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Well folks, the RfC came to the consensus of abolishing WikiProject Space, so now it's time to reorganise this project - there are several suggestions for tasks listed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation#Restructuring of WPSpaceflight under Option 2, which we need to decide and then act upon; here's to opening the floodgates on a huge amount of work! Colds7ream ( talk) 15:26, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Space/2010_Reorganisation#Restructuring_of_WPSpaceflight_under_Option_2
In summary, this is a condensed list of the start-up actions that have been proposed in a very rough order of when they should be tackled to reduce workload;
I realise there is a desire to keep momentum moving on this reboot, and I realise some things like the newsletter have started so I suggest we work our way down the list as best and as quickly as we can. Please suggest adding/removal or moving of tasks above as appropriate. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 04:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
A going theory is that we've had all this trouble with endless daughter projects and so on due to a lack of a clearly defined scope for this project, so setting one up is a very important first step, in my view. As for what said scope should be, here's my suggestion: "all hardware (i.e. spacecraft), software and wetware (i.e. astronauts, etc.) designed for operation beyond the Kármán line and placed there by a suborbital or orbital launch vehicle, and the ground-based equipment used to support their missions". Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 08:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
In a way I think both are right. I think what Mlm42 said on the reorganisation discussion is pertinent here, preferably the project should be about editors, not articles. The likelihood is that any editors signing up or at least using the pages will potentially have interests in a wide range of Spaceflight-related articles, from the spacecraft themselves to the launch vehicles, to notable people in the history of spaceflight etc etc. If the subject is likely to receive more appropriate attention from editors interested in Spaceflight than any other project it may be placed under then it should be within our scope. I think while there may be different styles of article (BLP, organisations etc) there is a need to input knowledge of Spaceflight technology, history and politics which is shared across related topics.
How about something like,
"The scope of this project is all topics directly related to spaceflight. Specifically this includes all hardware (i.e. spacecraft), software and wetware (i.e. astronauts, etc.) designed for operation beyond the Kármán line, the suborbital or orbital launch vehicles that place them there, and the ground-based equipment used to support their missions. Individuals, organisations and historical events directly related to spaceflight are also considered to be within the project's scope.
Articles on subjects of space exploration (Mars, Asteroids etc) are not considered within the scope and these are dealt with by WP:Solar System and WP:Astronomical objects."
Any thoughts? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 22:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I've recently added a tab system to the project pages; the style and code is copied from Milhist, but is quite flexible, so the style could change (in particular, the colour?). I'm no expert with these things, so I've probably made some mistakes. Mlm42 ( talk) 23:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
We now have a WikiProject clean-up listing, which shows that 49% of Spaceflight articles are tagged for clean-up. Yikes! Mlm42 ( talk) 22:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
I see articles have begun to be tagged with the new Spaceflight banner, so are we rolling this out now? I'm wondering because we have not yet defined such things as the importance criteria, currently it's in an unfinished state. Wouldn't it be an idea to sort that out first, particularly on what we consider are Top/High/mid articles? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Which banner should we use for newly-tagged articles? -- G W … 11:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I think the discussion concerning new task forces/working groups will take some time to resolve, but we can deal with the existing child projects now. We need to decide whether TLS should be a working group or not, but on the whole I think the four aspects below can be resolved quickly, allowing us to proceed with those areas of redevelopment and restructuring. There was a proposal to abolish Unmanned spaceflight, but I think the general consensus is that it should be retained, at least for now, until there are sufficient members to support more varied groups.
