Talk:List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches/Archive 11

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Archive 11

Chart to track fairing recovery

Currently in the article there doesn't appear to be a way to track the success on fairing recovery by catching in a net. I recommend that either an existing chart include this metric or an additional chart be added. War (talk) 21:48, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

What should be done in cases where there is more then one outcome? For example the Starlink launch L10 v1.0 had one fairing caught while the other was recovered out of the water. OkayKenji ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:13, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

5

10

15

20

25

30

2010

'11

'12

'13

'14

'15

'16

'17

'18

'19

'20

•   Fairing catch success
•   Splashdown recovery
•   No attempt
•   No fairing

Reference material - used the refs from the main page

Launch Fairing A Fairing B Ref 2019 #67 No attempt No attempt #68 No attempt No attempt #69 No fairing No fairing (Dragon) FH 2 Splashdown recovery (Go Navigator/Searcher) Splashdown recovery (Go Navigator/Searcher) #70 No fairing No fairing (Dragon) #71 Splashdown recovery (Go Navigator/Searcher) Splashdown recovery (Go Navigator/Searcher) #72 No attempt No attempt FH 3 Successful Catch (Go Ms. Tree) Splashdown recovery [?] #73 No fairing No fairing (Dragon) #74 Successful Catch (Go Ms. Tree) Splashdown recovery #75 No attempt No attempt #76 No fairing No fairing (Dragon) #77 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Tree/Chief) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Tree/Chief) 2020 #78 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) [?] #79 No fairing No fairing (Dragon) #80 Successful catch (Go Ms Tree) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Chief) [?] #81 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) [?] Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Chief) [?] #82 No fairing No fairing (Dragon) #83 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Chief) #84 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Chief) #85 No fairing No fairing (Dragon) #86 [?] - Splashdown recovery [?] -Splashdown recovery #87 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Chief) #88 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Chief) "while both fairings were recovered out of the water without attempting a catch in the net." #89 Successful catch (Go Ms Tree) Successful catch (Go Ms Chief) #90 Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) [?] Splashdown recovery (Go Ms Tree) [?] #91 Successful catch (Go Ms Tree) Splashdown recovery (Go Ms. Chief) References

Something like this? Only did for 2019/2020 so far. OkayKenji ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:02, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Each launch produces two entries. I see space for a graph but not for a table if we get reliable sources for each outcome (or we need an unknown bar). --mfb (talk) 03:00, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I like the chart. I also agree that there are two fairings per launch and each can have a different result.War (talk) 05:02, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Does anybody know a good website/source where we have fairing recovery data? It seems like SpaceX rarely updates the status of fairings unless they catch it or on their launch webcasts. Maybe https://spacexfleet.com/, but don't want to copy it... OkayKenji ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:46, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

So long as it's just data points you're citing, then it's not copying. Just a "Success", "Failure", "Partial success" type thing isn't an issue. I would not go into the level of detail that spacexfleet does. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

As an update - I'm still working on this, but I a noticing there are missions we do not know a lot about. To be frank SpaceX when it comes to fairings they are not transparent. We have to rely on (and thankful for) photographers who are at the Port Canaveral Port to get the condition of fairings. Tho there are a few webcasts where they do say condition of fairngs. OkayKenji ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:27, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@OkayKenji If there aren't high quality citable sources then it generally cannot be included on Wikipedia. You'll have to include sources somewhere on the page for every single fairing recovery. The same problem is going on with the second stage, though it's somewhat more visible, it's still hard to confirm as it's not clear which launches are which in the table. I've almost deleted the table a couple of times. Fairings will be even worse. You'll need a source for every single one. Ergzay (talk) 05:36, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Hey there. True, there’s no high quality sources. I’ve unpinned this for now as it’s unlikely we will get new sources soon (I think I pinned it?) And this discussion seems to have stalled since a few years ago. OkayKenji ^(talk) 11:25, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

As SpaceX has abandoned the net recovery effort, my suggestion is no longer needed.War (talk) 06:11, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Sources for Starlink masses

All of the masses for Starlink launches seem to use no source at all or use a poor source (everydayastronaut). I can say said source is poor because it has false precision. I suggest we source a single source for the mass of Starlink missions and then mention that somewhere in the page. Right now I'm considering changing all of them to use #expr calculations. For example:

