The JSR Launch Vehicle Database is an attempt to provide a complete
listing of all types of space launch vehicle, both suborbital and
orbital, and indicate relationships between them. An attempt has been
made to estimate numerical parameters even when they are not available
in the literature, on the grounds that some reasonable estimate is
better than none and gives a general idea of the vehicle's size and
power.
The database gives launch times in UTC to the nearest second where available.
It is the only online source for most of these launch times. An accurate launch
time is important if you want to compare trajectories of different launches
(did that missile launch pass close to this satellite?).
In the database:
The primary access to the database is through launch lists for
each `family' of rocket. A family groups together launch vehicles with
the same basic first stage design.
For each launch a citation (LTCite) is given for the existence of the launch
and the source of the launch time. Occasional secondary citations
are given for interest; I have not provided a detailed citation trail
for the values in other columns of the tables. You have been warned.
The cryptic citations are somewhat expanded in the
Launch Time References file.
I acknowledge the help of Joe King and Pat Ross at NSSDC, who provided
access to the old World Data Center/Rockets and Satellites launch
database, and Joel Powell, Jean-Jacques Serra, Vladimir Agapov, Phillip
Clark, Asif Siddiqi, Peter Hunter, Jacques Tiziou and the late Geoff
Perry for sharing data over the many years it took to assemble this
information. Mark Cleary at Patrick AFB, Roger Launius at NASA HQ,
Elaine Liston at the KSC archives, and Jeff Geiger at Vandenberg were
among those who provided useful data. Mark Wade has also caught a number
of inconsistencies in the designation system, which I've fixed, and Doug
Burke found numerous formatting errors. Above all, kudos to Carl Rigg
who once again spent several months painstakingly comparing my data with
his own extensive and independently constructed lists, and caught a
large number of typos and errors. Thanks to Carl, I believe that this
database is now as reliable a source for launch times, launch sites and
vehicle types as any currently in existence. I also thank Ulrich Brocks
who has scoured on-line newspapers and other resources to track down
additional launch times and details.