Talk:Commercial Crew Program

Merger proposal

The following discussion 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.

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I propose to merge Commercial Crew Development into this article. I am confused as to why the articles were separated in the first place, as they both concern the same overall program, namingly developing and launching crewed commercial vehicles to the ISS. Neither of the articles will likely be expanded significantly in the future, and the merged article (a proposal for which can be found at User:Rainclaw7/sandbox) would not be overly long or hard to read. @PhilipTerryGraham: Rainclaw7 (talk) 17:05, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose – They're separate mostly because CCDev itself is a program extensively covered in-depth in this article, the summary of which is presented in the Commercial Crew Program article under "Development program". On the CCP article, we attempt to cover the program as a whole, while on the CCDev article, we cover the program that helped develop it; it predates the Commercial Crew Program itself, after all. In the CCDev article, we already have more nuanced details of the award competition and some details on the proposals submitted to the competitions; a chunk of which was notably omitted in your proposed merged article. In further developing this article, we could potentially expand upon Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada's entries into the competition, note other entries through reliable sources that failed to get selected – and potentially build a path to have smaller articles such as Liberty (rocket) merged into Commercial Crew Development – and cover all seven flights made under CCDev and funded by it – including coverage of the cost of CCDev – without having to make the CCP article essentially 80% about CCDev and conflating the two to a confusing degree. Ultimately, this merge proposal is a bit premature and we should allow ourselves to be able to develop the articles further before shutting out the potential completely. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 00:29, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

  PhilipTerryGraham, one note I would make is that NASA appears to be referring to DM-2 as part of CCP, not CCD (https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2020/05/31/commercial-crew-astronauts-join-expedition-63/). I understand if you want to keep the early contracts and development in the CCD article, but based on this the test flights should be moved to CCP. Rainclaw7 (talk) 20:51, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Rainclaw7: I'm actually unsure about this. I originally placed the test missions under the CCDev program because I had sworn I read in earlier sources while writing the CCP article that the test missions were funded as part of CCtCap, and the operational missions were purchased afterwards. This is supported by the seeming absence of operational missions from the CCtCap contracts themselves; Boring, SpaceX. But looking back, I've managed to find at least one conflicting source that states the CCtCap contract also included the purchase of at least two operational missions; "The awards also fund between two and six operational flights to the ISS, each carrying four astronauts, once NASA certifies each company's vehicle." However, this article is from 2014, and the same source would go later call the operational CCP missions as "post-certification" missions beyond CCtCap, which is how most other sources have gone about describing the operational missions; Space.com, NBC News, ect. NASA themselves use this term to describe post-CCtCap missions; "CCtCap culminates in NASA's certification of the CTS and the execution of post-certification missions (PCMs) transporting NASA crew to the ISS." So it could be entirely possible that 2014 SpaceNews article might have simply had an inaccurate statement. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 10:57, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

PhilipTerryGraham could this be the result of NASA simply changing the public-facing language so it refers to everything as part of the "Commercial Crew Program" regardless of contract wording? For example this page (https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-crew-program-the-essentials) makes it sound like all the development contracts were packaged together into CCP at some point, at least from a public relations standpoint Rainclaw7 (talk) 12:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Rainclaw7: To make it clear, I'm not arguing CCDev isn't practically part of the Commercial Crew Program; it is summarised as the "Development" section on the Commercial Crew Program article, after all. I'm simply trying to argue that because CCtCap missions funded test flights and not operational missions, the test flights are more appropriately covered under CCtCap on the Commercial Crew Development article, since CCtCap is a CCDev program contract. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 12:49, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

PhilipTerryGraham OK Rainclaw7 (talk) 12:55, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• Mild support - to be honest it's a bit confusing that they're separate. One has to read much of the articles to really figure out where the lines of difference lie. --Jtle515 (talk) 07:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support - Commercial Crew Program is in effect a retronym that has superseded and umbrellaed everything that was referred to CCDev in the initial 2010-2015 phase. The boundaries of where CCDev proper ends and "non-CCDev" CCP begins are murky and NASA doesn't draw a significant distinction between the two in any primary sources. I also worry that a distinct CCDev article perpetuates Wikipedia's unfortunate systemic bias towards intense blow-by-blow coverage of the 2005-2015 period and poorer coverage of more contemporary events, which reflects some of the dynamics of the editing community. Thanks to the hard work of User talk:PhilipTerryGraham and others, there's definitely one good article's worth of content here, but I struggle to see how we'll get to two good articles or whether it will be an improvement to have the content split. The Tom (talk) 04:10, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Counter-proposal – @Jtle515, Rainclaw7, and The Tom: Seems to me the main concern is confusion about the relationship between Commercial Crew Development and the Commercial Crew Program. I'd like to work a compromise that ensures future development on this article is secure; rescoping it to "Development of the Commercial Crew Program", making the article a proper child of the general overview Commercial Crew Program article, and putting a focus on the Commercial Crew Program's development as a whole and not just on CCDev. This would remove any confusion regarding the topic of this article per Jtle and Tom's concerns, and also potentially pave the way for CCtCap test missions to be included in the Commercial Crew Program article as well, per Rainclaw's requests. Whaddya guys think? – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 02:36, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Seems to me that might work. --Jtle515 (talk) 02:38, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

