Talk:SpaceX rocket engines

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It has become difficult in recent weeks to cover all of the new rocket engine work going on at SpaceX in existing SpaceX articles. These engines include the recently announced MCT, the (now, methane-based) Raptor, etc.

Since these engines are not demonstrably (and verifiably) a part of the existing Merlin family, nor necessarily even a part of the Falcon family of launch vehicles, they don't really fit in those articles, and have been being removed by other editors, appropriately in my view; and this editor has also done some of that as well, once it was pointed out to not be within scope by other editors.

Furthermore, it has not been appropriate to have a lot of detail of new engine development programs and concepts in the main SpaceX article either. Moreover, for some engines (MCT, for example), we simply do not have sufficient public information released to warrant a separate article.

It thus seems appropriate to create an article for SpaceX rocket engines where all engines, however related to SpaceX's existing engine families, are "in scope." N2e (talk) 19:22, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rationale (above) is unchanged. However, Robert Horning is correct (section below) where he indicates that while early news sources claimed the new large rocket engine from SpaceX would be designatied "MCT", later sources have confirmed there is no engine named MCT. The article has been fixed, and now makes no mention of an MCT engine. N2e (talk) 13:28, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of new info at a Sept 2016 announcement: page 31 of http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhesus-factor (talk • contribs) 02:30, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While it has been reported in some major aerospace news sources, Elon Musk has unequivocally stated that the MCT engine simply doesn't exist and is being misrepresented in those accounts. I don't know what the MCT actually stands for (the announcement is forthcoming though) but the engines that will be called the Raptor that is being developed for future vehicles being developed by SpaceX.

See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB3R5Xk2gTY

Jump to about 49:57 in the video stream to see where Elon Musk corrected somebody speaking at the Royal Aeronautical Society at a speech he gave about the development of the Falcon rocket family.

More important, this MCT section needs to be reworked to get this detail put in. I don't want to stomp down too hard because this is the work of others, but I consider this to be a pretty reliable source and worth correcting details published earlier or in other accounts unless it can be proven that Elon had a brain fart at this lecture. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:12, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The early sources indicated there was to be an "MCT" engine. Recent sources, and now multiple Musk interviews, indicate that the engine is Raptor and that there is not an engine named MCT. I removed the MCT claim from this article a few days ago, so I think it is clear of the problem now. Do you agree? Cheers. N2e (talk) 13:19, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the work in maintaining these articles. This is a mostly thankless task which really does make Wikipedia better, and you deserve a barnstar for your effort in this regard. There are multiple articles that include this information, so it is important to keep it accurate and up to date... particularly since (unfortunately) many news organizations use Wikipedia as their first source of information about this kind of thing. Elon Musk did say that the names of the engines that SpaceX will be using into the future will carry either the Merlin or Raptor name. When pressed about what MCT stood for, he simply refused to comment.... something I've noticed in several interviews. I am presuming that MCT is in reference to a future spacecraft, but it could be something else.

I heard a rumor (completely without reliable sources and with very little additional information) that SpaceX is going to be making a major press release/press conference on or about December 15th that will involve a few other additional companies involving a new major project happening in space. Yes, I'm being vague here as well because I don't want to compromise the sources I have either, but supposedly it involves whatever MCT actually represents. This will be an announcement similar to the Planetary Resources announcement and will involve a similar amount of investors and some big names in the space industry. We'll see how that goes, if it happens. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:59, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your kind comments, Robert. I have been working to get the context specified correctly as well as the details on each engine or each rocket.

As to the coming announcements, of which I'm picking up some scuttlebutt too, I'll just say this: there does seem to be some intial movement of the tectonic plates in space technology and space enterprises that we could see some real competition enter the space industry for the first time, with all of the attendant rapid development that true market competition brings along with it. N2e (talk) 00:18, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have now proposed that the REDIRECT at MCT (rocket engine) be deleted. Other editors are invited to weigh in on that discussion. (the link to the discussion is at the top of the redir page). N2e (talk) 16:18, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just reverted two good faith edits so they might be discussed here on the Talk page. Looked like several helpful improvements in there, but also quite a lot of article text deleted (over 1700 characters net deletion from the article size in the two edits), for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

I was particularly concerned by the deletion of certain historical information about the development of these engines, and the fairly significant direction change of the company into methane rocket engines as announced in 2012. Perhaps some of the historical or big-picture context material could be consolidated into a History section? Or something else?

