Talk:2016 in spaceflight

SpX-DM1
The first crewed version of the Dragon spacecraft shall launch that year in fall. Please add it, if you know how to do it. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 10:46, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * "As of July 2015", shortly after launch failure. The schedule has been changed significantly, so I don't think that is reliable any more. --mfb (talk) 15:07, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, the crewed Dragon flights aren't influenced by the accident. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 20:10, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This list gives December 2016 as estimate. --mfb (talk) 14:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Currently, none of the sources used for the article include a fixed date for DM1, nor do official SpaceX or NASA pages. When one of them adds one, I or someone else will update it accordingly. Astrofreak92 (talk) 22:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Alright, thank you. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 13:27, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Also, the Dream Chaser maiden flight is planned to occur that year. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 06:53, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Added it. --mfb (talk) 14:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you. --212.186.0.108 (talk) 21:50, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The Dream Chaser is gone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.15.237.221 (talk) 22:21, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Source? --mfb (talk) 22:30, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Because Dream Chaser won the smaller Commercial Cargo award with no development funding rather than the Commercial Crew award, the first orbital flight will be a production run in 2019. Their development schedule now no longer includes a test flight this year. Source.

China's Scientific Research Satellites
China will launch 4 scientific research satellites in the coming months and years.

The first one is DAMPE (DArk Matter Particle Explorer), which is scheduled to be launched in Dec 2015.

The next two will be in launched in first half of 2016:

--Quantum Experiments At Space Scale (QUESS).

--The Shijian-10 (SJ-10).

The fourth is also to be launched in 2016:

--Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT). here're the references:

http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2015/11/06/china-to-enter-big-league-with-the-launch-of-4-research-satellites/ Can somebody help and add the 3 scheduled for launch in 2016 to the list? 73.231.196.103 (talk) 06:46, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

"Manned" vs. "Crewed"
Perhaps 2016 should be the year we start referring to flights carrying humans as "crewed" rather than "manned." Ethan82994 (talk) 14:46, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm all for it, but we need a consensus, and it needs to be site-wide, not just on one page. I'm not sure where that discussion would go, though.Astrofreak92 (talk) 15:01, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
 * What is the difference? PSR B1937+21 (talk) 10:48, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Although "manned" technically only means "occupied by humans", the historical replacement of the term "were/wereman" for males with the previously gender-neutral term "man" means that "man" and "male" are now synonymous in the public eye. As a result, "manned" has a gendered connotation, and is becoming disfavored as a term in many media sources. I personally think the terminology doesn't really matter, but the people that do are more likely to create a controversy than the ones that want to keep things the way they are, so I think it's worth considering making the switch on Wikipedia as well in order to avoid controversy. Additionally, if it's the term that most people in the space business use (NASA no longer uses "manned" in most contexts), it would make sense for Wikipedia to reflect the change in usage. Astrofreak92 (talk) 15:34, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Gender-neutral nonsense isn't a place for the wikipedia. It is a field for kindergarten to be played in! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.229.233.117 (talk) 19:40, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * All that matters is what the source for the content uses in aerospace articles. If they use imperial, we use imperial. If they use SI, we use SI. If they use manned, we use manned. If they used crewed, we use crewed. That's just how aerospace articles work.


 * With that said, has anyone gone and looked at the primary sources (this is about the only time (word usage) where a primary source outweighs a secondary source), and looked at what percentage of them use "manned" vs "crewed"? Whichever is greater than 50% in either direction, use that word. &mdash; Gopher65talk 19:38, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Landing attempts for Falcon 9 1.1. FT and Blue Origin rockets
Will we be listing that planned launches will include a rocket landing attempt as we did in 2015?

user:mnw2000 21:43, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I can't see why not. Astrofreak92 (talk) 04:28, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 --mfb (talk) 14:51, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Suborbital flights
There was some reasonable consensus last year to split the table between orbital and suborbital flights, especially to avoid polluting the list of spacecraft launches with sounding rockets and missile tests. I have just executed this, so the table is less cluttered. If people strongly disagree, they can always revert. Also, I have deemed it unnecessary to place subheadings for months in the suborbital flights section; I tried and that was just too cluttered, the TOC was too long and the month navigation templates were confused. I'm going to apply this split gradually to previous years too. — JFG talk 18:07, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ for years 2014 to 2016. Comments welcome. Also I am now using a pie chart generator to display the yearly statistics by country, which depended on uploaded PNGs in the past. I have applied the new graph style to all years since 2005, e.g. 2005 in spaceflight. It is now much easier to maintain, just type the number of flights per country and let the graph generator do its job. — JFG talk 19:42, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Great job! --Михаило Јовановић (talk) 21:59, 16 May 2016 (UTC) I also would like to thank you for the orbital/suborbital split. I've long desired this. --IanOsgood (talk) 15:44, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

By Country...
Should Soyuz launches from Kourou be counted under Russia since only the rocket is Russian built? After all, the launch itself and all aspects of the spacecraft's insertion into orbit are conducted from EU territory and under the auspices of the ESA and Arianespace. The rocket is purchased by the European Space Agency and launched from a ESA launch site in South America. Is it really a Russian launch? Of course, the Kazakhstan launches for Russia qualify as Russian launches since Russia is leasing the launch site but control all aspects of the launch and the spacecraft's insertion into orbit.

