Talk:Comparison of orbital launch systems

Starship payload figures
Are the Starship payload figures trustworthy? Elon's tweets don't exactly count as a reliable source. After all, he markets his products in these - so the figures can be expected to be a little optimistic. Lets do our own calculation with the most pessimistic numbers, and list the payloads as a range. A Silverbird Astronautics calculation with 10% booster fuel for RTLS reuse, 5% ship fuel for orbital return and mass figures from currently ongoing tests without any of the yet unrealized "optimalizations" that Musk claims will get the payload that high puts payload mass somewhere around 70t. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.233.149.186 (talk) 12:24, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Payload numbers are generally sourced from the rocket manufacturer as they are almost impossible to get otherwise. A statement by the CEO is a far better source than "I calculated some numbers on a Wikipedia talk page" (which would be WP:OR). --mfb (talk) 00:00, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, no. A CEO advertising what his product would be capable in a configuration that will never be based on evidently wrong numbers (The Super Heavy configuration that is capable of 150t was abandoned years ago by SpaceX. Even if its CEO didn't get it.) is neither better than a calculation on real numbers nor is it a upcoming rocket. (It will never be used expendable and you wold have to make some minor changes to be able to do it.) Btw. it is even both: A unreliable, biased evidently wrong source AND WP:OR. The numbers are calculated with a calculator of some random private website based on the numbers Elon Musk posted on Twitter that are contradicting the official numbers from SpaceX. --Fabiwanne (talk) 00:42, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what your point is, or if you propose any changes of the article (the convoluted grammar isn't helping), but you seem to misunderstand what WP:OR is about. --mfb (talk) 01:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
 * No. Using some calculator on some strange website is of course WP:OR. Even if the private website of Dr. John Schilling would be a reliable source. Using this estimator and presenting it as a reliable estimate is clearly WP:OR. But this is not my point. An expendable Starship was never a "upcoming rocket". It was some suggestion someone on twitter did. It dosn't matter if the person is the CEO of SpaceX or if it is some cleaner there. It is clear, that SpaceX as company has no intention to launch or build such a rocket. So it should not included in this list until SpaceX is planning to do something like that. And yes, this can be announced by Musk on twitter. But there is a difference if Musk is saying: "There is the possibility to do XY" or if he is saying: "SpaceX is planing to do XY" --Fabiwanne (talk) 19:18, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Indeed there is no plan to ever fly any mission with an expendable Starship, this was pure speculation during program development. I think the dust has settled on this idea and I'll remove the relevant entry. — JFG talk 13:33, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Recent split of the upcoming rockets table
With this edit on July 8, IP user split the table of upcoming rockets into several sections, depending on each rocket's country or continent of origin. Their edit comment says "redesigned upcoming rockets to make it look better". Looks are subjective, and I object to this split, because it prevents readers from sorting the full table, in order to actually compare upcoming rockets to one another. Besides, the capability to sort rockets by country was already there before the change, and now we have just lost the ability to sort by all other criteria. I have no time to undo the split now, and I invite fellow editors to weigh in on this change before a decision is made. I have also encouraged this prolific IP editor to create a user name, so s/he can participate in discussions about topics of interest. — JFG talk 05:00, 15 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Concur with JFG. Major change without advance consensus, and can certainly then be Discussed on the Talk page and reverted.  WP:BRD and other policies apply.  I would support reverting to the table not messed up with country as first subdivision.  N2e (talk) 01:14, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I also concur with JFG. It's an interesting way to look at the data, but prevents sorting and makes it less useful.  It doesn't fit with the style of the rest of the page and should be reverted. Unrulycow (talk) 21:58, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I also agree. Using the sortable wikitable is a nicer way to do things than splitting out the individual countries and regions. Sub31k (talk) 18:52, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Lovely informative chart
Someone has put together a lovely and informative chart comparing a number of the recent new launch vehicles on the development time axis. Very relevant comparative info, in my view. An LV in powerpoint charts and on the drawing board is of little use. chart by Ken Kirtland