Do others feel that this would be the correct first step? -- G W /P … 14:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Walter Haeussermann died Wednesday of complications from a fall. [1] There's a fair amount of information available about him on the web for free today, but it will not be available like so in the near future. I have updated the article to reflect his passing, but there is a good deal more info that could be included. I'm not sure where else his passing might be mentioned - portal(s) or elsewhere. -- ke4roh ( talk) 01:42, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks, I've added a header to the project's main page, using the HSF image as a placeholder. Two things; can someone please move this into the main header template so that it displays on all the pages, and what image do we all think should go in it? Cheers, Colds7ream ( talk) 18:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
It's looking good; I like the changing images for the different task forces. But I'm not sure about the second layer of tabs? The task forces (GW, thanks for moving these over, btw) are already linked from the Navigation box, and this seems like a more natural place for them.. I guess we can still have the Project header on pages which don't necessarily have a Tab all to themselves? Mlm42 ( talk) 22:31, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
I recently stumbled across the Aerospace biography task force, which claims all astronauts and rocket scientists under its scope. Were other people aware of this? This task force seems pretty inactive; and since it's a task force of WP:Aviation, I'm not sure why they broadened their biography task force to include astronauts. Mlm42 ( talk) 20:19, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to formalise guidelines for the assessment of articles in terms of quality. WPSpaceflight has never set formal criteria for assessing articles, and consequently B and C class assessments are based on the assessor's interpretation of the relevant WP:1.0 guidelines, and due to the lack of criteria or a review process, zero articles have been assessed as A-class. Assessment is always going to be subjective, however I believe that by establishing guidelines for assessment we can limit the effect of a difference of opinion upon this. My suggestion would be:
I would appreciate input on these criteria, I'm sure others have better ideas on how to handle this. We will also need to discuss implementing a review process for A class articles. -- G W … 23:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I just wandered into the Expendable launch system article where the following (partially sourced) assertions are made in a USA-related section of the article:
On October 30, 1984, United States President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Act. [1] This enabled an American industry of private operators of expendable launch systems. Prior to the signing of this law, all commercial satellite launches in the United States were limited to NASA's Space Shuttle. citation needed
On November 5, 1990, United States President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Launch Services Purchase Act. [2] The Act, in a complete reversal of the earlier Space Shuttle monopoly, ordered NASA to purchase launch services for its primary payloads from commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course of its activities.
I was surprised to find no extant Wikipedia article on either one of those two, fairly significant, US laws that made major policy changes in space and space system development. I'm new to the Spaceflight WikiProject. Just wondering if there is a reason for no articles on these important laws, other than merely "no one has ever done it."? Thanks. N2e ( talk) 17:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Since we now have a working group, I think it would be a good idea to establish procedures for dealing with such groups, setting guidelines for establishing, running and abolishing them. Clear guidelines should encourage users to propose them, and should help to prevent undesirable groups, such as ones with only one active editor. My suggestion for establishment would be to require new groups be discussed, and find a minimum number of participants. If there is consensus to set one up, and enough editors are interested, then it can be set up, otherwise the proposal is archived, and can be used in future proposals as a source of editors who might be interested. -- G W … 23:53, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
I've just noticed (thanks to the Recognised Content screw-up) that the new banner does not have "|MAIN_CAT = WikiProject Spaceflight articles" parameter for the overall project. The Space banner sent all articles tagged under Spaceflight to Category:WikiProject Spaceflight articles. As I've tagged all the featured/good article content with the new banner it has now all been removed from that category which is why the bot hasn't found any suitable content. I would just add the parameter to the banner but at the moment the above category is quite useful because it shows all the articles that definitely still need re-tagging. What should we do, wait til the new banner has been applied to all articles and then add the parameter? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 23:04, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I've redone the importance assessment criteria table ( here), with columns for "Concepts", "Spaceflights and spacecraft", "People" and "Other"; each with an individual description of their importance ratings. Hopefully they are in-line with what others think (much is copied from the HSF assessment scheme, with some modifications); if not, then it's easy to change. Also, more examples could be added.
It occurred to me that the importance ratings are nearly identical (I think) to both the importance ratings of both Unmanned Spaceflight and Human Spaceflight projects. This made me think, maybe we shouldn't bother with individual importance ratings for these projects? They could simply use the quality and importance ratings from spaceflight.. this would make it easier for people doing assessments, without losing very much. At the very least, we could make the HSF and Unmanned importance-assessments optional, and if there is none, then the banners could use the Spaceflight importance-assessment by default. Mlm42 ( talk) 18:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
But back to my original question: is it worth having importance assessment scales for USF and HSF, which are different from the Spaceflight scale? Mlm42 ( talk) 17:12, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks, some input at Talk:Progress M1-5 would be appreciated; I suggested that Deorbit of Mir be merged into Progress M1-5 as there was a lot of redundancy, but some content copying has occurred and the discussion has stalled; input would be appreciated. Colds7ream ( talk) 18:47, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Hey everyone, I see from this week's Signpost that the article alert bot (which we have delivering to the 'Open Tasks' page) has been updated - I'm not coding guru, so does anyone know if we'll need to change anything to keep it working? Colds7ream ( talk) 12:23, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Hello everyone! There's a deletion request at Commons for over 80 files, many of them on the subject of space and space flight. These were thought to be under the copyright of NASA because they were all taken from a remote sensing tutorial on one of its sites. Later it turned out that the author copied the files without noting the sources and many of them might not be free. Now we need to find the original sources, otherwise they will be deleted. Many of these files are extensively used in different Wikipedias, and rescuing them will save everyone a lot of headaches and red links.