{{cvt|{{#expr:300*51 round -3}}|kg}}

as an example for the first launch of 2023. This changes some of the calculations but I'm not sure there are any good sources to the mass of each starlink launch beyond that they're "around" 300kg. I've gone ahead and made this change for the first launch and I'll change it for others if there's no objection, along with sourcing the mass from gunter's page. https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/starlink-v1-5.htm which says "~300kg". Ergzay (talk) 05:31, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Lazaro Fernandes Do you have any comment on this? I saw you making recent changes to the Starlink mass. Ergzay (talk) 00:31, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

yes, each starlink has 300kg Lazaro Fernandes (talk) 02:07, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

yes, each starlink v1.5 has 300kg Lazaro Fernandes (talk) 02:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

310kg starlink v1.5 * Lazaro Fernandes (talk) 02:11, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

@Lazaro Fernandes Do you have a source for the 310kg figure? I looked and could not find one. Ergzay (talk) 01:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

"Most successful launches by any rocket family"

Launch 253 has the following description: "An East Coast v2 mini Starlink launch to their Generation 2 network. SpaceX's Falcon family thus broke the world record for most successful launches by any rocket family, first set by the R-7 family in 1980 after this launch." The linked source shows that this is an incorrect statement, and that the R7 family has had well over 1000 successful launches. Even if it is talking about a specific variant, the Soyuz-U alone has over 700 successful launches. If this is talking about the longest streak of successful launches, this was broken by the Falcon 9 a long time ago (I believe it was about 120-130 launches?). Am I misunderstanding their claim? Finlaymorrison0 (talk) 12:14, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

This has since been edited to "yearly world record" 5.31.29.177 (talk) 07:36, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

4 Additional South Korean satellites

In this article about "425 Project SAR satellite" they state "Under a contract with SpaceX, South Korea plans to launch four more spy satellites by 2025, according to South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration." Do we know which 4 launches those are? I only count one more Korean satellite in the list. Ergzay (talk) 17:30, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Fate of second stages

I presume most Falcon second stages are de-orbited safely after releasing their payloads, but what about lunar or translunar missions like today's Psyche Falcon Heavy launch? Do they have enough Delta-V left over to return to the Earth's atmosphere or are they abandoned in heliocentric orbit? If the latter, that is something worth keeping track of in this or a related article, it seems to me.--agr (talk) 18:38, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Psyche's F9 2nd stage, AFAIK, went into heliocentric orbit. The few straight-to-GEO missions I think put the 2nd stage into the GEO graveyard orbit. All LEO and GTO missions try to do a controlled deorbit of the 2nd stage - There was one notable failure : flight 109, 4 March 2021, which says "The second-stage deorbit burn failed, causing an uncontrolled reentry on 26 March 2021, over the west coast of the United States.[164]" Pehaps we could note just the ones that fail to do a controlled deorbit ? - Rod57 (talk) 12:52, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Many second stages from GTO missions are still in orbit. Finding good sources for them can be difficult. --mfb (talk) 16:19, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Heaviest payload - ever, not just reusable

Flight 266 says "First time 23 Starlinks V2 Mini were launched and new record in reusable Falcon 9 weighing 18,400kg." but this was a record even for expendable launches - so (similar to flight 176) could we say "... Heaviest payload flown [yet] on Falcon 9" ? - Rod57 (talk) 12:46, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I changed it. --mfb (talk) 06:40, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Too many graphs

As I've stated before, none of the content these additional graphs are referenced elsewhere in this page, nor are they cited by sources. You can't have graphs with content that's not elsewhere in the article. For example it's nigh impossible to separate "Government (other)" versus "Military (other)" versus "Space Agency (other)" as many countries combined the organizations. So I'm deleting that graph. And the second stage configurations table is entirely WP:OR, so you can't do that, so I'm removing that graph. Finally, the "payloads to orbit" graph is impossible as many missions have unknown or "guessed" payloads and mixing them all together can't be done. Even the Starlink payload masses are guestimates and honestly I've considered removing them for quite some time. Ergzay (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

The second stage configurations table was added by @122.187.144.98 this time, but I'm not sure if notifying them will work.

