Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Comparison of orbital launch systems/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 5 November 2018 (UTC).

Comparison of orbital launch systems

 * Nominator(s): — JFG talk 03:34, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

This list has been stable for a couple years, it is well-maintained to the point of having reached completeness. Inclusion criteria are well-defined, and regular contributors ensure timely updates, as well-sourced news develop. It can be an effective first-stop resource for readers wishing to check current and future offerings in the booming space launch market. In short, it's high time this list got a lil' star. — JFG talk 03:34, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I'll start immediately by noting that we should write a longer and more explanatory introduction. Can the reviewers look at the rest of the page while I gather a few "regulars" to think of what we should add in the intro? — JFG talk 03:38, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Comments by Kees08

 * ✅ Web citations need an access-date
 * I know you try to cover it by defining propellant, but since a solid-fuel rocket could be a rocket with either solid propellant or a traditional hybrid, I prefer to word it differently - " conventional solid-fuel rocket is a rocket"
 * ✅ I do not see any citations for the footnotes, at a glance.
 * ❌ Development rockets should get their own table.
 * ✅ Orbital ATK is now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS)
 * ❌ Instead of listing out the manufacturers for all the subsystems (e.g. solid rocket boosters as ATK), can we have that column be the prime contractor? We have a lot of detail for the subsystems on American rockets, but not for rockets of other countries. There are a few solutions to that issue, and using the prime contractor might be the simplest.
 * ✅ There are some bare URL citations
 * ✅ I have some neat books I could use to help with the citations, but I might have to recuse myself from supporting/opposing. History of Rocketry and Space Travel being one, and one specifically on Soviet rockets.
 * ✅/❌ Not sure how to bring this up properly, but how do we define things like LEO? In History of Rocketry and Space Travel, when discussing payload capacity to LEO, sometimes it uses a 100 mile orbit, sometimes a 150 mile orbit, and sometimes a 300 mile orbit. I am not sure what specific LEO the tables refer to, as LEO can be a wide range of orbits.
 * ✅/❌ Reforder: some references are not in order, such as: "	2020[97][56]"
 * As reliability is important, it would be nice if we could somehow include launches/failures/success% (not all of them..) to show general reliability of each system.
 * ✅ It would be nice to remove suborbital launches completely, since this is comparison of orbital launch systems. A footnote on the column header saying only orbital launches count for this table could alleviate confusion.
 * I have seen images here and there showing launchers next to each other, to show the general size of them. Maybe NASA or someone has an open source version of that? Would be a great addition to the article.

Will add more later  Kees08  (Talk)   03:55, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Quick note: it has been decided to keep currently-available rockets with rockets under development, to allow for easier comparison of what is "on the market" today. Decisions to launch are made years ahead, so that studying whether to launch a future spacecraft on a future rocket is a totally reasonable pursuit. Conversely, retired rockets were split off into their own table, because direct comparisons would have no practical value. I think we should leave things that way, but I'm prepared to change my mind if a majority of other editors disagree. — JFG talk 04:37, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair enough for now. It may address 's accessibility concerns as well.  Kees08  (Talk)   05:08, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Per your suggestion, I have now removed the parenthetical count of suborbital flights. They are explained in footnotes only, and always with a citation. Checking to-do items off your list above. — JFG talk 08:02, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I also excluded on-pad explosions, because the big kabooms didn't even try to go to orbit. They get footnotes for posterity, though. — JFG talk 17:25, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I made some more progress. First, take note that everything I'm doing is for the table of current and upcoming rockets. Once that's settled, I'll request help to bring the retired rockets up to scratch.
 * Progress on current and upcoming rockets
 * All citations should be good now: no more bare URLs, no missing dates, no dead or unverified stuff, some updated data. Please review them.
 * Orbital ATK moved to NG Innovation, however I kept the pointers to archived Orbital documentation for older rockets (Minotaur series, Pegasus), because the NG site has almost nothing of value for those (they basically slapped their logo on the old docs). Antares and OmegA refer to the new Northrop documents.
 * Subsystem manufacturers: most cases have only one "face", irrespective of their suppliers. The cases where we list two companies reflect the reality that labor is strongly divided between them. For example, the Antares 230 first stage is entirely manufactured in Ukraine, and Orbital (ahem, Northrop) just assemble their second stage on top of it. I think such cases deserve to be singled out. There are very few. The big obvious one is the SLS. Now I'm not sure if we can list NASA, Boeing or Northrop as prime contractor. My understanding is that NASA supervises development and launch pad integration, and provides the all-important funding impetus, while Boeing and Northrop each build their part of the launcher rather independently from each other. Do you have more accurate information?
 * Reference order: I fixed most of them. However for the Soyuz citations, there is a logical order to the sources: first the bare rocket, then the same with Fregat upper stage, then the same with Ikar upper stage. Because the way our main source for launch counts is structured, the "Soyuz + Fregat" page is repeated for all Soyuz variants, so that its reference number ends up lower than some base variants that come before it. Given this logic, I'd leave things as they stand; the other solution would be to always place the Fregat config first. What do you think is less confusing?
 * Still about references, you may have noticed that we don't repeat the citation in every column of performance figures for various orbits. By default, the LEO source also provides figures for GTO and other orbits. If we need to use a different source, then we add both. I tried with repeating the source everywhere, but that looked really cluttered; the current formula lets readers see at a glance when several sources are used for the same rocket, I think that's a bonus.
 * I have added reference altitudes for SSO orbits when the information is readily available. Unfortunately, not every LSP documents this publicly. I hope that we have enough of them for readers to understand that the information may simply not be available. For LEO, it's just hopeless. I have added the ISS orbit for vehicles which are specialized to fo there, such as the Japanese H-IIB with its HTV cargo spacecraft. For the generic rockets, I wouldn't bother. LEO theoretical figures are enough of a pissing contest already…
 * When sources give a range of payloads, I generally keep the highest value, unless it's totally unrealistic, i.e. projected for a future version of the vehicle. This means we are biased for mass rather than biased for altitude, but at least we try to be always biased in the same direction, so that's fair for everybody.
 * Adding a column for success rate may be worthwhile, but it would have to be applied by family, and we get into OR pretty quick. It also would not make sense for low-volume rockets that have less than 10 flights under their belt. To be discussed.
 * You said: I have some neat books I could use to help with the citations. That would be much welcome, especially for the retired rockets. Their specs are probably easier to find in books. Apparently a lot of the old rocket entries are sourced to a web site called Encyclopedia Astronautica, which is not well maintained (most links need to be found again, because the site URLs were reshuffled recently), and unclear about its own sources. I'd much rather replace those links by citations to well-known books on the history of rocketry.
 * Images: we have plenty of good-quality illustrations of rocket outlines on wiki already, so I'm sure a volunteer could scrape together enough material to fill the page. The problem would be to choose which rockets to include, because we can't possibly list them all. This page should remain a useful and precise overview, I'm not too keen into turning it into a photo album. Ideas welcome, though.
 * Propellants, and general definitions: I haven't worked on the intro text yet, it's in pretty bad shape. Hopefully some volunteers will show up and bring some drafts for consideration.