PhilipTerryGraham, my primary point is that a separation between CCDev and CCP appears unwarranted, and attempts to bulk out the CCDev/program development article to avoid a merge would continue the 2005-2015 bias mentioned by The Tom. We could revisit this later, but my overall intention is to make this one article with a possibility for expansion or a development see also down the line if enough content materializes naturally to warrant a second article. In my opinion, a "program development" article would focus relatively heavily on CCDev due to CCDev being conceived as developing tech and systems for CCP. Rainclaw7 (talk) 02:58, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

@Rainclaw7: I'm no longer advocating for "a separation between CCDev and CCP", nor do I want to "bulk out" an article on the CCDev program. I'm advocating a compromise in which the existing Commercial Crew Development article is rescoped to be about the development of the Commercial Crew Program as a whole instead, meaning it'll no longer be an article on just the CCDev program itself. These will very much be both CCP articles; Commercial Crew Program being the general overview and Development of the Commercial Crew Program being a child article expanding upon the "Development" section, which is already too big to be expanded upon within the general overview article which has already been written as a summary-style section. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 03:22, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

PhilipTerryGraham apologies for misunderstanding some elements of your position. I agree with your proposal, although we should likely wait for The Tom before closing. Have you looked at my proposal for a CCP parent article at the top of this section? Would you want to implement that or a similar new article as the merged article, or do you want to revert to before the split and edit from there? Rainclaw7 (talk) 03:30, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

@Rainclaw7: In re-evaluating your sandbox article, yeah, with a few consolidations – e.g. most of "Requirements" is already covered in "Spacecraft", and "Timeline" is both already covered in "Development" and would be better detailed in the future Development of the Commercial Crew Program article – this general outline for an expanded CCP article would work; especially the sub-section split of "Missions" into CCtCap missions and post-certification operational missions. We can further discuss this after this merge discussion. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 03:48, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good. Rainclaw7 (talk) 03:50, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

• Comment – There hasn't been movement on this for a while, I propose to close and implement the above solution. Rainclaw7 (talk) 13:37, 26 June 2020 (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.

Adding Certification Flights to Mission Table

Quoting from the above closed issue, "... CCtCap missions and post-certification operational missions. We can further discuss this after this merge discussion." I would like to propose that the current mission table include the crewed certification flights for the commecial crew program. Specifically SpaceX demo 2 from May 2020 and the future Starliner CFT flight.

Mission	Patch	Launch date	Launch vehicle	Spacecraft	Duration
		Crew
SpaceX Demo-2 Expedition 63		30 May 2020	Falcon 9 Block 5 (B1058.1)	Crew Dragon Endeavour	63 days, 23 hours
		Doug Hurley Bob Behnken

This is a major milestone for the commercial crew program and readers will have a more complete picture of the program by this minor inclusion.Scottd521 (talk) 17:51, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

@Scottd521: I mostly disagree with its inclusion. It seems to me that the "Missions" section of this article is meant to document the post-certification, operational missions of the Commercial Crew Program. Therefore, Demo-2, and the rest of the development of the program, belong in the Development of the Commercial Crew Program article in my opinion. More specifically in its own "Missions" section that it has as well. — Molly Brown (talk) 13:24, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell no page on Wikipedia exist that list all flights under a commercial crew contract. This push toward making articles into small "sound bites" comes at the cost of eliminating the breadth of a topic, it really damages the ability of Wikipedia to address nuance by simple omission. The table is the perfect example, it's about the human launches under commercial crew, but the most important launch of that contract, the first human launch from the US in nearly a decade is simply not listed. Scottd521 (talk) 14:06, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Move more development details to the development article?

We have moved on from the time of the earlier merger proposal and the CCP is now in the operational phase. I feel that the development portion of this article should be condensed even further and any relevant stuff should be moved into Development of the Commercial Crew Program. I feel that this would make the articles more accessible to the general readership of the encyclopedia. -Arch dude (talk) 18:05, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

OK, I am beginning to condense this content. I intend for the result to be enough for a general reader to get an overview that suffices but does not interfere with the flow of this article, while not removing anything that is not explained in the main dev article. I will work incrementally. -Arch dude (talk) 04:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

No Russian crew on Starliner-1

I removed the tentative Russian crewmember assignment from Starliner-1 based on recent statements from Roscosmos. This is a bit odd: I have a source [1] but no reasonable place in the table to put it, so I simply removed the old Russian source that was speculation anyway. Roscosmos and NASA have agreed to a yearly crew member swap (2022, 2023, 2024), but it will be on Crew Dragon, with NASA stating that Starliner might be added later. -Arch dude (talk) 15:23, 5 August 2022 (UTC)