Talk:List of Launch Systems and Vendors

ok, thanks for setting this up J. Charles F. Radley 15:42, 11 January 2007 (PST)

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Any time :D -- Jarogers2001 15:44, 11 January 2007 (PST)

Real and paper

Cool. This might be a bit more useful if it were separated into historical, existing, and proposed-- it's not really fair to compare something that is launching today with something existing only on paper. Geoffrey.landis 13:32, 12 January 2007 (PST)

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The "status" field is meant to denote that difference. The way I have the table set up, it is possible to color code the first cell in each row if necessary. However, there is a whole plethora of things that can go into that field. cancelled, discontinued, in use, suspended, proposed, under development, etc etc. Should we make a standard key to avoid confusion about status? My only concern with coloring is that it is buggy and tends to look bad. Jarogers2001 14:15, 12 January 2007 (PST)

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I just don't think proposed vehicles shouldn't be in the same category as existing ones. I just put in a draft version where the boosters are separated; take a look. Yep, separating cancelled,discontinued, etc, also should be done. Another categorization might be suborbital vehicles. Geoffrey.landis 14:21, 12 January 2007 (PST)

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your many contributions (both here and elsewhere!). Yes, I would like us to agree on some key-phrase statuses (stati?), rather than give a complete history of each vehicle. The key-phrases I suggest to standardize on are:

- Currently in service
- Future Development
- Orbital Launch attempted
- Suborbital Launch Attempted
- Retired

So by those criteria, Energia would be Retired

What do y'all think?

Charles F. Radley 14:22, 12 January 2007 (PST)

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Hi, Charles,

Yes, those are good distinctions. I do think, though, that the distinction between "doesn't exist yet" and "has been launched" is a very fundamental one. I agree, Energia is retired (although only recently Energia was still trying to sell it!) I did want to list it because several Lunar and future space mission proposals have suggested using it as a low-cost HLV. Ultimately, I think suborbital vehicles should be a separate entry in the Lunapedia; they are different in basic nature from orbital launchers (just as orbital boosters are different from in-space vehicles) Geoffrey.landis 14:34, 12 January 2007 (PST)

Formatting

I took the liberty of changing the headers and commenting out a few things (and changed insert language in used rows to say 'vendor needed.'

Technically, the =level one= header is supposed to be used only for article titles, but I went ahead and left the level two headers as level two, requiring manual use of level one.

Also: how do we want the tables to be structured? As the presently are the centered topics don't look very good to me. We could however format them in a way where it might be appropriate (although uncentered may still look better).

Booster	Operational Status	Vendor
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)	Currently in service	Indian Space Research Organization http://www.isro.gov.in
Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) GSLV III	Currently in service	Indian Space Research Organization http://www.isro.gov.in

Booster	Operational Status	Vendor
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)	Currently in service	Indian Space Research Organization http://www.isro.gov.in
Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) GSLV III	Currently in service	Indian Space Research Organization http://www.isro.gov.in

Please feel free to spend more tinkering than I have to spare today (the sandbox is a good place for this). An incomplete guide can be found here. More useful information may be buried here somewhere. A good CSS cheatsheet could also come in handy. I'd spend more time here, but I'm kind of indisposed for the time being. -- Strangelv 15:58, 12 January 2007 (PST)

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Aha! Thanks! Sadly, I know nothing of CSS. Only HTML. On color: I kind of like the black background. On seperating suborbital, orbital, and vehicles: Should we create new lists? It would be easier for me to add a fourth column to designate the category.. Here are some ideas

• Suborbital launcher
• Orbital Launcher
• Suborbital Spacecraft
• Orbital Spacecraft

On Proposed/Existing: I think we should leave proposals in as Future Development until the proposals are cancelled or no longer feasable. I think we should condense as many lists as possible while creating additional Categories the articles can be tagged with. Sort of a master index with links to the seperate categorical indexes which would narrow a reader's search. -- Jarogers2001 18:16, 12 January 2007 (PST)

I would like to rename the category "Existing and Historical Launchers" to simply "Existing Launchers". We already have a page for Historical launchers at this page, which already represents quite a lot of work:

List of Discontinued and Cancelled Boosters

Charles F. Radley 20:53, 12 January 2007 (PST)

Looks much better!

Looks much better- the page is really beginning to shape up. 08:17, 16 January 2007 (PST)