Talk:SpaceX

Pictures

Today I went to visit the place and made some pics. I would say some could be used to illustrate this page, or the Falcon or Dragon ones. Pics are Creative Commons attribution, so I'd be honored to provide them. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasonurb/sets/72157625359251768/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brunosan (talk • contribs) 05:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for making them available under a free license. I've uploaded several of the best to Wikimedia Commons, so they can be shared across all Wikimedia projects (Wikipedias in other languages, Wiktionary, etc.), and added two File:SpaceX Dragon.jpg and File:Entrance to SpaceX headquarters.jpg to this article.

The rest I've uploaded are:

• File:Merlin rocket engines.jpg
• File:SpaceX factory.jpg
• File:Astronaut signatures at SpaceX.jpg

Thanks again.

--Jatkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 21:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Messagebox Question

The messagebox at the top of this article mentions "This article contains information regarding a LSP that is..." but LSP wasn't an abbreviation I was familiar with and wasn't defined in the article. Might hyperlink the abbreviation to the Wikipedia page: Launch Service Provider — DanDawson (talk) 02:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

SpaceX in a Post-Constellation world for NASA

Now that NASA has announced a new (post-Constellation) direction for their plans to get humans into Earth-orbit,(Private Spaceflight Goes Public, Alan Boyle, MSNBC Cosmic Log, 2010-02-01; many other sources will be published this week) and the Obama Administration is backing the new policy in the just-released budget proposal, what is SpaceX saying about how this may change things for SpaceX? (which should, subsequently, be reflected in this Wikipedia article.) N2e (talk) 16:52, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

In Wikipedia we cannot venture into speculation, so we'll to wait for new developments to be reported. Cheers, --BatteryIncluded (talk) 21:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely correct. I worded my question poorly. I have edited the question, above. I want to know what SpaceX is saying about this change in government policy, and how that will/may affect their plans. Only then, and only when we have verifiable sources, should we edit this article to reflect that development. N2e (talk) 21:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Surrey

In the article you say that Space-X purchased a share of Surrey. But since then it seems to me that this share has been sold by Space-X when EADS Astrium purchased surrey ? Hektor (talk) 16:14, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I've tagged it for update. Do you have a source for the sale? N2e (talk) 22:30, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

• From Surrey Satellite Technology: It then agreed to sell its majority share (roughly 80% of the capital) to EADS Astrium in April 2008.

So, I'm gonna pull the "dated" tag. It seems that SpaceX sill owns a minority share (I can't find any coverage of them selling, so... <shrug>).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:18, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 Development funding: private vs. government. How much of each?

The following notes appeared from Clark Lindsey at RLV and Space Transport News after the successful first launch of the Falcon 9 on 4 Jun 2010:

Total SpaceX expenditures?

- The $350M-$400M mentioned the other day was for Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets.

- Dragon, facilities, pad, etc add up to about another $100M-$150M.

- So total SpaceX expenditures till now adds up to around half a billion dollars.

- Includes money from NASA, private investment, deposits from customers, etc.

What is the breakdown of the funding in terms of private funding (e.g., Elon Musk's initial and subsequent funding, private investment, non-governmental deposits from customers) vs. government-provided funding? (e.g., "money from NASA")

Is this primarily a privately-funded development effort, or not? I think deposits on purchases of raw materials for manufacture of future vehicles for future spaceflights is not really development funding, or R&D. Any deposits from a customer is much more a partial payment for future (yet to be manufactured) goods, what is normally considered work-in-process. Anyone have a breakdown from the accountants that has been made public?

More importantly, does anyone know of any verifiable, reliable secondary sources that we might use to cite such a breakdown for development funding within the article? N2e (talk) 04:45, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Context

Wikipedia needs context for this article relating to 'Private Industry in Space Flight', most probably in a separate article. It's a very discussed matter, the "NASA vs Private money" and sources should be a lot. --195.74.255.52 (talk) 11:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

We already have private spaceflight, commercialization of space, alt.space, and NewSpace :-). --Jatkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 20:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Falcon 9 section: Cost per pound in Falcon 5?

