket. Appable (talk | contributions) 01:21, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Also not particularly relevant, but for the Orbcomm launches, they used ESPA rings, which would make it a third-party adapter. I'm not sure which third party, since more than one makes those things.Fcrary (talk) 23:23, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

SpaceX buys its adapters from RUAG. Like the others. The Payload adapter is the integral part of the rocket, it is integrated, tested and cleared to launch by SpaceX. Guys, it is a very cheap excuse for this unsuccessful launch. Kalpet (talk) 19:59, 21 January 2018 (UTC)