The other tables were added by @Redraiderengineer, thankfully an actual user so hopefully they see this. Ergzay (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

That table was added by me earlier but was unapproved and removed. I kept the graph safe in SpaceX Merlin. Then @Redraiderengineer added the other graphs. I just linked that graph. Then someone saw the link and copied the graph from that page so I started keeping it here. Fair it's still on Merlin page like earlier. This was no original research but what SpaceX showed to us (short nozzle) and told us (medium coast kit). 122.187.144.98 (talk) 15:04, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

@122.187.144.98 Original research is when something has no direct sources and is compiled by a wikipedia user. So yes it would fall under original resaerch. Go read WP:OR. Ergzay (talk) 20:53, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

It has no direct sources but if you say sources are needed source all falcon 9 mission livestreams. Simple. Like listings of Autonomous spaceport drone ship doesn't require sources same way. 122.187.144.98 (talk) 12:31, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Also many starlink missions are not sourced on List of Falcon 9 first-stage boosters. Leave ebd the discussions and enjoy concise page for user viewership @Ergzay 122.187.144.98 (talk) 12:34, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying here. If they don't have sources they should have them. Ergzay (talk) 06:27, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Also a lot of satellites are confusing even just limiting to the US. GPS satellites are launched by the military, but are used substantially by the public. Satellites launched for the NRO are primarily used via the military, but the NRO is a civilian organization. If you want to split it up, split it up by major US customers and then by "foreign government". Ergzay (talk) 01:09, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Ok RIP B1058 (talk) 17:14, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

GSAT-20

@RIP B1058 I temporarily removed GSAT-20 as it was a complete mess of broken citations, broken URLs and over-citations. Look at the commented out text at the top of the 2024 section when editing for some guidelines on how to properly format things. For example you only need a single source for the launch date. You only need a single source for any piece of information you add. If several pieces of information are in a single source, you don't need to cite it multiple times. Please re-add the mission when you've cleaned it up. I was considering fixing it but it looked like too much work. Ergzay (talk) 20:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I have dont what you asked. (monociting and restroring broken urls) RIP B1058 (talk) 03:14, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Preaching

@Mfb@Ergzay@AmigaClone I have got a nice sticky tool in List of Starlink and Starshield launches table please use it in all page that have long tables 122.187.144.98 (talk) 03:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "sticky tool". Ergzay (talk) 03:50, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

{{Import style|sticky}}

|- class="is-sticky"

This code that I added in front of tables for sticky tittles for readers so that they can match cells with headers wherever they are while reading that table.@Ergzay 122.187.144.98 (talk) 14:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

@Ergzay I think based on this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1192771556 revert we must remove this too

SpaceX had a rare coincidence of four rockets (all types of operational and under-development rockets) on all four of its orbital launch pads and two Dragon 2s (both types of Dragon 2s) on orbit on 10 January 2023.

RIP B1058 (talk) 17:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't read your diff there, it doesn't show up properly. Ergzay (talk) 19:36, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Ergzay I meant if igniting rocket stages on a single day for different rockets is useless for this page then we must remove the above line saying all rockets on pads irrespective of purpose there. So that must be removed also this Stat suits for a standalone SpaceX rockets page not Falcon family page so must be removed. RIP B1058 (talk) 20:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@RIP B1058 I can't understand what you're trying to say. I'll just point you to WP:NOTSTATS as that's what I'm trying to convey. Any and all statistics should be removed if there's not some explaining text on what the significance of the statistic is, ideally with a source saying why the statistic is important. Ergzay (talk) 20:51, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Please do not add Starlink masses when they're unknown

@Lazaro Fernandes You reverted my removal of the Starlink mass when it's obviously incorrect. Please undo your revert. Ergzay (talk) 20:01, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

800kg each starlink v2 mini, in this case it was 21 so it's 16,400kg :) Lazaro Fernandes (talk) 00:12, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

So is it better to just put the mass of 15 starlinks?  since the other 6 have unknown mass Lazaro Fernandes (talk) 00:17, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@Lazaro Fernandes This is wikipedia, any information that's cite-able should not be on the page. It doesn't matter whether you know something to be the case or not. The column is for total mass, if you don't know the total mass then you can not put the mass there without some kind of explainer.