The deletion request is here
I've already started working on them and tracked down a couple to NASA and Hubblesite, while others weren't so lucky. Any help in sorting out the rest will be appreciated. Please have a look, you might find something in articles you're working on, that you need to upload locally or find an alternative for, or hopefully find the original free source. Best regards, -- Orionist ★ talk 00:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Is there a commons category for unnamed man-made satellites?I recently uploaded a few satellite pictures to Commons:Category:NRO_JR_Satellite_Book, but the source (which is designed for children) doesn't specify the satellite names. Smallman12q ( talk) 02:38, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Would there be any interest in forming a space stations working group, with an aim to create featured topics on the ISS, Mir, Salyut and Skylab, as well as to work on articles for Progress and Soyuz missions, expeditions, etc? -- G W … 15:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Just a quick note to wish a very happy Christmas to everyone! Hope it's a great one! :-) Colds7ream ( talk) 08:42, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I just wanted to check other's views on the limits of the scope of the project on a few articles I've been tagging. We've separated "astronomical objects" from our scope but would phenomena important to spaceflight (for example hazards) be included such as the Van Allen radiation belt? Also ground stations (specifically ones for satellite communication) and facilities like Yuanwang be included? I suggest there's a good argument for both. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 17:18, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Just to let everyone know, I've merged the SPACEFLIGHT and HSF ToDo lists, and the result can now be found at Portal:Spaceflight/Tasks. I know this is a part of the project's pages which hasn't really been used in the past, but I feel that, if everyone keeps it updated and on their watchlists, it might be an excellent way of letting folks know what needs doing and encouraging collaboration. Thanks, Colds7ream ( talk) 18:40, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Note:There's a small problem with our alerts at the moment which could be due to a bot bug. If anyone notices an article that should be appearing in Article Alerts but is not could they please notify me as it may give clues as to what's going on. Thanks. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 22:16, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
I think the Article Alerts bug has now been fixed, and the Recognised Content has updated too. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:34, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Whilst in the pub last night, I had a thought that I'd like to share! :-) I have vague recollections of seeing some user pages where editors offer out the loan of their personal book collections to aid other editors in finding sources, and I wondered if there would be any interest in running a shared library within this project, where we could list the books we have and members could request them out on loan? For instance, I've got several space station and space shuttle-related books that I presume would also be useful to others? Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 12:36, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
Hey folks! Just completed my first draft of Mir, and I'd be grateful if someone wouldn't mind doing a B-class assessment for me; I'll be sending it for peer review afterwards, then hopefully GAN. Colds7ream ( talk) 15:09, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Spaceflight to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages.
The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr. Z-man 00:53, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
As some of you may be aware, I have started to draft a project newsletter. I think that it would be best if the first issue sent out is an introduction, and subsequent issues will carry content. I suggest that we release it monthly, in the first week of each month, with each issue carrying news of new members, major discussions within the project, new featured/good/A-class content and items which have appeared on the main page. Does anyone have any comments on the layout of the newsletter, whether or not it should be published, how new content should be decided, and anything that should be added/removed. One idea I had was having a "selected article", but with a twist - it would be a start or stub class page in need of improvement, to encourage editors to contribute to it. Either way, my suggestion would be to get the introductory issue out before the end of the month, and start publication of the newsletter proper in January. Are there any objections to this? -- G W … 21:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
How's about this for a structure for the newsletter?