There is a reference to the projected cost per pound of cargo in the Falcon 5, but earlier it was stated that the Falcon 5 had been abandoned, so this is confusing. Would someone (who knows more than I) fix this? I might just delete the sentence; the ones before and after flow well enough. But that would leave out the cost per pound (actual? projected?) of the Falcon 1. Plus, I just don't know enough to mess with it. --Everything Else Is Taken (talk) 13:34, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, Falcon 5 was canceled quite a while back. I think even the Falcon 9 and Falcon 1 pricing is somewhat outdated. The price for a LEO mission on Falcon 9 with 80% or more of the capacity to the consumer orbit is $51.5 million and the payload for a Cape Canaveral launch is 10,450 kg, so: $51.5 million / (10,450 kg * 0.8) = $6,160.29/kg or $2,794.26054 kg/lb. That's a very rough estimate and I'm not an expert, but it gives you an idea of the price per kilogram. For Falcon 1e, the yet to be launched upgrade of Falcon 1, which is the only Falcon 1 price given: $10.9 million / 1,010 kilograms = $10,792.08/kg or $4,895.17/lb. --Jatkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 20:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Recent news media articles

Here are two interesting, fairly thorough, SpaceX/Musk sources (August 2010):

• Elon Musk: 'I'm planning to retire to Mars', guardian.co.uk, 2010-08-01, accessed 2010-08-01.
• Entrepreneur Elon Musk On Weathering the CEO Storm, Business News Daily, 2010-08-02, accessed 2010-08-04.

Several facts about Falcon 1, Falcon 9, SpaceX, Dragon, including the origin of the names for Falcon and Dragon, could be sourced from these articles as well. Cheers. N2e (talk) 04:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Merge of Falcon X and Falcon XX articles into SpaceX

Deletion nominations were recently made for both the Falcon X and Falcon XX articles. The result of both nominations was a consensus to merge the appropriate content into this article, SpaceX. The archived results of the AfD discussions is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Falcon X and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Falcon XX.

As of 2010-09-16, the Falcon X content has been merged, and Falcon X redirects here. The Falcon XX material has yet to be merged, but I expect it will be in the next week or two. Cheers. N2e (talk) 14:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The merge has been completed, and merge headers have been added to the bottom of the header section at the top of this Talk page with all the appropriate reference information. Thanks go to User:StuffOfInterest for handling most of the merge work. N2e (talk) 21:22, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

While I understand the need to merge these articles, they should have been merged into a parent article on the Falcon series rather than SpaceX. This article is getting unwieldy. The sections on the other Falcons are too long as well especially since each has it's own dedicated article. Any comments on creating Falcon (rocket family), merging the X and XX sections there, most of the detail in this article on the Falcon 1, 5 and 9 and leaving behind a paragraph or two in a single Falcon section? These sections are just going to get bigger and more difficult to maintain.--RadioFan (talk) 11:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Falcon XX heavy ?? Useles speculation and rocket fetishism. How about Falcon XXX with 1000Mt LEO and antimatter upper stage? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.248.202.81 (talk) 15:10, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Falcon 9 Heavy

There is a prominent column of information in the Launcher versions table for the Falcon 9 Heavy launcher. However, I can find no information in the body of the article that specifically explicates the nature and characteristics of this particular version. I can find a few (more vague) mentions of "heavy" rocket development thinking going back to 2004. I believe this will need to be cleaned up. N2e (talk) 05:30, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The Heavy is a falcon 9 with two extra first stages strapped to either side, much like the architecture of the Delta IV Heavy. No flights planned as yet. It's different to the X and XX mentioned above, and this should possibly be better explained in the article.--Yeti Hunter (talk) 16:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The reference is right there at the bottom of the table ([1]), along with the refs for the F1 and F9. It is in the same state as the Atlas V Heavy: they have designed the current core stages for the Heavy configuration loads, but are awaiting a customer to actually fly it. --IanOsgood (talk) 16:34, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Ian for finding the citation, adding text to the article, and updating a lot of the specs in the table. I think it is important to source the tables a bit more specifically so, in keeping with Wikipedia core policy of verifiability, readers can easily verify the claims, and the table data doesn't change over time without the source changing. N2e (talk) 18:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

list of articles

This list of articles has been tagged for 5 months with concerns about it being incorporated into the article as footnotes. Any issue with removing the section ? The article is already pretty well footnoted so this section is essentially a link farm.--RadioFan (talk) 11:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

LockMart Institute attack

Somebody (most likely with the initials L.M.) paid the Lexington Institute to put out a hit piece on SpaceX

http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/110505-lexington-institute-takes-spacex.html

Are the charges well founded enough to include here? Hcobb (talk) 15:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

