Talk:SpaceX/GA2

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Jazzstinger (talk · contribs) 21:14, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article SpaceX you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Jazzstinger (talk) 21:14, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The article SpaceX you nominated as a good article has failed ; see Talk:SpaceX for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of the article. Jazzstinger (talk) 21:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, sorry for taking so long. Please consider editing to fall in line with WP:PL and MOS:LIST. Jazzstinger (talk) 21:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)


 * It is an invalid fail. This is not at all a quick-fail and it does not obviously show WP:PL in my eyes. My alternative solution is to improve it from here. Notifying @Ita140188. Also, is the review a bit sus? The criteria passes should be accompanied with a statement of some sorts. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:32, 9 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I am not sure how this article qualifies as a quick fail. Especially given that the reviewer did not give any specific comments. Was this article actually reviewed (or even read)? There are much more constructive and specific comments from  who was not actually the reviewer. --Ita140188 (talk) 10:18, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Fine, let me do it. Alright, I am a reviewer now. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:15, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Comments from CactiStaccingCrane (talk)
Well, I see a ton of glaring issues. I gonna list them below: for notifing that the review is in progress CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 01:08, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:PROSELINE is rampant in the article, and more so with recent-y stuff
 * The Starship section needs updates, fortunately, I'm happen to be the guy who works on it a lot so that should be easy
 * Paragraphs needs a bit of a touch up to look good
 * Launch facilities don't have enough information, so that bit needs some sprucing.
 * Found unreliable sources: Teslarati, 
 * Some sections need distillation for brewity


 * Thank you for your comments. Almost half a year has passed since I nominated this article for review. In the meanwhile there have been some changes. In the coming days I will again revise the article based on these comments and on the review from . Thank you again! --Ita140188 (talk) 15:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi, and as a person who speedrunned GA at SpaceX Starship, I think I am qualified for the job! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:19, 18 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for rescuing this review! Sorry for the late reply, I will try to address your points in the following days. --Ita140188 (talk) 11:23, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Text
Lede is really good for GA! However, for me, brackets should be eliminated in favor for integrating the vehicles directly to the accomplishments. The third paragraph might be able to be integrated to the first two, since these are just some future stuff.

Copyright violations found:
 * 
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 11:50, 23 December 2021 (UTC)


 * On 27 March 2020 SpaceX revealed the to NASA's planned Lunar Gateway space station under a Gateway Logistics Services (GLS) contract. NASA plans to use Dragon XL to transport  to be used on the Gateway and on the surface of the Moon.
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 20:33, 23 December 2021 (UTC)


 * On 7 December 2020 SpaceX flew the cargo variant of Dragon 2 to the Space Station for the
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 20:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)


 * In February 2019 SpaceX formed a sibling company, SpaceX Services, Inc., to license the manufacture and deployment of up to 1,000,000 fixed satellite Earth stations that will communicate with its Starlink system. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded SpaceX with nearly On May 15, 2021, SpaceX and Google collaborated to provide data and cloud services for Starlink Enterprise customers.
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 18:41, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * The following June, the company for the project, aiming to build a constellation of 4,425 satellites.
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 11:50, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

After reading the article, two complaints I have are too short paragraphs. Example of which is -- which is a lone sentence. Another is that some sections do need update, particularly about Starlink and Starship. That's it for now, I will skim the article for various errors later, since it is not efficient to do so now. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:34, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅, checking more MOS issues. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:02, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Sourcing
Unreliable sources at Special:Permalink/1060903969: 6, 121, 133, 138, 160, 184, 233
 * Done (for now): 6, 138, 160, 233. 133 if from the Guardian which is a reliable source per WP:RSP --Ita140188 (talk) 10:09, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ - also replaced 121 and 184. --Ita140188 (talk) 13:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Sources from "Spaceflight Now" (blog), "TechCrunch" (context matters), "Futurism" (churnalism), "phys.org" (news aggregator, since this is tertiary source and in most case a secondary source would suffice), "National Space Society Blog", "Main Engine Cut Off" (blog) are NOT reliable.
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 17:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Some citations are missing URL link, especially at journals
 * Generally, journals should not have a URL link, just a DOI. Can you suggest a way to check which URLs are missing? --Ita140188 (talk) 16:16, 30 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Dead links should use an archive.org link instead
 * Many sources are misformated and missing parameters, too much to list here
 * I think this would be too much to ask for a GA review. The article has over 200 citations, and all of them use the relevant citation template. For GA, this should be enough even if some have some missing parameters, as long as the source is clear. Also, I am not sure where do you see so many problems with the citations. From a fast check it seems all of them have the required parameters. Of course in some cases there is missing information, for example, in the case of [29] in the BBC article does not provide the name of the author. --Ita140188 (talk) 17:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, alright. Feel free to work through them, but it is not really that required. The key thing here imo is to able to someway access the source directly through a link. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 23:56, 30 December 2021 (UTC)


 * On to the actual original research...