Obviously, not necessarily in this order... Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 09:08, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
What sorts of requests for assistance from "elsewhere" were you thinking of? -- G W … 16:50, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Given the discussion below regarding the possibility of forming a Space Stations working group and trying to get some FTs, I've pencilled in an editorial on "Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics" for the first issue, with Salyut 2 as the selected article. Does anybody have any objections to this? -- G W … 18:23, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Atmospheric reentry naming is under discussion, see talk:Atmospheric reentry, where the definition, usage, and relation to natural phenomena, and balance is noted. 184.144.161.173 ( talk) 20:15, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
I've just tagged Intercontinental ballistic missile with the Spaceflight WikiProject banner. There appear to be quite a few ICBM-related articles which are not tagged with the Spaceflight banner.. am I correct in assuming all ICBM-related articles are under the scope of this project? The V-2 is often cited, after all, as being the first ever "spaceflight".. but it seems the first successful V-2 flight (in 1942) didn't reach 100 km (according to List of V-2 test launches); the first one to do so was in June 1944, according to Spaceflight before 1951 (although I'm not clear on the references for this).
But according to the article Spaceflight, "sub-orbital flight is not considered a spaceflight in Russia." Really? Is there a reference for this? We should be making sure we present a world-wide view here; so when making spaceflight lists, it's probably best to explicitly say "reaching 100 km", instead of just "reaching space". Mlm42 ( talk) 22:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
According to this source—a panel discussion at the Space Studies Institute’s Space Manufacturing 14 conference in October 2010 [3]—Canadian mining engineering manager and professor Greg Baiden has been working for four years with the Canadian Space Agency in building a "strategic plan for how we are going to mine the moon." This is at approx. 17:30 mins. in the video; but Baiden's talk starts at about 16 mins. in.
Question: Is this really happening? Is it public? If so, is it something that ought to be reflected in the Canadian Space Agency article? ... or elsewhere? I have started a discussion on the CSA Talk page.
I see that the CSA article is of high-importance to the WikiProject Spaceflight project scale, so thought I should let others know about it to see of other's want to weigh in. Or if perhaps we have any Canucks monitoring this project who might have some ideas of how to learn more about the public aspects of this project. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 01:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Space Interferometry Mission needs to be updated following the cancellation of the mission. It is currently a GA, but I am seriously considering sending it to GAR if it isn't updated soon, and I don't have time to do it myself. Can anybody help? Thanks -- G W … 13:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I have conducted a GA reassessment of Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures. The article needs a lot of work, I would currently assess it as being a poor C-class article. Improvements are needed if it is to retain GA status. The review is at Talk:Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures/GA2 -- G W … 22:50, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Naming, and particularly disambiguation of spacecraft names and programmes is currently a mess. I think it would be a good idea to adopt some form of guideline to standardise it. I believe the current issues are:
I've started the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight article titles. By the way, it appears Dragon (spacecraft) already exists as a disambiguation page.. but I think we should move the SpaceX Dragon article there, with a hatnote link to Dragon (rocket). Mlm42 ( talk) 21:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Having just created a few new pages for sounding rockets, I was wondering if maybe the project should have a 'New articles' page like WP:AIR does? Like so. - The Bushranger One ping only 04:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me that Category:Space exploration should be merged into Category:Spaceflight. Does anyone know why these two very closely related categories are separate? Mlm42 ( talk) 00:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
{{ Rocket specifications-all}} has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.14.196 ( talk) 04:38, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks, got a bit of a problem with the List of Mir spacewalks, which I've been reformatting recently; I've only got three references for the article, and, as I'd like to get it up to Featured List standards, that's probably going to be an issue. Thus, I'd like to request some help gathering more citations - in addition, any other comments you have about it (which I based on List of ISS spacewalks) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Colds7ream ( talk) 17:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Most early U.S. Earth orbital missions were launched into a (nearly) circular low Earth orbit, of around 100 nautical miles (190 km), and the initial parameters are usually what people have been putting into the infobox, perhaps assuming that these stay constant for the duration of the mission. But some missions deliberately change orbit as part of the mission requirement; a common example is to raise the apogee. (Examples: Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, which went several thousands of miles (km) out in order to partially simulate the Moon mission.) What is the intent of the infobox, which isn't documented? Shouldn't the apogee given in cases like this be the maximum one reached during the mission? Or was the intent to give only the initial launch orbit? JustinTime55 ( talk) 21:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the ideas, guys. I guess part of the problem is inherent in the "one-size-fits-all" design of a template, but on the other hand we don't want to make the template needlessly complicated. For these missions, I guess the best, simplest solution in this case is to make Apogee a two-line entry with (initial) and (maximum). JustinTime55 ( talk) 17:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