And SpaceX response: http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2011/05/24/spacex-responds-to-forbes-contributor-loren-thompson/ Hcobb (talk) 01:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Thompson's comments so political in nature and based on such faulty logic that it's not worth mentioning here. I would hope that someone writing about the aerospace industry would know which administration that initiated the push towards commercializing LEO. Thompson's report was political and the response was equally political. I dont think it has much place here.--RadioFan (talk) 02:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Iron Man 2

The scenes with Hammer's Factory were filmed at in this company's headquarters in Hawthorne. Is this something that could be added?--HiroProtagonist 19:37, 27 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by HiroProtagonist (talk • contribs)

If you've got a reliable source, it could potentially be worked in. Probably trivial in the overall scheme of the company though; that sort of thing would be better off at the film's article IMO.--Yeti Hunter (talk) 22:47, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Falcon 9 Merged Missions

I'm unsure of how to properly edit articles. However, there is some outdated information in this article. In the "Falcon 9" section of the article it ends with there are two more upcoming flights for the Falcon 9, flights 3 and 4. As seen here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COTS_Demo_Flight_2 - SpaceX had NASA agree to combine the missions for flights 3 and 4 into just one flight, not two. Can someone please update? Andrewv067 (talk) 03:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Updated, thanks for pointing this out! Scampioen (talk) 16:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

SpaceX new VTVL suborbital rocket: Grasshopper

Lots of news out this week about the new VTVL reusable launch vehicle suborbital test rocket from SpaceX, named Grasshopper.

• MSNBC
• Slashdot
• The Register, UK
• Satellite.com — "The vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) Grasshopper RLV consists of a Falcon 9 first stage tank, a single Merlin-1D engine, four steel landing legs and a support structure, plus other pressurization tanks attached to the support structure, according to the FAA application document. It will stand at 106 feet tall, and use the Merlin-1D's primary fuel and oxidizer, RP1 kerosene and liquid oxygen."

"Testing of Grasshopper will take up to three years, and will require the construction of a launch pad and other support infrastructure at McGregor, SpaceX's current rocket engine test facility. SpaceX may run up to 70 suborbital launches per year, with the number assuming both potential multiple launches per day and potential launch failures."

I do not have the time to abstract this and potentially add it to the article at the present time, but did think others would want to know, and perhaps use the info to improve Wikipedia -- Cheers, N2e (talk) 22:50, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

• More here, from Discovery News SpaceX to Build 'Grasshopper' Rocket — "The rocket is likely a test to chase the elusive holy grail for rocket scientists -- reusable launchers." N2e (talk) 04:34, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

• "Tim Hughes of SpaceX notes that they expect ... first test of F9 reusability tech demonstrator (Grasshopper) in 1st quarter of next year." N2e (talk) 15:07, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Y Done I have now updated the article text with a brief summary of the Grasshopper RLV test vehicle. N2e (talk) 19:01, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

SpaceX new reusable Falcon 9 launch vehicle

Here, according to the LA Times: SpaceX says it's developing the first fully reusable rocket, 29 Sep 2011

This is a full-blown reusable Falcon 9 RLV, both stages, apparently much more than the "Grasshopper" empty first-stage tank and single Merlin 1D test vehicle that will be used in Texas for testing, per paperwork filed with the FAA and mentioned in the previous section on this Talk page. N2e (talk) 02:58, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Next-day coverage of the new project has appeared in a number of media outlets, which will provide decent sources for any improvements to the article:

• MSNBC
• Washington Post

“I wasn’t sure it could be solved, for a while, but then I think just relatively recently — probably in the last 12 months or so — I’ve come to the conclusion that it can be solved and I think SpaceX is going to try to do it,” Musk said. “Now, we could fail — I’m not saying we are certain of success here — but we are going to try to do it. And we have a design that on paper — doing the calculations, doing the simulations — it does work,” he added. “Now we need to make sure that those simulations and reality agree, because generally when they don’t reality wins.”

on costs:

Musk said a Falcon 9 costs about $50 million to $60 million but the cost of fuel and oxygen for a launch is only about $200,000. “So obviously if we can reuse the rocket, say a thousand times, then that would make the capital cost of the rocket per launch only about $50,000,” he said. Musk did not detail a timeline or cost for development. “If it does work it’ll be pretty huge,” he said.