Looking forward to your next round of feedback. — JFG talk 17:19, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * +1 for failure/success ratio. If not for every launch system, than for those that made more than [place number here] launches.Igor Krein (talk) 13:04, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Comments from TompaDompa
TompaDompa (talk) 20:01, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) An image in the WP:LEAD would be nice.
 * 2) The first paragraph should be a hatnote, rather than a paragraph.
 * 3) The second paragraph is so broken up with explanatory footnotes that it impedes readability.
 * 4) The WP:LEAD is very scant for such a long list.
 * 5) Is there any particular reason to have the table of contents to the right?
 * 6) All abbreviations used in the tables should use the abbr template so the reader doesn't have to scroll all the way to the top to find out what an abbreviation means. It would also help those using screen readers quite a bit.
 * 7) Where color is used to convey information, symbols also need to be used per WP:ACCESS.
 * 8) Keep the number of empty cells to a minimum. The use of TBA is good, as it tells the reader the nature of the missing information (it will be added at a later date, but right now it is not available – other examples might be that a cell is not applicable for the entry in question, that the value is known but not available to the public if it for instance is kept secret, or that the value is unknown to anyone).
 * 9) The sourcing is either poor or unclear. There are very many cells that contain values that should be sourced, but no reference.
 * 10) The LEO payload cell for Simorgh only contains a reference, no value.
 * 11) Rocket variants are not distinguished; i.e., the Atlas V series is only counted once for all its configurations 401–431, 501–551, 552, and N22. – "i.e." should be "e.g." (unless that's the only example).
 * 12) The "Launch systems by country" graphic would be better as a table.
 * 13) The external links listed here need to be fixed.
 * these comments appear to have remained unaddressed (at least unanswered) for two-and-a-half weeks, are you intending to respond to/resolve them? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Had no time to work on this. Will definitely continue the process asap. — JFG talk 11:08, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * no stress, was just checking it was active. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:24, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * it's been a few weeks now, are you going to address/respond to these comments? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:31, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. The main issue is that there is a lot of data in the table of retired rockets that is badly sourced because the source URLs were changed all across the site. It will be a lot of work to update them all. I was hoping that some other rocketry "regulars" could help. I also need to write a new lede section. Expecting to do this by the end of the month. — JFG talk 22:10, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

This nomination appears to have stalled, with little or no interest reviewing it. I'd suggest that unless significant progress is made in the next week, this will be archived with no prejudice for a renomination once existing issues have been resolved. Let's give it until 1 November. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:42, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Giants2008 ( Talk ) 23:05, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.