The last of the transclusions of the HSF banner have now been converted over to the new template. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 07:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject Spaceflight for an upcoming edition of The Signpost. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, you can find the interview questions here. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. If you have any questions, you can leave a note on the interviewer's talk page. Have a great day. – Mabeenot ( talk) 23:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
In May 2010, I added a mission timeline section to STS-88. At that time, the article was rated as a Start-Class article. Now, the article is rated as a C-Class article. What changes need to be made to make STS-88 a better article? Basketball123456 ( talk) 16:51, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
With the 50th anniversary quickly coming up of the first man in space, we should try to get his page featured and on the main page that day. And, by we, I mean someone who is better at bringing articles up in quality then I am. I can help write but it has been a long time since I have navigated the Featured processes. Rmhermen ( talk) 22:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
The author of topic “Non-rocket spacelaunch” does not know about many new non-rocket space launch systems which developed in last 10 years. The information is very backward/ I advice him to read the following books and articles:
1) “Non Rocket Space Launch and Flight”. Elsevier, 2006. 488 pgs.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24056182
2)“New Concepts, Ideas, Innovations in Aerospace, Technology and the Human Sciences”, NOVA,
2007, 510 pgs. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24057071 3) “Macro-Projects: Environments and Technologies”, NOVA, 2008, 536 pgs. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24057930 . 4) “New Technologies and Revolutionary Projects”, Scribd, 2010, 324 pgs, http://www.scribd.com/doc/32744477 5) Magnetic-Space-Launcher. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24051286/ 6) Magnetic Space AB-Accelerator. http://www.scribd.com/doc/26885058
7) AB Space Engine. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0803/0803.0089.pdf 8) AB Levitrons and their Applications to Earth's Motionless Satellites.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0708/0708.2489.pdf
9) AB Levitrons and their Applications to Earth's Motionless Satellites.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0708/0708.2489.pdf
10) Wireless Transfer of Electricity in Outer Space.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0701/0701058.pdf
11). Beam Space Propulsion. http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0701/0701057.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.241.97 ( talk) 18:21, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
It has been suggested ( here) that the template {{ Infobox spacecraft}} be expanded to include manned spacecraft as well, such as the SpaceX Dragon, Shenzhou (spacecraft), and Apollo Command/Service Module; all three of these articles have hard-coded their own infoboxes (the Shenzhou one is lower down the page). It seems like a reasonable idea to me; in fact, it may be worth attempting to merge {{ Infobox space station}} into {{ Infobox spacecraft}}; but on the other hand, maybe this is too much. Thoughts? Mlm42 ( talk) 00:08, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Concerns were also raised that the existing infoboxes were not well-equipped to handle spacecraft which operated in more than one orbit, or whose orbits changed over the course of their missions (which in practise is most of them).
I've noticed the new {{ Spaceflight sidebar}}, which currently appears at the top of the article spaceflight. I think this is a good idea; quite a few topics on Wikipedia have a similar sidebar. There seems to be a trend to make the sections in these sidebars collapsible (see, for example {{ War}}); maybe we'd like to do the same? Mlm42 ( talk) 07:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Just a heads-up, I have started a collaboration page in my user-space. It's in its preliminary stages and I'm sure it will evolve with expanded content as I push on. I have started to assess the articles involved according to the B-class criteria to give a head start in looking at what to improve. Anyone who wishes to help out in the push is welcome to join in. See User:ChiZeroOne/Collaboration. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 03:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
VTVL, VTHL, etc. terms for Spacecraft and Rockets: Should they be kept separate (and cleaned up)? Or merged into the aircraft related term articles? Or what?
There is a poor quality "rocket"-specific article on VTVL, which also briefly mentions VTHL and HTHL. In addition, there are a series of articles that are aircraft-specific (e.g., VTOHL, VTOL; plus see the template bar that is the bottom of each of those articles).
The rocket/spacecraft definitions are unclear. Is the Space Shuttle and the X-37B a VTHL? According to a definition from what source? Or should VTVL be reserved for non-staged craft like the small Lunar Lander Challenge vehicles?