Let's discuss further, and then see if we might not be able to gain a consensus. Cheers. N2e (talk) 04:14, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See my revised edit, it maintains the 2012 change of direction, unless I made an error in formatting a citation that blanked everything after a broken <ref> link.--Abebenjoe (talk) 04:29, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I like the revised edit much better. I'll say a bit more below, following your Hobbyspace source comment. N2e (talk) 03:30, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that Hobbyspace.com, a blog, is being used quite a bit as a reference. I don't believe it meets the reliable source criteria? That's one of the reasons I removed the 2011 conference, which was one sentence, and wasn't an official statement. The 2012 Royal Aeronautical Society announcement was official, and has reliable sources that aren't blogs.--Abebenjoe (talk) 04:50, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I see that. Still, I think it best not to lose the historical statement, which is verifiable, that was made at that AIAA conference:

At the AIAA 2011 propulsion conference, Elon Musk publicly mentioned a potential staged cycle engine.

... although I would think it perfectly okay to tag the <ref name="Musk & Shotwell"> source that was used to support that claim with a {{better source}} tag. Then, we would be explicit that the claim is challenged and provide the reason for the challenge, while allowing a bit of time for an interested editor to come along and help provide a better source from the AIAA conference where the comments were made. N2e (talk) 03:30, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Given recent SpaceX announcements and discussion—including clarifying that all future engine development work is methane (not LOX/RP-1) and that they are working on only the one 1M lbf thrust Raptor engine and that the entire focus of the company will be the Mars objective once they get Falcon Heavy and Dragon v2 flying regularly—it seems to me that this article is unbalanced. We have way too much detail on the Merlin 2 concept rocket, a LOX/RP-1 large rocket concept that was floated at one conference in 2010, and then quickly walked back by the company a couple of weeks later, and we've heard nothing on it since that episode.

In my view, three paragraphs on this flash-in-the-pan concept is too much for this article. If no one has an objection, I will reduce it to a single paragraph high-level summary in the coming weeks. N2e (talk) 12:58, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely. I've been for removing the Merlin 2 section from all of these articles for more than a year now. It was an old *possible* development path that was dropped shortly after it was thought up. It doesn't appear (from the outside, at least) that any significant development took place on it. It was just a "back of the napkin" idea that was blown out of proportion. That happened primarily because it was given undue attention on Wikipedia for years, and the media is too lazy to due their own research, so they steal ours:P. — Gopher65_talk 14:30, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let me start by saying how much I like this article's content! However, I propose renaming this article to, SpaceX rocket engines or something similar. As the article states, "The company has developed three families of rocket engines." To lump these (and future) families into a single super-family doesn't make sense (to me). Is there any evidence supporting the notion that engines are grouped into families based solely on their being manufactured and used by the same company? (sdsds - talk) 23:04, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Family isn't the best title for this article to have. I don't mind your proposed title. Does anyone have any other suggestions or preferences? — Gopher65_talk 23:49, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if people decide they *really* want us to keep using the word "family", there is nothing to stop us from pluralizing it. "SpaceX Rocket Engine Families". — Gopher65_talk 23:51, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Considering that all of the various engines here have their own pages, either for the families or the engines themselves, what might be best here would be to prune back the article some and rename/rescope it as a list, i.e. List of SpaceX rocket engines. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:53, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this proposal. The Rocketdyne page has a Category page for all engines produced including a short summary of Rocketdyne followed by a category page. In this case, a list would make more sense due to the ease of list maintenance compared to category and the small number of SpaceX engines. Appable (talk) 06:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Taking a slightly different angle, might a merger be the best option. I don't think there are enough engines here for a list in its own right, nor a sufficiently defined topic for an article, so how about merging the overview and list into the main SpaceX article, with details on each particular engine/family going into the article on those engines. --W. D. Graham 21:13, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I like the original proposal, which seems to have gone quiet from April 2014 until recently. Unfortunately, reading the above comments, it appears there may have been several different ideas, with no firm consensus having fully emerged.

With my support of the OP proposal, I think that is three editors who, at minimum, support eliminating the term "family" in the existing title of this article. For those of you who made other proposals, do you have any objection to just doing what we have clear consensus on, and leaving the rest for later discussion? If not, I'll try to get back here in a week or two and WP:MOVE the article if there are no objections. N2e (talk) 19:22, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@N2e, Sdsds, Gopher65, The Bushranger, and WDGraham: Since nobody seemed to state any major objection yet nothing happened with this proposal, I just moved the article (over two years after it was proposed). I still think it would be worth looking into long-term solutions like rescoping this article as a list article only, but for now this represents the content better. Appable (talk) 15:08, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Noted and concur enough time has passed to take action. Thanks! (sdsds - talk) 23:48, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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