I'll add that we don't actually know each starlink v2 mini is 800kg. The Starlink v2 mini payloads have obviously changed in mass over time as the number of satellites has changed over time. Ergzay (talk) 06:32, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@Ergzay here a problem arises that future launches as per Planet4589 sir, direct-to-cell connectivity starlinks are designated from 11000 series and normal ones are 30000 series so we need to keep in mind and maintain when to use ~ and when > (SpaceX won't declare everytime when they are launching direct-to-cell connectivity) RIP B1058 (talk) 04:55, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

https://x.com/planet4589/status/1742588387272331350?s=20 RIP B1058 (talk) 04:56, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand what point you're making. I don't think we should be using > at all for any Starlink satellites unless we can confirm their actual masses. Ergzay (talk) 11:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Ok (i denoted how to find if starlink satellites they are regular or direct-to-cell ones) (sorry if there's a grammatical barrier in between us) RIP B1058 (talk) 11:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

But @Ergzay in case of Globalstar-2 M087 (FM15) and 425 Project SAR satellite, we are placing the known mass of satellite with explainer. What about that??? RIP B1058 (talk) 11:28, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

(This is in context to your talk with lazaro on only including 15 starlink mass) RIP B1058 (talk) 11:29, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

That makes sense when there's satellites with known stated masses as the primary payloads and then additional smaller satellites with unknown masses. It means the majority of the mass is known. If they're all of the same mass it doesn't make much sense to have an explainer because the majority of the mass is still unknown. Also as I've already stated, ALL starlink masses are relatively unknown because the satellite mass keeps changing from launch to launch even within a single generation of satellite with the same model name. For example not all Starlink v1.5 satellites have the same mass. They gradually grew heavier. Ergzay (talk) 18:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

In case of Globalstar its that Starlink v1.5 is ~303kg and Globalstar is ~700 so majority is unknown as 4 supposed military starlinks. RIP B1058 (talk) 10:20, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

(this starlink mass as per that time) RIP B1058 (talk) 10:21, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Article getting too long?

The list of launches is getting so long that I think it would be better to spin off lists by year, or a range of a few years. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:56, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree - it might also make sense to move future/planned launches to a separate article Rebell44 (talk) 18:29, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

100% agree with this. The 2010-2019 article has 77 launches. A 2020-2021 article would be similar, and then I'd recommend yearly after that due to the large increase in launch cadence in 2022 and 2023. Ajthom90 (talk) 16:06, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

• It is long, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. It's useful to be able to search across multiple years. If we do ever split out 2020-2021 or 2020-2022, it would be good to always keep the current and future years in this article. IMO - Rod57 (talk) 12:58, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
  • future years in this article, as the last 2 years of lauches. from january 2024 we can add page for 2020-21. in 2026 we can create 2022-23. and in 2027 2024 alone, 2024 seems to be a year with more than 100 lauches. --Dwalin (talk) 18:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

We split out 2010-2019 in May 2022 at 525 kb bytes text and with 158 completed launches (article before, discussion), moving 80 launches to the new list. We are now at ~200 past launches on this page (480 kb). Splitting 2020-2021 would create a short list (56 launches) and make people complain about a long list quickly again, I prefer making a page for 2020-2022 (117 launches). That means we'll likely get to 200 again in late 2024 or so when we can split out 2023 (~90 launches). I don't mind waiting a bit, but support for a split is inevitably growing over time. --mfb (talk) 16:17, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Splitting off by number of launches makes sense. Create 2020-2022, and then split off one article per year starting with 2023 from there on. 91.74.28.231 (talk) 04:58, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I would propose that until the retirement of the Falcon 9, the main Falcon 9 family launches article contain at least the year in progress and the previous years. I would propose to split out 2020-2022 in January 2024 AmigaClone (talk) 07:04, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

All good suggestions. But please, please somebody do something about this page. It is such a pain to scroll. How about this suggestion: Have only one master "Falcon 9 launches page" with a summary paragraph for each year. In each of these summaries have a link to a separate page of the specific launches for that year (which contains links to return to the main Falcon 9 launches page). 108.31.113.201 (talk) 11:22, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

