Wikipedia:WikiProject Launch vehicles/Standards discussion

Standards discussion I am starting discussion on WP:LV standards, transcluded to WT:LV and WT:Air. It can be edited here.

Naming conventions

 * Current standard : NICKNAME (rocket)
 * Issues with standard
 * 'rocket' is a less useful disambiguator than others because it describes form rather than function, the latter of which is both more important and of more interest. Also, it fails to distinguish between missiles and space launch vehicles.
 * In many cases, nicknames are not official names, or the primary way of referring to a rocket/missile.
 * Military designations are often used when naming air-to-air missiles (such as AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 AMRAAM) and for almost all military aircraft. The current standard precludes this.

Proposal
Follow Wikipedia's policy of 'most common name' as the article title. For a few rockets, who are well-known by their nicknames alone, the military designation should be omitted. Examples of this group: For these, the disambiguator to be used should generally be 'missile'. More specific disamguators such as 'IRBM', 'ICBM', or 'air-to-air missile' are also possibilities, but generally seem overboard to me: they do not provide any more clarity than 'missile'. One necessary modification: for a program with many important design stages, such as the Titan program, the main article is Titan (rocket family), with separate articles for the Titan I, II, III, and IV. 'rocket family' should be the disambiguator for programs that include both missiles and rockets; for those programs that include only missiles or only space launch vehicles, the title should be PROGRAM NAME program.
 * Jupiter
 * Titan
 * Atlas
 * Minuteman

For more obscure missiles&mdash;those that are not widely recognised by their nicknames alone&mdash;or for those normally known by their military designation, such as the AIM-9 and AIM-120 mentioned above, their military designation and nickname should be used. If no nickname is available, the manufacturer name should be included in the title. (This may need some modification to follow the reference standards in other works). Ingoolemo talk 18:32, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussion
Military designation is certainly the way to go for air-to-air missiles because this is how they are referenced in the vast majority of aircraft articles. For ballistic missiles, using the full military designation would be the strict encyclopedic approach (and in line with what's used on WP:Air). The server cost of redirects is basically nonexistent and redirects will be virtually unavoidable because of the multiple changes in designations, e.g. MGM-1 Matador was also the SSM-A-1, the B-61 (not to be confused with the nuclear bomb), and the TM-61. Certainly nothing in parentheses, IMHO, because it creates more work for the editors (instead of working the phrase "so-and-so missile" into the sentence, a piped wikilink has to be done). - Emt147 Burninate!  01:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Specifications

 * Current standard : Infobox with specifications
 * Problems : Has been disucessed before, but to review, specs create large infoboxes that have many problems, such as:
 * Wide infoboxes look bad at low resolution. If set to a fixed pixel or em width, it can crowd out the text.  If set to a percentage, it can cause ugly linebreaks within the box.
 * In small articles, a long infobox can be as much as three or four times the length of the text, which looks hideous. This is an especial problem for aircraft ant rockets, which can be stubs for months or even years at a time.
 * When combined with images, long infoboxes can cause massive whitespace or extremely narrow text, both of which are hideous.
 * When combined with tables, such as navigational footers, long infoboxes cause headaches such as overlaps or massive whitespace.


 * Column widths often need to be set manually or the software puts too much space between the columns&mdash;which looks hideous.

Proposed solution
Thankfully, extremely simple: move the specs to a text-based list, just like in WikiProject Aircraft.

The specs are similar enough to aircraft specs that we probably could manipulate to accommodate rockets, but it's probably not worth the trouble to do so; we should just create a separate template.

Proposed template: General characteristics 

Length:  Diameter: 

Launch mass: 



Engine {{#if:{{{Stage1|}}} |{{{Stage1_name|First stage}}}: {{{Stage1}}}Thrust: {{{thrust1 main}}} ({{{thrust1 alt}}}){{#if:{{{burn time1|}}} |Burn time: {{{burn time1}}} Fuel: {{{fuel1}}}</li> }}</ul></li>{{#if:{{{Stage2|}}} |<li>{{{Stage2_name|Second stage}}}: {{{Stage2}}}<ul><li>Thrust: {{{thrust2 main}}} ({{{thrust2 alt}}})</li>{{#if:{{{burn time2|}}} |<li>Burn time: {{{burn time2}}}</li> <li>Fuel: {{{fuel2}}}</li> }}</ul></li>{{#if:{{{Stage3|}}} |<li>{{{Stage3_name|Third stage}}}: {{{Stage3}}}<ul><li>Thrust: {{{thrust3 main}}} ({{{thrust3 alt}}})</li>{{#if:{{{burn time3}}} |<li>Burn time: {{{burn time3)}}</li> <li>Fuel: {{{fuel3}}}</li>   }}</ul>   }}  }}|{{{Engine}}}<ul><li>Thrust: {{{thrust main}}} ({{{thrust alt}}})</li>{{#if:{{{burn time|}}}  |<li>Burn time: {{{burn time}}}</li>  }}<li>Fuel: {{{fuel}}}</li></ul> }}

Performance <ul> <li>Cruise speed: </li> <li>Operating altitude: </li> <li>Range: </li> </ul>

Discussion
It appears that only the two of us are participating in this discussion, but FWIW I agree. To stay in line with the new name for Airtemp, Template:Missile specifications would be a good name for it. - Emt147 Burninate!  20:41, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Infobox
As we discussed above, it is best if the specifications are removed from the infobox. It is similar enough to the current that we can probably use the aircraft template for missiles and change the missile template to a redirect. Ingoolemo talk 20:57, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Footer
The WP:Air footer should work just fine. See PGM-17 Thor for a good example. Ingoolemo talk 20:57, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation
We can probably justify a category tree similar to WP:Air, but I don't have the energy to suggest anything right now.