Plenty, such as:
 * - (primary) source don't say it is a test-bed
 * ✅ removed --Ita140188 (talk) 17:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)


 * - source don't mention vertical integration. Inference is original research.
 * The source does mention it: "But as for SpaceX’s organizational style, it’s Silicon Valley, not NASA, that had the most influence. In Hawthorne, where everyone including Musk works in cubicles instead of offices to encourage communication, the buzzwords of the business culture—lean manufacturing, vertical integration, flat management—are real and fundamental. Says former SpaceX business development director Max Vozoff, “This really is the greatest innovation of SpaceX: It’s bringing the standard practices of every other industry to space.”"
 * Somehow, I couldn't find that word while Ctrl+F :) Thanks for the head up! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 23:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Testing of the much larger Starship prototypes is conducted in the SpaceX South Texas launch site near Brownsville, Texas. - Last sentence is sourced, prior sentences haven't
 * ✅ added specific refs. --Ita140188 (talk) 08:23, 8 January 2022 (UTC)


 * - again, inference.
 * ✅ added more specific reference --Ita140188 (talk) 22:12, 6 January 2022 (UTC)


 * - entire paragraph is not sourced, yes, there is a source on the paragraph, but that factoid is not relevant to the topic of the paragraph
 * ✅ I removed the paragraph. The table and rest of the article is enough. --Ita140188 (talk) 18:05, 30 December 2021 (UTC)


 * ... and so on


 * This is a pretty serious issue and I suggest you to take a few weeks (next year!) to sort this out as it is quite massive. Sorry that I cannot help you, I'm too lazy busy at SpaceX Starship right now. Most of the +  stuff are accurate, but it's even better if you decide to recheck the whole thing. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Image

 * Too much image? See MOS:IMAGELOCATION.
 * To me, images seem to me pertinent and related to the section, and do not disrupt the layout (at least in my screen). They are also all on the right side. --Ita140188 (talk) 18:37, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

---

thank you for your comments up to now, which I addressed. Let me know if you think more is needed. In particular (based on the summary table above), where do you think the article fails NPOV? And why do you think the images are not used appropriately? Thanks --Ita140188 (talk) 13:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)


 * @Ita140188 My impression with the article structure isn't great. About the images, there is just too much of them and they all kinda get sandwiched to each other, giving the reader a hard time to understand which is which. About NPOV, I want to see the article to talk about the "philosophy" of SpaceX. When I graded the article, there is no criticism which gives me as a red flag, but User:QRep2020 just solve it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:51, 26 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Can you be a bit more specific about the structure? Do you think the sections should change, or some parts should be summarized/expanded? For the images, in my screen I don't see any problem with sandwiching (also because all pictures are on the right).. it may be a problem with your screen being too large? The new Wikipedia skin should set a fixed width for pages, and using that width the images are all in the proper place. Personally I would struggle to choose which images to remove, since they are all quite pertinent and informative.
 * "About NPOV, I want to see the article to talk about the "philosophy" of SpaceX": what do you mean? I am not sure I understand this point. Also the recent criticism of SpaceX related to sexual harassment has its own subsection within corporate affairs. Criticism of Starlink is also reported. Wikipedia guidelines generally discourage having a section dedicated to criticism (see WP:CRITS) --Ita140188 (talk) 14:05, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The image structure should be organized so that it is not full of images (or use multiple image template). The section do need work as well, like you said. About philosophy of SpaceX, I am quite surprised that there is no mentioning of iterative design, even though there is a section about how SpaceX disrupt the industry. Feel free to integrate the criticism section though, I haven't mentioned it because the issue does not need to be covered to get GA. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:10, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Can you give more details about what is wrong with the section structure? Also, again, I don't think there are many images. There were 24 in total (including infobox) for an article of 164 kb. I think this becomes a problem only for very large screens without maximum column width (for the new skin with limited width this wouldn't be a problem: ). In any case, I removed one in the history section. --Ita140188 (talk) 16:58, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅, I solve this by realign the images. 6b is ticked. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:25, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Also checked 6a since all images are tagged. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:29, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * , what's the current status of the review? A. C. Santacruz &#8258; Please ping me! 09:09, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It is on hold for a second opinion. Maybe you want to give the opinion for the article! CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 01:38, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, . A. C. Santacruz &#8258; Please ping me! 17:23, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
 * @A. C. Santacruz: are you still planning to give a second opinion? If so, can you change the status of the GA back from 2ndopinion to onreview? Femke (talk) 09:15, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Drive-by comment from Ovinus
There's a fair amount of uncited material in Starship, although it may have been added by someone else. More worryingly, the quote attributed to "Jim Bridenstine" is not found in the given source. Ovinus (talk) 20:31, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