@108.31.113.201 Wikipedia uses a navbox at the top of articles with links to jump to sections (if you want to jump to the end of a section, it's handy to jump to the beginning of another). That allows you to not have to scroll. Ergzay (talk) 22:55, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

We really should delay any splitting as long as possible until it becomes unbearable to manage. The number of inter-page links to this page from elsewhere and inter-page links from within this page to other parts of this page is tremendous (remember that every mission entry can be linked to directly as well as every year). It's a ton of work to fix those up and inevitably the person who does the splitting isn't aware of all these problems and leaves the cleanup to other people. Ergzay (talk) 06:30, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

On this note, whatever splitting we should do, we should do in equal-year-sized "chunks". Rather than three year chunks I'd choose 2 year chunks, because I think with us heading into around/over 100 missions per year that'd end up in page sizes with over 300 missions in the page. So 2020-2021 page for now, and a 2022-2023 page after 2024 ends. Ergzay (talk) 18:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

How about just moving all launches until the end of 2022 to the already existing article with early F9 launches? That article doesnt contain all that many and it would minimize the number of articles in which all F9 launches would be split. Rebell44 (talk) 14:43, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Cite needed for flight leader Merlin engine on flight 302

Flight 302 Entry adds (with no ref) "... One of the nine Merlin engines powering this first stage is flight leader, powering its 22nd mission to Earth orbit. ..." - This needs a source - It's not in the ref in column 1 for the flight itself. - Rod57 (talk) 03:55, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

• Found it : SpaceX says "Main engine cutoff and stage separation. One of the nine Merlin engines powering tonight's first stage is our flight leader, powering its 22nd mission to Earth orbit". Will try to add to main page. - Rod57 (talk) 21:19, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  My mistake @Rod57 will add now —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 09:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Shortest Gap between 3 launches?

Comment on launch 307:" SpaceX set a new record for the shortest time between two Falcon launches at 1 hour and 51 minutes."

What about "SpaceX set a new record for the shortest time between THREE Falcon launches at 20 hours and 3 minutes."? MikesPlant (talk) 01:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Bad source for Starlink 6-43 launch - SFN gives wrong booster - now fixed

Article says "308 10 March 2024 23:05 23:56 F9 B5 ♺ B1063.17 CCSFS, SLC-40, Starlink Group 6-43 (23 satellites)" but it gives the wrong booster (the same as the next flight) because the spaceflightnow source is wrong and tries to talk about both of the launches. The live streams say it was the 11th launch of a different booster B1077. Everyday astronaunt [1] says "B1077-11" - Rod57 (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Erledigt Someone Quickly fixed with space.com source. - Rod57 (talk) 01:06, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Second stage configurations

I just added back the graph of Second stage configurations. The information can be clearly sourced from both the primary sources (SpaceX streams show the nozzles and the stages and they also usually mention the nozzles and grey stripes on the second stage if present) and secondary sources (NASASpaceflight and other specialised media always mention shorter nozzle on the second stage and grey stripe in the video). So all of it can be sourced from the videos. Some of the related Wikipedia rules and guidelines:

1) WP:OR: "Faithfully translating sourced material into English, or transcribing spoken words from audio or video sources, is not considered original research."

2) WP:ORMEDIA: "Source information does not need to be in prose..." 88.102.32.33 (talk) 13:47, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

You still need to provide citations of that information though. Ergzay (talk) 03:30, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Booster landing

Can we also start adding to the information about the landing of the booster the exact location of the landing, e.g. "Success (drone ship - OCISLY)" or "Success (ground pad - LZ-1)"? It is very tedious to check this in a completely different place on Wikipedia ~ Agnaton (talk) 08:14, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

We have LZ, ASDS, boosters page for that. —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 11:55, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Why does it matter for the mission where it landed at? The landing location can be inferred from the launch location and the specific boat it lands on is only relevant to pages related to specific vehicles. Put another way, this page is focused on the launch and mission itself. Ergzay (talk) 13:19, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Splitting proposal

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 to split the article. Ergzay (talk) 13:55, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