Perhaps Kirtland might be interested in releasing that chart under CC license, or someone might make up a new one (as long as it has good sources). — N2e (talk) 01:18, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Splitting of the historic rockets table
With this diff the table of historic and retired orbital launch vehicles has been split into many parts by a productive IP user, on the basis of a "loading issue". It would be nice to know what this loading issue consisted of. Meanwhile, the splitting of the table has some issues in preventing comprehensive sorting of the data. Sub31k (talk) 04:01, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Don't know what loading issue that is. Reducing the number of separate Delta and Atlas variants can be useful. --mfb (talk) 17:45, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Not sure how advisable it is to cut content. In any case the splitting out of Delta and Atlas strikes me as odd. Sub31k (talk) 17:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I really would like to revert this. Now we have an article without description and a pure copy from here is odd too. I think the idea of such an article is to give an overview to compare systems. You can not do that if the content is split over two articles and 18 tables. On the other hand I see your point: This gets really crowded. Even so loading much bigger tables shouldn't be a problem if you use a proper view. If wikipedia/your browser has problems there this should be fixed there. Maybe adding entries with ranges and splitting only Delta/Atlas to an other article helps. In the end this will never be an good looking article. wikidata/SPARQL is just the better way to do such things. But 99% do not know how to do that. So a list articles it is. --Fabiwanne (talk) 06:11, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Reusable/expendable column
I think the colors are too prominent, and red/green in rocketry tables looks like some sort of failure/success. Remove the colors? We should also distinguish between partially reusable and fully reusable. And I think Vulcan should be classified as expendable. It launches without any recovery option at the moment. Partial reuse might or might not happen at some point in the future, with significant changes to the rocket. --mfb (talk) 15:37, 17 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree with the colors, changing that @Mfb 68.132.201.101 (talk) 12:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I completely disagree, the colors are much more prominent and there is no need to show partial reusability, do not look too much into it Puck1737172 (talk) 11:47, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The colors being too prominent is the point of the change. Why would there be no need to distinguish partial and full reusability? They are obviously completely different things. --mfb (talk) 12:08, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * While having colours helps us to distinguish expendable from reusable rockets with ease, i think that red for expendable and green for reusable is not a good idea. It feels as if we are trying to say that expendable is bad and reusable is good, which is not the case. Maybe a blue/yellow colour palette would be more suitable. 2006 Opel Meriva (talk) 23:16, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks like we have a clear majority against red/green. --mfb (talk) 15:38, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Current vs. upcoming rockets
I think we have a problem with the more "agile" development processes not only but particularly at SpaceX. Splitting up rocket families into different configurations made the table much less confusing and any other definition of current rocket than "where flown once" – even if it was a failure or only suborbital – produces other hassles. So to be honest: I don't know how to make it better: But the result is, that the H3 which has seen all its components in real successful flights is only listed in its 22S configuration with half the maximum capabilities while the Starship is listed with its planed maximum planed capability even so B9 should be less capable (worse aerodynamics) than the end product and S24 was not capable delivering payload at all.

Always moving whole families to current rockets would make the SLS Block 2 current even so it is more in an early stage of development. Moving rockets down while parts are still in development would have made the Ariane 5 upcoming 13 Years after its first flight since the ECA and ES versions where planed from the beginning. So: Any suggestions? --Fabiwanne (talk) 08:50, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Edit: Pressed publish instead of preview. So I corrected the worst mistakes. --Fabiwanne (talk) 08:57, 27 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I think that our current system (Current rockets being the configurations that have lifted off at least once) is the one we should keep. I'd say that starship is the only problematic rocket in the charts: It's payload capacity is a very vague number and may not even represent the final product. Furthermore, even if we could split starship into 3 configurations (expendable, p. reusable and fully reusable) it wouldn't matter because on orbit refueling would give all 3 configs similar performance. So unless we get more info on what a single starship can carry there is nothing else we can do. 2006 Opel Meriva (talk) 21:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)