General notes:

 * Lead does not include relevant criticism of Starlink network.
 * ✅ Added a sentence summarizing the main criticism --Ita140188 (talk) 12:30, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Does not make any sense to have criticisms of Starlink in lead, it belongs on the starlink page where criticisms is already included. Warbayx (talk) 14:46, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Warbayx, just because Starlink has its own article where the criticism is noted does not mean that the criticism should not also be on the SpaceX page, and specifically in the lede as well as the body. I'd like to suggest that if you feel it is undue, your concerns should be pursued on Talk:SpaceX. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:59, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Lead

 * Second and third paragraphs should be switched.
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 17:27, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

History

 * the Falcon 1, with private funding. do you have a source indicating from where this private funding originates?
 * Clarified this refers to funding coming from the company itself rather than external grants or contracts. Company funds were mostly provided by Musk himself at that time. --Ita140188 (talk) 17:31, 4 May 2022 (UTC)


 * U.S. military payloads, which for nearly a decade was dominated by the large U.S. launch provider wouldn't "had been" make more sense here?
 * ✅ Agree --Ita140188 (talk) 17:33, 4 May 2022 (UTC)


 * In July 2017, the company raised US$350 million for a valuation of US$21 billion. How? For what purpose? "For a valuation of" also feels like awkward wording
 * SpaceX being private, I don't think there is a way to know who invested in the company during a funding round. Also the company does not need to specify a purpose for raising funds, especially when the funding is not public. Agree with the wording comment, which was changed --Ita140188 (talk) 17:39, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a fair argument. — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 21:29, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

More comments in a minute.
 * Some of the achivements in the summary are not sourced. I imagine this may be because they are sourced elsewhere in the article, but I think the citations should be added to the table as well.

Hardware

 * I don't know why Falcon 1 is not its own paragraph in Launch Vehicles but the other two are. I suggest making Falcon 1 its own paragraph.
 * Falcon 1 is significant for the history of SpaceX, but as a launch vehicle had little impact by itself (it was also retired a long time ago). Falcon 9 and Heavy are instead major launch vehicles, and Falcon 9 is arguably the most important launch vehicle today (in terms of capabilities and launch frequency). I don't think the three rockets deserve the same amount of attention. Also breaking the first paragraph would create two mini-paragraphs which would disrupt the flow of text in my opinion. --Ita140188 (talk) 12:35, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * While I'm not as convinced by the breaking of paragraphs argument, judging by the Falcon 1's coverage in the History section your argument satisfies me :) Good editorial thinking, in that case! — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 12:39, 6 May 2022 (UTC)


 * – Merlin, Kestrel, and Raptor for change to – Merlin, Kestrel, and Raptor – for.
 * ✅ --Ita140188 (talk) 17:42, 4 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I think the engine section could be much shorter. It currently is technical and hard to understand for average readers, so the specifics are probably best left to the child article. I think just leaving the first paragraph in would be enough.
 * I removed the excessive amount of details from the section, but left information about where the engines are used and the propellants used for the main engines. These are important facts that are frequently discussed in relation to these engines (especially the Raptor being powered by methane) --Ita140188 (talk) 12:44, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * While you are at it, why not merge the separate Starship section into launch vehicles section? It just makes sense that way (coming from someone who works at the rocket's article extensively). CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:47, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Detail removal noted, I'm happy with how it looks now as a summary of the child articles. I do not agree with that suggestion and ask you to remove yourself from commenting in this review in matters related to Starship as your editorial judgement with that article and related matters is faulty. I do appreciate the suggestion though. The reason why I do not think it makes sense to merge the sections is because the Starship (to my understanding) is not fully commercialized already the way the other engines are (i.e. is still somewhat in a development phase). — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 13:00, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, I shouldn't even open this review in the first place (the reason I did so is because the review has sit there for like 9 months). CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:08, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * it was a good thing you opened the review! I hope you don't feel my comment above was unfriendly towards your participation in this review to any capacity. I'm sure Ita will agree that you taking this off the shelf to review was a good thing. My point applies only and exclusively to matters related to Starship. I also hope my comment about editorial judgement did not hurt you or seem to put in question your abilities as an editor overall, it was meant as a very constrained and specific comment based on the GAR due to your self-disclosed positive bias towards that product (same as how I don't trust my own editorial judgement when it comes to Spanish radical politics due to my negative bias). Me and many other editors have enjoyed collaborating with you on the wiki and I look forward to interacting with you with full trust in your ability as an editor. TL;DR you should have opened the review and I'm glad you did — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 14:08, 6 May 2022 (UTC)