---

The article has gotten so long that even with my very fast connection and very fast computer, the delay after hitting submit is approaching 5 seconds. The page needs to be split. As I discussed previously, I think that with the Falcon 9 flight rate increasing, we should start splitting by 2 year lumps starting with splitting off 2020 and 2021 into a new article, and then later splitting off 2022 and 2023. I chose 2 year gaps instead of 3 years because with over 100 launches per year the pages will end up having over 300 launches in a single page, and it additionally splits evenly into a decade (the conventional way rocket launch pages are split). Pinging people who've mentioned this previously. @Bubba73 @Rebell44 @Ajthom90 @Rod57 @Dwalin @Mfb @AmigaClone

I plan to make this split as proposed after a couple days, assuming there's no debate in the manner/size of the split. Please don't rush ahead and do the split unless I forget for some reason. I want to make sure that we follow WP:PROPERSPLIT as the last split was a bit of a mess. Ergzay (talk) 07:19, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I have a work in progress draft over in my userspace. Do note that no history from this page will be preserved as there's a bunch of junk changes as I fix mistakes and errors. So if you do submit changes to it the log won't be preserved. I plan to copy the page wholesale into the actual page once a few days have passed and I clean it up some more/fix issues. Ergzay (talk) 09:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, please do this. Thanks! Adam B Davis (talk) 19:47, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Probably a good idea to break out a few years worth 200 launches into a separate article, maybe List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches (2020-2022) or similar. A regrettable change (for us at least, SpaceX seems to be making bank) but probably necessary to cope with the extremely large page size. [osunpokeh/talk/contributions] 19:16, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I also intend to create a List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches (2020-2029) page that will store the graphs and other generic information. It will have links to the 2-year sub pages. I'll transclude those statistics into the 2-year sub pages. Otherwise the graphs will only have two bars for each page which doesn't look very clean. Ergzay (talk) 08:22, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I certainly agree with the split - it is way too long. Back in the early days, it was suggested that Wikipedia articles be under 64KB so everyone could read them. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:35, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

On second thought, it may be too soon to create this other page as it might cause confusion. Anyone have additional thoughts? Ergzay (talk) 08:26, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we need a 2020-2029 page. A general one (here) and then subpages for past year ranges should be enough. If we split out 2020 and 2021 (57 launches) then the list will get even larger by late 2024, unless you plan to split out 2022-2023 in this year already. Splitting 2020-2022 (117 launches) would be safer. I don't think we need a fixed pattern. The Falcon 9 launch rate is still increasing rapidly, and it's expected to fall quickly once Starship takes over most launches. A 2028-2029 list might be just a few Dragon launches. --mfb (talk) 08:39, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't really considered the Starship situation, that's true, however trying to predict the future seems difficult and ending up with a bunch of random year groupings spread around isn't ideal I feel like. Also having only a couple launches isn't the end of the world. Look what List of Thor and Delta launches (2020–2029) consists of. Ergzay (talk) 08:58, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Also I think quite a decent number of missions will stay on Falcon 9 for contractural reasons or government reasons besides just Dragon. Ergzay (talk) 09:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

As to splitting out 2022-2023 in this year already, we can cross that bridge when we get to it if 2024 goes absolutely nuts. The page will shrink substantially even just removing 2021 and 2022 because of the around 250 references it'll also remove. Ergzay (talk) 09:18, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

My proposal is to handle the ranges flexibly exactly because we cannot predict the future. If we go by fixed 2 year intervals (which we don't even do consistently, given the 2010-2019 list) then 2020-2021 will have 57 launches while 2022-2023 will have 160 and the next one is likely to have over 200. Thor and Delta had a manageable list of launches in every decade so a list for the last one is following an established pattern, there is no such pattern for Falcon 9. 2024 is unlikely to be slower than 2023. At the moment we have 213 launches, if 2024 is matching the speed of 2023 then by the end of the year we'll have 252 launches (2022-2024). If SpaceX reaches their goal we'll have close to 300. --mfb (talk) 13:14, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

