Talk:Falcon 9

"Partial failures" metric

The summary box still shows only one partial failure (Partial failure(s) 1 (v1.0: CRS-1)[9]), however, another "partial failure" is Transporter 6 mission. Also, Zuma mission's outcome remains unknown, so maybe it is reasonable to have additional metric "outcome unknown"? 207.102.27.181 (talk) 20:15, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Is Falcon 9 heavy lift of medium lift

In its expendable form it is heavy and reusable medium. Which should we say? 2600:4040:937B:1B00:7D56:1A56:4D46:D1C5 (talk) 11:51, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I would say heavy as it definition is "capacity upwards of..." Starship 24 (talk) 21:55, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

We have this problem in lots of places where an arbitrary distinction is used. Many configurable rockets have configurations that fall into two or more categories, including Falcon Heavy and Vulcan. It happens in a lot of non-rocketry areas also. Because it is arbitrary, there is no "correct" solution, so just do your best. If it really bothers you create a footnote to explain the situation. -Arch dude (talk) 02:04, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

However, it is not a "partially reusable heavy lift rocket". It is either a "partially reusable medium lift rocket", or it is an "expendable heavy lift rocket", depending on the mission. -Arch dude (talk) 17:05, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I chose to use "partially reusable medium lift" in the first sentence and I added a "expendable heavy lift" second sentence. I chose this order because in more than 200 launches, it has never flown as a heavy-lift vehicle. -Arch dude (talk) 17:15, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Merge Falcon 9 Block Variants

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was don't merge . Cocobb8 (talk) 18:52, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

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@N2e, Lfstevens, JFG, and CactiStaccingCrane: Hello, this is to notify you that there is a discussion on the Falcon 9 article concerning the merging of its other block variants articles into Falcon 9 article. If you'd like to add your opinions, feel free to do so here. Thank you! Cocobb8 (talk) 14:33, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I propose merging Falcon 9 v1.0, Falcon 9 v1.1, Falcon 9 Full Thrust and Falcon 9 Block 5 into this article, Falcon 9. Most rocket articles don't have a separate article for every block variant, so it would make sense to follow that logic. Feel free to support all, oppose all or partially support. Any thoughts?

• Support all - See reasoning above. Cocobb8 (talk) 17:04, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support merging split content to this article. -Fnlayson (talk) 19:16, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
• Alternative My issue is that the article is already pretty long. I'd rather see the blocks merged into a single article of their own Falcon 9 block variants article. That keeps the level of detail down in the main article and provides less bloat than separate articles as the variants continue to emerge. Lfstevens (talk) 19:39, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
• Alternative Merging all would make the article too long or would remove a lot of content from the article(s). List of Falcon 9 versions or similar could cover the differences between the versions. --mfb (talk) 05:37, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
• Comment - I can see the reasoning behind this but Falcon 9 has had a pretty articulate development history with some very significant milestones that deserve to be detailed. Wouldn't we loose a lot of content like this? {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:29, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for your comment! If we were to merge all the block variants, we surely would be more limited in terms of length. However, if losing material is a problem for you, other users have mentioned an alternative to create a new article covering all the block variants, which, according to what you want, would allow for more material to be included. Cocobb8 (talk) 14:58, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not sure that's a good solution. I checked and for the Soyuz we have this page: Soyuz (rocket family) with an article for each version (e.g. Soyuz-U2). I would probably err on the side of precedent here. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 15:13, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

• Refactor This article is already too long, and the merger would make it much worse. Maybe just merge the block articles into a single block article, but a "history" article might be a better choice. It would have portions of the history from this main article in addition to putting the block articles there. -Arch dude (talk) 15:12, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose and rename? – Like others said the resulting page would be too long. We should follow precedent such as: Soyuz (rocket family) with an article for each version (e.g. Soyuz-U2). Maybe we should rename this page to Falcon 9 (rocket family)? {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 15:16, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I agree for the renaming. It would make way more sense, as it is not only one launch vehicle. Cocobb8 (talk) 15:21, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  @Gtoffoletto, I've been thinking about it, and technically it would make more sense to have an article Falcon (rocket family). It is currently under the name of SpaceX launch vehicles, but that means that Starship would be included there. It would make more sense to just include Falcon 9, Falcon 1 and Falcon Heavy, (with possibly their block variants) which are all the same kind of rocket. Technically, v1.1 and such are just block variants, so I don't think we can say that they are different rockets: just different blocks of one. For instance, I don't think that we have a separate article for every block variant of the SLS. Cocobb8 (talk) 14:17, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Probably yes. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 16:36, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Do you think we'd have to create a brand-new article and merge everything there? Cocobb8 (talk) 17:51, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  We can just propose to rename SpaceX launch vehicles {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 18:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  The thing is, it includes Starship as of now. Cocobb8 (talk) 18:29, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I would remove it and just mention it as a successor. But we need to propose this on that page. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 18:35, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Sure. You wanna do it? Cocobb8 (talk) 18:38, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I'll close the discussion here as it seems like we've reached a consensus. Cocobb8 (talk) 18:38, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Oppose to renaming; it would create confusion if the article covers Falcon Heavy (derived form Falcon 9, and with former name "Falcon 9 Heavy") and Falcon 9 Air as well. I realize that "Falcon 9 (rocket family)" currently redirects to this article, but I believe it's wrong. I think the redirect should be converted to a set index article, or re-targeted to SpaceX launch vehicles.

• Oppose all In addition to "Soyuz" variants (already discussed), there are articles on Long March (Changzheng) variants, on Proton variants (Proton-K, Proton-M), Zenith variants (Zenit-3SL, Zenit-3SLB, Zenit-3F). So there is no clear precedent. In addition, there is no generally accepted definition what is a variant of a rocket vs. a new rocked, derived from the existing one. For example, are H-IIA and H-IIB variants of each other and of H-II? I think some confusion may also be related to the treatment of configurations (also called variants). It looks like it is uncommon to have separate articles on rocket configurations (for example, Atlas V 401, 402, 411, ..., 552). But for Falcon 9, the rough equivalent would be expendable/reusable configurations, or short/long nozzle MVac. We don't have separate articles for these now; there is nothing to adjust here. Teaktl17 (talk) 19:36, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for your comment! Cocobb8 (talk) 21:03, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Oppose - I don't have a whole lot of arguments, but, all of these pages added up, are longer or almost as long as the current article Falcon 9 itself. Consider that the resulting article would be twice as long and unpractical to read. CodemWiki (talk) 21:18, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Large specification change without supporting reference

This page previously listed specifications which were the same as those on the Falcon Heavy page, which are at least supported by a (broken) reference link.

These were replaced with substantially different numbers for EG 2nd stage propellant. There appears to be absolutely no citation for the new numbers. (Am I missing something?)

Addtionally, diameter was previously listed correctly as 3.66m, and has now been "improved" to 3.7m.

What is the justification for such a large change to the specifications without support by link to a reference source? MP99 (talk) 12:15, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Supporting this - the ~93t prop figure is for a very old version of F9US according to this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220406013729/https://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falcon9ft.html MP99 (talk) 19:38, 4 October 2023 (UTC)