 * The starship section should not be an excerpt from another article. If there is a child article we must summarize it, not copy-paste in its entirety. The whole section needs to have in-line citations as well.
 * Agree, I restored the previous section that was actually replaced by an excerpt by the main reviewer  --Ita140188 (talk) 17:49, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
 * That's weird. it goes without saying you should probably never do that as part of a review unless you have a really, really, really, really good reason to do so. I would also avoid doing so in general as part of normal editing as new editors do not understand how excerpts work and it removes our ability to provide a summary of the child article that makes sense in the context of the parent. There are some notable exceptions but those are best discussed in the talk when multiple editors feel that is the best way to ensure accuracy in the parent article. In this case your use of an excerpt is additionally problematic based on your strong bias towards SpaceX and especially its Starship project. — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 18:12, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree, though it would be a bit more work to update that section every time something big happens. I should have been more aware of the surrounding context of the article before using the excerpt template. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 01:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)


 * There is no critical assessment of any of these hardware devices in the sections. Failure to include such assessments will result in failing the GA. We are not meant to just list the tools they make, but put them into the context of the company's history. ASDS for example is a really great tool and has gotten media attention, so the barebones description of them feels non-comprehensive.
 * I am not sure what is the suggestion here, what kind of information should be added? It would be really helpful to have more details, since it's difficult to imagine what's missing when you are working for a long time on a subject (you start taking a lot of things for granted). Thank you! --Ita140188 (talk) 12:49, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * For example comments by this rocket landing engineer from SpaceX provide a useful view of the challenges of developing and deploying ASDS. I am not an engineer by trade so I am unfamiliar with where such criticisms or industry reviews are published and how, but I think it safe enough to assume such critical analyses would exist. Feel free to start a thread in the Rocketry WikiProject, for example, to see if other editors can help finding them. — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 14:40, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * This article explains some of the legal challenges posed by widespread deployment of similar autonomous ships. — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 14:48, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Talking as an engineer, everything SpaceX does is extremely challenging, including building and flying rockets, and of course safely returning from orbit and landing them. They were the first to actually manage to land an orbital class rocket, of course this means a million difficult things that have to be solved. However I am not sure this article is the place to put so much details about the challenges of landing on ocean barges in particular. In my opinion, other things SpaceX does are more challenging than landing on a barge, such as flying a full-flow staged combustion cycle engine reliably. Also (in my opinion), the most challenging part of landing on a barge is not designing or controlling the barge itself, but rather the safe return and slow-down of the booster from orbital velocity. If we were to include details about the ASDS, I feel other places should also have a lot more details. As for the autonomous part, as far as I know the ships are autonomously keeping a specified position, but I am not sure whether they are going to that position autonomously or if they are remote-controlled. In either case, I think talking of the challenges of autonomous ships in general would be off-topic in this article. This info would definitely fit in the main article Autonomous spaceport drone ship though. --Ita140188 (talk) 17:45, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Facilities

 * No comments here

Contracts

 * No comments here

Launch market competition and pricing pressure

 * No comments here

Final comments
That's it for my review at this point, I doubt I'll have other comments so I'm putting the review on hold while you address the issues.— Ixtal &#8258; (talk) 11:02, 28 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your review, and sorry for the delay in this reply. I will try to address all the comments within a couple of days. --Ita140188 (talk) 13:26, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Just ping me when you're done, . — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 14:01, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Some thoughts
This citation might be useful to add criticsm of their work rate and worker exploitation culture to the corporate affairs section. Further expansion on this section certainly seems warranted.— Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Join WP:FINANCE! 19:07, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I added the cite and a comment about the work culture at the company. However in my experience it's difficult to have clear and NPOV references for this. (for example in this case the article is based on a memo by a competitor) --Ita140188 (talk) 13:01, 6 May 2022 (UTC)