The standard way of splitting rocket launch pages is by 10 year intervals, however that's completely impossible for Falcon 9. That's why the first Falcon 9 page is 2010-2019, but that's not possible again. There aren't any other rocket pages as far as I'm aware of that split by trying to even out the number of rocket launches per page. We should look at this from the perspective of people using the page. They wouldn't care that there's a roughly equal number of launches per page. They'd just look at the odd year grouping and wonder "why?" For the record, the 2010-2019 page has 81 entries on it. The current page has 241 launches and a whole bunch more in the Future Launches section. I can see the issue with waiting until the end of 2024 to break off 2022-2023, however I don't really see the problem with doing it before 2024 is up unless you think it's wrong to not have 2023 on the page. Ergzay (talk) 13:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Also Thor had 314 launches in the 1960-1969 range. You yourself called that "manageable" so there's no reason it shouldn't be for SpaceX as well. Ergzay (talk) 13:57, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Do we have to stick to splits we have done? E.g. Split out 2020-2021 from current (2022+ with just general title) now but later this year or at start of 2025 change name and split it to 2020-2022 with current becoming 2023+ ? Probably want the current to always have current year and previous year but for the moment can manage 2 past years and current year. C-randles (talk) 15:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@C-randles I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. Are you suggesting to split 2 years now and then later split out an additional year, merge it with the existing page and move the existing page to a new title? That seems very busy and annoying to deal with. Ergzay (talk) 11:31, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ergzay Yes that is basically it and I don't see this as particularly confusing, annoying or excessive work. A redirect of the 2020-2021 page to the new 2020-2022 page deals with people looking for the old wrong page. I am trying to say: keep the focus on the current list and include as many years as we can, while we can, on the current list. I would suggest not doing anything for a month or two while we can. Then split off 2020-2021 while the current page can manage 2022-2024/5 then move 2022 to 2020-2021 page, rename it and do a redirect from 2020-2021 to the 2020-2022 page. Might even move 2023 to a 2020-2023 page if there is enough room for it. C-randles (talk) 14:41, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Ok, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. I'm personally opposed but perhaps my opinion may change in the future. So for now I think we're all in agreement here to at least move two years out, with the option of maybe doing more later. Ergzay (talk) 09:48, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

I think we should continue to do 1 article per decade for Falcon, in order to remain consistent with other lists.

I also think there should be a cutoff: after we get to 500 (just a placeholder number) launches in an article, a new article is started for the next year. Redacted II (talk) 17:19, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Redacted II I suggest looking at Help:Template#Template_limits. Here's the current page stats:

Preprocessor visited node count: 55034/1000000
Post‐expand include size: 1955028/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 17338/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 18/100
Expensive parser function count: 25/500
Unstrip recursion depth: 1/20
Unstrip post‐expand size: 3518157/5000000 bytes
Lua time usage: 4.916/10.000 seconds
Lua memory usage: 10807927/52428800 bytes

We're at 1.955MB of the 2.097 MB limit of the post-expand include size. There's only 142KB of space left before the page starts generating errors and not rendering properly. The page NEEDS to be split soon. Waiting for an entire decade of launches is just impossible. The only question is _how_ to split it. Ergzay (talk) 11:43, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

The article has 2,868 words at the time of this reply. According to WP:SIZESPLIT, "at 6,000 words and below a split would generally only be justified based on content issues."

The delay after submitting is a result of the parser generating the HTML code for the article. Wikipedia serves a cached version of the article, so readers don't experience this same delay.

A split is unnecessary and doesn't actually solve anything as pointed out by mfb. Also, it may cause additional confusion if splitting requires creating a new list every year, such as the example provided by C-randles. Selection criteria for the "Future launches" section might be a good place to start reducing the size. Instead of indiscriminately listing every possible future launch, there could be a notability criteria.

If there is a split, it should be consistent with the decade pattern (2020–2029). Redraiderengineer (talk) 17:26, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Listing every launch is the entire point of the article. Redacted II (talk) 17:28, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Redraiderengineer Listing every launch is the entire point of the page. I strongly disagree with a "notability criteria". I struggle to think why you'd even suggest that unless you hadn't looked at the page. Ergzay (talk) 11:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

We don't list individual flights of aircraft, because there are too many and they're not notable. I don't think we're there yet, but Falcon 9 is starting to move in this direction, and we'll need to crack this nut if Elon's predictions of 3+ Starship launches every day ever become reality. Jpatokal (talk) 21:58, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm not opposed to a split if it's consistent with the decade pattern. The concern is creating multiple lists for only a couple of years [(2020–2021), (2022–2023),...] or a dynamic list where the name changes every year [(2020–2023), (2020–2024),...]. This will be a mess of redirects and may add confusion, especially for links to the article on the internet.

