Talk:Atlas (rocket family)

message: This article needs more work. But having Atlas rocket redirect to Atlas (missile) didn't convey to readers the full sense of what "Atlas" refers to! Sdsds 11:43, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Started 

message: Back in the days of the Atlas I, I was really "into" rockets and spacecraft.  I'm now officially out of it, so this may be a naive question.  But what is the same about the Atlas I and the Atlas V?  The 1 1/2 staging is gone and replaced by a very different two stage design, it uses a different booster engine, the tanks are different, the manufacturer is new, and surely the guidance system bears no resemblance.  I guess the first stage fuel and oxidizer are the same, but besides that?  (Oh, and the name.)  Heck, it looks more like a Titan III...  (This is not a criticism of the article, just maybe a question the article could address.) Mcswell (talk) 04:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Right! Not even the name of the manufacturer is the same. We can speculate that some of the engineering and manufacturing culture remained through the evolution, But Atlas V essentially looks like a new vehicle. The question is, does the "Atlas Evolution" chart show this properly? It starts with Atlas II, which used the stage-and-a-half design, and shows the changes. Is there some reliable source we could cite that underscores how much changed during this evolution? (sdsds - talk) 06:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's the same? 

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thread_title: File:Convair General Dynamics Atlas Centaur launch, c. 1965.jpg Nominated for Deletion

message: Not even a mention of Karel Bossart?  Arguably the most brilliant rocket designer in the USA, and nobody has heard of him.  I recently got lectured on this by a Russian rocket engineer, which is ironic, that he is more famous there than here.  DonPMitchell (talk) 02:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Karel Bossart needs to be discussed, at least get a sentence! 

message: User:WDGraham said:  "reordering of article sections  ... in my opinion, put[s] too much emphasis on the rocket's current status as opposed to its history - placing the entire Atlas V section ahead of the historical section describing the vehicles which led up to it. I also felt that some of the changes to structuring further down the article marginalised the Atlas' role as a missile, focussing instead on its use to launch satellites." (this quotation copied by User:N2e from WDGraham's comment above)
:I believe that this article, "Atlas (rocket family)", ought to emphasize the entire family of rockets with the Atlas descriptor, mfgd over 50 years, by the company (and its successors) that made them.  Specifics on individual rockets, including the current Atlas V, ought to be left for individual military-rocket-specific or launch-vehicle-specific articles, with just a summary of the rockets here.  
:As a result, I do not believe the summary of the Atlas V, a summary that should naturally be a part of the Atlas (rocket family) article, should take extraordinary precedence in that article, and should not be placed in ordinal order prior to the History section.  Rather, I think that the chronological ordering would appear to be best.  After all, this is a "family" (or, at minimum, the manufacturer chose to keep the moniker consistent over 50 years, perhaps partly as a marketing benefit in marketing subsequent rocket designs to the U.S. Space-industrial complex) article that spans fifty years of rockets.  Cheers.  N2e (talk) 02:31, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Issue no. 1:  order of the Atlas V section

message: User:WDGraham said:  "splitting of the main table of variants into several subjective categorisations. Now granted, the current table needs to be thrown out and started again, but it should still show the whole family of Atlas rockets rather than dividing it into fairly subjective groups. These groups were also an issue in Ajh's proposed merger of four articles (of varying similarity, including the whole Atlas-Agena line into the article on the Atlas-D missile." (copied from earlier discussion by N2e to make for a more clear conversation on a point-by-point basis.)
:(Attempting to be a peacemaker here, by suggesting a possible consensus opinion) In the discussion below—entitled "Clear breaks in technological advance", and to date involving only the two editors Ajh1492 and WDGraham—where it appears that the two opinions are at loggerheads, I think I see a middle ground that might be acceptable to all.  WDG has said the entire table in this article should be thrown out, and start over, and also that the extant two table going to four tables is not a good idea, especially without clear criteria being developed in advance on the Talk page as to what ought to go in the tables.  Ajh has stated that it would probably be best if this particular Atlas family article—which is really just an Atlas family of lower stages-sort of article, given the 50-year history and quite clearly delineated and non-Atlas upper stages—to have no table in here at all, and just leave the detail in the separate articles that exist on each member of the Atlas family, each with often quite divergent designs, and therefore not-easy-to-compare features.
:So might we get a middle ground on that?  Either remove both of the tables from the current version of the article, and leave the design detail in the individual articles.  Or, alternatively, either Ajh or WDG suggest, here on this Talk page, a very high level single table that would compare the various Atlas family members, but only at a very high level, while leaving the 98% of the technical detail for the individual articles, or the prose summaries in this article, and only if they can be sourced by reliable sources (which, for the record, I note a good bit of the stuff in the current tables are not).  So, for example, we might see in a table things like years mfgd, or years in operational use; name of company who made the rocket for the US Government; basic high-level mission of the Atlas lower stage when it was called that (e.g., ICBM, or space probe launch vehicle, or early manned orbital launches (Gemini), or general purpose ELV for US DoD and NASA, etc.); an then maybe just a simple technical detail or two like height of the first stage, or booster throw-weight "payload" (second stage ++) mass, etc. – but generally only a very few columns to allow the reader of this family article to click into the detail elsewhere.
:So, are you willing to just kill the (poorly executed) tables that exist today, as Ajh suggested?  Or might either of you be willing to propose a simplified single table, with only the sourced major members of the Atlas progression?  
:Hope this was helpful to potentially breaking a logjam and working towards achieving a consensus.  N2e (talk) 14:03, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I missed your reply here. I think there should be a table, but I'm not sure what's the best way to handle it - obviously not how it is at the moment. The problem, which has come up several times before in other articles, is that what constitutes a "major member" is often highly subjective. There are more differences, for example, between the Atlas IIIA and IIIB than between the Atlas G and I, however the IIIA and IIIB are usually considered variants of the same rocket, whereas the G and I are often considered separate types. --W. D. Graham 12:35, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Issue no. 2:  Categories for the table of Atlas V rockets

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message: So, through the variants, over the years, the trend was toward longer and longer. Somehow despite the super-thin tanks being held against collapse by pressure, lengthening should make them more vulnerable to failure. I know that some skin thickness increase happened during the Man-Rating Process for Mercury-Atlas, but were the thicknesses ever published. Then there was the trend to lengthen the Atlas, followed by the Centaur.
The SLV-3A Atlas-Agena being 2.97m Longer than the baseline structure. The SLV-3C Atlas-Centaur being only 1.3m longer but leading to the G stretching 2.06m more, the Atlas II gaining 2.74m, it's Centaur gaining 0.9m finally the Atlas III stretching 3 or 4.4m, with the Centaur gaining 1.7m!
The Atlas V throws all of this taffy-pulling out except for the Centaur and the new main engine. Hopefully someone with good access to NASA can get a more clear-cut list of specs.2603:7080:CB3F:5032:FC09:FFF3:38BC:412F (talk) 12:43, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dimensions of Atlas Family