• Bloomberg
• Agence France Press
• Florida Today (a newspaper with a substantive "space" desk; so might be considered part of the "space press")
• SpaceX Unveils Plan for World's First Fully Reusable Rocket, Space.com

Cheers. N2e (talk) 12:05, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Date and time formatting inconsistent

Can we come to a consensus on what the date and time format is? Currently there's about three in the main article, and more in the references. WP standard is day, month, year; but that does not have to be the case per se. I prefer it, but usually the format is decided either by which was used first in the article, or consensus on the talk page. I strongly recommend — for the reference section only — that they be just the numeric YYYY/MM/DD to keep the citations from taking up too much space, as the citations can have a different date format from the main body text. Time formatting seems to be in ET, EDT, EST, GMT, and UTC (basically the same thing as GMT). Standardizing the date time formats would be a step in the right direction to making this eventually a 'B'-class or 'Good' article. Thoughts? Comments? Questions?--Abebenjoe (talk) 00:22, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd prefer DD Month YYYY in both main text and references for consistency and maintainability. The mixed style is much less convenient, because automatic tools don't handle it well. Conversely, if the style is consistent, I could convert all the dates in the article by one mouse click. As for citations taking much space, a lot of other pages with many more references use this style and it seems that there's no problem. Consequently there shouldn't be problems for us too.

As for the time format, I think that we should get rid of that information entirely, since it is quite unimportant and reduces readability (at least in prose). The only relevant information, which can be extracted by the reader, is the length of some operation. So another sensible solution might be something like this: "The rocket has been launched on DD Month YYYY. It entered the orbit XX minutes after launch" (note, doing this isn't WP:OR per WP:CALC). What do you think? 1exec1 (talk) 18:45, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll weigh in on the date format question only. I think keeping the dates closer to the ISO standard yyyy-mm-xx is best, especially for references. If per WP:MOS they ought to be different than all numeric date format in the prose, then I will support whatever the MOS specs for the in-prose dates. As for the time question, I'm agnostic. N2e (talk) 21:29, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:MOSNUM says that either Month DD, YYYY ( Month DD in short form) or DD Month YYYY ( DD Month in short form) are acceptable for prose. For references, it says that either YYYY-MM-DD or the format used for prose are acceptable. Other all-numeric formats such as YYYY/MM/DD or DD/MM/YYYY are not allowed. See also section on citation style. To sum up, WP:MOS doesn't prefer either of the formats for references. My own opinion is that using the same format as in prose offers consistency and maintainability, so I support this option.1exec1 (talk) 22:53, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. If WP:MOSNUM says that "either Month DD, YYYY ( Month DD in short form) or DD Month YYYY ( DD Month in short form) are acceptable for prose," then I support the more internationally sensible DD Month YYYY over the alternative. I continue to think that ISO standard yyyy-mm-xx is best for references. I remain agnostic on how to handle the time issue, and will leave other editors to work that out. N2e (talk) 23:12, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe that using time breaches WP:OR, but it might start getting a little bit tedious if excessively used. Space launch articles routinely use specific times, because they are reported as such both in the media, or by the Space Agency/Company that launches them, thereby making them relevant. For a general article like this, getting into too much detail regarding each aspect of each flight, is beyond the scope of this article and should be modified. I think all launch times should be included in UTC format, which will make all the dates consistent as well, since SpaceX's first launches were in the Pacific Ocean near the International dateline.--Abebenjoe (talk) 19:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

As for citation formatting, I prefer YYYY-MM-DD for a few reasons: a) it is much faster to type eight digits and two hyphens than it is a fully spelled out month and digits (sometimes this information must be inputted four-times in the citation template generator); b) In the past, and maybe now, when this method was utilized, a user's browser preference switched the date format into their regional preferences automatically (this does not work for me anymore, but it did in the past); c) as mentioned before it takes up less space producing a less cluttered, more readable citation; but is also allows for precedence, i.e., it is easier to sort citations with the year first displayed, followed by the month and day (although how many readers may find that useful is questionable, but I do). In my experience, one format for the prose section, and one for the citations and bibliography sections causes little confusion. Since I seem to be the one doing most of the citation maintenance, it would make my work easier if we maintained YYYY-MM-DD for citations only.--Abebenjoe (talk) 19:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Old news articles section

Here are the news articles that were in the old article section. These were not incorporated into the main article as inline citations, so I moved them here in case they are needed for later research. Otherwise they should be deleted if not used.