The notability criteria was a suggestion for the future launch section. I'm aware of the point of the article, but as Jpatokal mentioned, one day in the future it may be needed. I'm not saying that day is today. Redraiderengineer (talk) 23:05, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Also as I pointed out to Redacted II above, the page is hitting the post-expand template limits where errors will start occurring. See: Help:Template#Template_limits. Ergzay (talk) 11:48, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ergzay you mean a page like List of R-7 launches —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 12:00, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes that was what I was thinking, but it'd be two levels deep, this page would link to the (2020-2029) page, and the (2020-2029) page would link to five pages, (2020-2021) (2022-2023) (2024-2025) (2026-2028) (2028-2029) (of course appended to the current page title). However I think this would end up being confusing. Also it's not something we need to decide right now and can be done later. So that's why I crossed it out. So that's no longer part of my suggestion. I want to keep that option open though so that's why I'm suggesting creating a (2020-2021) page for now. Ergzay (talk) 12:07, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

We have another option of 2020s in spaceflight keeping future launches from 2025 here and creating offsets lesser than what you said that is 2 offsets (2020-21) and (2023-24), rest stays on this page until 2025 arrives. —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 12:15, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

If splitting is need of hour —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 12:15, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Alternatively if spitting concensus redults in splitting failure we can risk and reduce or totally remove launch summary, especially in starlink flights.@Ergzay (sorry for tagging but reply falls in middle and hard to track) —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 12:22, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

@RIP B1058 No we should definitely not remove the current year's launches from this page. Ergzay (talk) 13:16, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

This page is getting very large and is going to get larger at an accelerating rate for at least the next few years. I think it makes sense to split into three pages (for now) "List Of Falcon 9 And Falcon Heavy Launches", "...2010~2019" and "...2020~2024" The main page can have the "Notable Launches", full statistics charts and some new summary statistics like tables of data, more like the "2024 In Spaceflight" page. The main page can also have ALL the "Notable launches" information instead of splitting it per time period. The sub-pages can have the launches for those time periods. The only contentious part is how many sub-pages / what time period. It seems logical to start with "...2020~2024" for now and split it later if it becomes too large.82.5.219.151 (talk) 19:28, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Strong oppose: have tools for user viewership like sticky tools, falcon lauch id tools like "#F9-300" in links. Its spacex fault to increase launches not us so stick to what is happening. But i have an idea —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 03:02, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I give you a best help add Template:TLS-M or makea falcon version of Template:TLS-L and list all launches by [[F9-300|300]] on it —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 03:08, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

So Strong oppose as per above help —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 03:09, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Join the talk on Wikipedia:Requested_templates#A_Falcon_launches_clone_of_Template%3ATLS-L_and_Template%3ATLS-M in hope of a clone for TLS:M and TLS:L —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 03:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

You oppose splitting the article because SpaceX should launch slower? What? 82.5.219.151 (talk) 01:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Most of the launches are notable as you see the summary of each launch —🪦VSVNB1058 (2020-2023) (TALK) 11:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

agree with slitting--Dwalin (talk) 13:34, 24 March 2024 (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.

Article split - more work needed

I've split the article, though there's still more cleanup to do in terms of inter-wiki links. Also please join the conversation over at Talk:List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches (2020–2021)#Launch statistics graphs. We need to figure out what to do with the concept of 2 years of launch graphs. Ergzay (talk) 15:13, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

IMO, splitting off less than 60 launches that hapenned in 2020-2021 is a bit ridiculous - it would make a lot more sense to include 2023 launches there, and/or split of future/planned F9 launches (which take a decent part of this page).

As it is currently, this page will be back in the same situation in a matter of months. Rebell44 (talk) 12:19, 30 March 2024 (UTC)