Maybe this section should be changed to reflect the country where the launch occurred rather than who makes the rocket.

user:mnw2000 10:56, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I would agree with this approach but we need consensus with other editors; this change would have to be applied to previous years ever since Soyuz at the Guiana Space Centre came into action. Note that Sea Launch was counted as an international project when the LSP company had diverse shareholders (see 2008 in spaceflight for example) and counted for Russia after RSC Energia took over a 95% share (see 2012 in spaceflight). — JFG talk 17:31, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe it should be European launch, like Ariane, but I believe there are Russian technicians at Korou as well. If I remember they also appear during launch webcast. I believe all the telemetry from Soyuz is first sent to Russia and then it comes back to mission control in Fr. Guiana, after confirmation. It's tricky. :) I agree for Kazakhstan since Baikonur is not Kazakh spaceport (teritory) but Russian until lease expires. --Михаило Јовановић (talk) 19:05, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

There is Russian team at Kourou from Roscosmos which maintains launch. In terms of who created the rocket which went into orbit - it is certainly a Russian creature. Lola Rennt (talk) 13:36, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

(Necro, but...) It's actually collaboration - European companies provide few components to the Arianespace Soyuz. But yes, almost all of it is Russian. As far as where should it be counted: IMHO it should be under European launches. Launch was sold by the European company, launched from European spaceport on French land, rocket contains European components. It never made sense for me to mark it as Russian. SkywalkerPL (talk) 14:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reviving this thread. My opinion has evolved a bit since last year, I'm now fine with keeping them under Russian launches, but the question can certainly be argued both ways. Perhaps we should open a wider consultation of editors at WP:WikiProject Spaceflight? — JFG talk 00:00, 29 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Why do we have to select a single country for every launch? We have an exception already: Europe is not a country, it is a group of countries. We can make another group Europe/Russia. --mfb (talk) 20:17, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Historically, only nation-states developed and launched rockets. Today, there is a mix of individual nations, international cooperations and private enterprises, which themselves can be multinational or partly state-owned. By this logic, we should not even have a breakdown by country… but readers still would like to get a sense of how various countries are performing in the space race. We should just decide on a criterion and stick to it. Currently, the criterion is "which country builds the rocket". We may decide to change this to "in which country is the LSP incorporated?" or to "from which country is the rocket launched?" Or as you suggest, listing the combinations, where perhaps in that case we would distinguish state-sponsored from private LSPs; but there are combinations there too. I'm still undecided, although I'm happy with the current setup. It's simplistic but clear. — JFG talk 07:23, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Rename SpaceX CRS-n missions to Dragon CRS-n
Spaceflight editors may wish to comment on this global move discussion. — JFG talk 10:24, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Amos-6 loss
As Amos-6 was destroyed on the launch pad in a static fire test two days prior to launch, how do we list it? Launch failure, cancelled mission or just remove it from the article? — JFG talk 17:00, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This is rare. Even that recent Proton failure with three Glonass satellites was after liftoff, that is during flight. I think it should remain in the article, but list it as on-pad failure. Reminds me of those first launches in the early days of the space race, hope it's nothing serious and they will fly very soon! --Михаило Јовановић (talk) 17:09, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Elon just said it originated around upper stage oxygen tank, but cause is still unknown... --Михаило Јовановић (talk) 17:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * And here is the video. Just horrific! --Михаило Јовановић (talk) 17:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Should be listed as a loss of vehicle/payload and not a launch failure, it never attempted launch and wasn't due to launch for 3 more days, and still unknown if at this point if it was GSE failure or vehicle failure. 156.3.55.64 (talk) 20:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. Keep it in the table as rocket that was scheduled to fly and disintegrated, but don't put it in the launch counts because there was no launch attempt. --mfb (talk) 11:40, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

This one do fall into the gray areas, but similar accidents did exist before (e.g. the 3rd Brazilian VLS-1 rocket that blew up on the pad with the satellite and killed dozens in 2003, or Soyuz T-10-1 - although the later one was during the actual pre-launch sequence). Some sources do count it, but most people like me don't count this kind of thing as a "launch (failure)", like Jonathan McDowell's webpage. So I would suggest that this don't count into the statistics - but feel free to make an entry in the table. Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 11:55, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Remember also AMROC failure - very similar incident - rocket destroyed by fire on the pad. It was never listed as launch failure. I suggest it to be simply removed from any lists. It is a vehicle lost before launch. Russian Proton damaged beyond repair during transportation to launch site wasn't listed as a launch failure, either (http://newskaz.ru/society/20121126/4352839.html)

New Shepard Abort Test
According to NASASpaceflight, the apogee of the booster during the abort test was 93,713 meters, putting it 6.3km below space. Should the test be kept on the suborbital list because the impact of the abort on the booster wasn't known and it *might* have gone to space, or removed like the first test flight last year because it did not go to space? Astrofreak92 (talk) 14:13, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

MUOS-5
Is no longer "stuck" at GTO. At least according to the Gov't and wiki article about MUOS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 214.25.29.6 (talk) 16:10, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

SuperView Orbit Problem
The 28 December 03:23:56 launch of a Chinese Long March 2D placed the SuperView satellites in a non-optimal orbit. They appear to be raising their orbit using their maneuvering propellant, but it is not yet known if they will reach a sufficient orbit to be operational for a long period. Is there a certain point when this launch would be considered a partial failure? Here is a potential SpaceNews Reference Andrewpullin (talk) 17:34, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I personally consider the launch a partial failure because the satellites were not in the intended orbit after spacecraft separation. I don't know if we have a formal definition for what counts as a "partial failure" so I don't want to change it on my own. Others' thoughts? Astrofreak92 (talk) 18:51, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This might be a suitable comparison for a partial failure: 2014_in_spaceflight. The August 22, 2014 launch resulted in the Fregat upper stage placing the two satellites in the wrong orbit, but they were both able to get to their own orbit under their own power.  Seems like a good comparison...  If everyone agrees I can update the 2016 space flight page to reflect the SuperView launch as a partial failure Andrewpullin (talk) 16:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Looks reasonable. --mfb (talk) 01:17, 11 January 2017 (UTC)