• Rincon, Paul (December 30, 2008). "Private firms to haul ISS cargo". BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/7800721.stm. 
• Dinkin, Sam (February 27 – March 13, 2006). "A tour/interview of SpaceX". The Space Review. http://thespacereview.com/article/567/1.  Parts 2, 3,4
• Cowing, Keith (March 6, 2006). "The SpaceX Dragon: America's First Privately Financed Manned Orbital Spacecraft?". SpaceRef. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1095. 
• Wayne, Leslie (February 5, 2006). "A bold plan to go where men have gone before". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/business/yourmoney/05rocket.html. 
• Bergin, Chris (January 20, 2006). "Interview with Elon Musk and VP of Development Operations". NasaSpaceFlight.com. http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2006/01/spacexs-musk-and-thompson-q-and-a/. 
• Foust, Jeff (November 14, 2005). "Big plans for SpaceX". The Space Review. http://thespacereview.com/article/497/1. 
• Lemley, Brad (September 2005). "Shooting the Moon". Discover. SpaceX. http://www.spacex.com/media.php?page=42. 
• "Space X, with video interviews". ScienCentral News. August 12, 2005. http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392620&cat=2_1. 
• David, Leonard (August 12, 2005). "SpaceX Private Rocket Shifts to Island Launch". Space.com. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050812_spacex_island.html. 
• Ray, Justin (May 27, 2005). "Privately-made Falcon 1 rocket roars on the pad". Spaceflight Now. http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon/050527frf/. 
• David, Leonard (May 23, 2005). "Private rocketeer looks to August flight". Space.com. http://www.space.com/adastra/050523_musk_nss.html. 
• Scully, Janene (April 27, 2005). "Small firm fired up to test new rocket". Santa Maria Times. http://www.santamariatimes.com/news/local/article_19a73114-7d4f-517d-8c85-a6a1ce97e97e.html. 
• Reingold, Jennifer (February 2005). "Hondas in Space". Fast Company. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/91/honda.html. 
• Ray, Justin (January 20, 2005). "SpaceX starting small as it dreams of grand plans". Spaceflight Now. http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon/050120spacex/. 
• Livingston, David. "Broadcast interviews with Elon Musk about SpaceX". The Space Show. http://www.thespaceshow.com/guest.asp?q=15. 

End of articles.--Abebenjoe (talk) 15:19, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused by the comment above. Where did these sources come from? Could you be more clear about that? —N2e (talk) 21:32, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

These are not my sources, these were in a section of an earlier version of the main article, which were not part of any inline reference. I just copied and pasted them here so they are not completely orphaned, if someone needs to use them in this article. If not useful, they can be deleted from here as well.Abebenjoe (talk) 19:16, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Split to Falcon (rocket family)

A recent split of the launcher table and development vehicles to Falcon (rocket family) was reverted because it was too large a change without discussion. I hereby vote for the split as it was implemented. The Falcon rockets are indeed a family with lots of shared technology, and there are enough of them to warrant a new article. And I think it is a good idea to shrink this article and reduce duplication by moving details from the SpaceX article to the rocket family article. --IanOsgood (talk) 16:31, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Air-launched large rocket is now under development

On December 13, 2011, SpaceX announced that it would develop a 220,000 kilograms (490,000 lb) air-launched rocket as part of the Stratolaunch Systems project. Stratolaunch is funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan is involved in concept development for the world's largest wingspan aircraft; Allen and Rutan had previously collaborated on the creation of SpaceShipOne. I have made an initial update to the article with this info. N2e (talk) 01:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

manned vs. crewed

A change from "manned spacecraft" to "crewed spacecraft" has been reverted. Perhaps in the future this change will be appropriate but we aren't there yet. A google news search on the 2 phrases shows that the former phrase is used about 6-7 times as often in the news and about 4 times as often in published books. Space agencies generally use "manned" when referring to their human spaceflight programs.--RadioFan (talk) 18:47, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

"Crewed" was a rush on my part, as the article uses "human-rated" because that is also the language that SpaceX uses. As well, it is in keeping with WP:Gender stylistics. "Manned" should only be used if it is a direct quote by someone.Abebenjoe (talk) 19:13, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I this is based on SpaceX sources that would be perfectly reasonable, however neither mentioned of "crewed" is referenced. The first mention of "crewed" should also be wikilinked to human spaceflight to help clarify that manned, crewed, human crew, etc. are all the same thing. Crewed can be confuesed to mean multiple humans for example.--RadioFan (talk) 19:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Co-founder Tom Mueller

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdvv8qIl_WI At about 0:20 seconds onward. Worth a mention as one of the 'key people' along with Gwynne and Elon? — Preceding unsigned comment added by HeavyQuark (talk • contribs) 18:44, 5 February 2012 (UTC)