Given the new CCDev phase 2 proposals announced yesterday, at least of couple of which appear to be VTHL spacecraft, I'm thinking it would probably be useful to think about this at a project level soon and see if a consensus might not be reachable as to how to improve the extant articles. What do others think? N2e ( talk) 15:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, as I said earlier, I think I'd be happy to go with whatever is proved by sources to be both notable and cited. However, in my reading over the years, I do think that the acronyms with the "O" in them (STOL, VTOL, VTOHL, etc.) tend to be used in the aircraft community and aircraft literature, while those without the "O" (VTHL, VTVL, HTHL) tend to be used in the space community. Clearly, there is a large recent, if informal, use in the alt.space ( NewSpace) community to use these terms to compare the wide variety of design concepts, and even vehicles in development or in use: VTHL (the new Orbital lifting-body spaceplane proposal for CCDev2 fits here, but so does the X-33, X-37B, and the Space Shuttle); VTVL (e.g. Blue Origin New Shepard, all the Armadillo Aerospace rockets, all of the Masten Space Systems rockets, and the SpaceX plan to equip the Dragon spacecraft with a vertical landing capability in a future version); and HTHL ( Reaction Engines Skylon, Rocketplane XP, SpaceShipTwo, etc.)
At the end of the day, Wikipedia ought to reflect whatever is descriptively verifiable, and not be force-fit to use whatever language we might prescriptively prefer. I don't know for sure just yet what that language is, but my sense tells me that there will be a distinction between the terms used by the two communities, and that it will be a distinction with a difference. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 18:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
STATUS (two months on): Neither a proposal to merge, nor a later proposal for a process we might follow to clean up the articles, achieved consensus. So these articles will stay as is for now, and rather than some sort of planned/orchestrated change, will no doubt improve over time through the natural spontaneous order of Wikipedia. If anyone wants more details, the full discussion has the entire record. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 22:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
The above article could use some neutral outside contribution.-- Novus Orator 12:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks, I'd like to set the ball rolling on developing a procedure for reviewing articles from A-class, and, to that end, here's a proposal for how it could work. I suggest that we simply run the review in a similar manner to the FAC process, with some changes. This would mean that:
Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 10:53, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks, just to let you know I've put Mir up for WP:GAN. I realise its very short notice, but it'd be great if someone could please review it by 19 February, the 25th anniversary of the launch of the core module. In other news, I've also got List of Mir spacewalks up for Peer Review, any input would be appreciated. Colds7ream ( talk) 18:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
We need an article about this. [2] Neat! 71.141.88.54 ( talk) 02:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
This article has been created via what appears to be a google translation of the Japanese article, with unsurprisingly poor results. We don't seem to have an article on this at the moment though - Japanese space program redirects to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency but this doesn't seem to discuss anything prior to ten years ago. Could someone here take a look and redirect/merge/clean up as you see fit? Thanks SmartSE ( talk) 14:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I am improving the Japan's space development (where somebody entered a google translation...) by translating manually from the Japanese article. I stumbled upon a strange sentence and wanted to confirm whether it is true. According to the Japanese source, Americans and Soviets decreased the size of their rockets in the 1950s. Is this true? bamse ( talk) 09:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Last night I removed an unsourced claim, attributed to Alex Dessler, that the Van Allen radiation belts may be due to volcanic activity. I think this is physically very unlikely, and not at all main-stream, though I am not an expert on Van Allen radiation. A little Google search found ~9000 hits on {'Alex Dessler' 'Van Allen'}, but looking at the top few I see only things that seem to quote our previous Wikipedia article verbatim — almost all having all or part of the phrase:
"while Alex Dessler has argued that the belt is a result of volcanic activity".
Most appear to be blogs & other lightweight material, nothing that looks like a reliable source. A full-text search of the Astrophysics Data System for {"ALEX DESSLER" "VAN ALLEN BELT"} found no hits between 1952 and 2003. (Where would one search for older space physics information, I wonder?)
At first glance it appears to me as if there may have been an avalanche or loop of citations stemming from that very early (~2002) Wikipedia mention. The editor who made the claim was blocked indefinitely in 2008 as a troll, although that was not at first enough to convict the edit. Although "Alex Dessler" is redlinked, he is a reputable worker in space science.
I looked around a bit for a proper source, and commented out the dubious claim, thinking that if there is a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal that supports the claim, we should probably restore it. But I now it looks like this is a classic Wikipedia horror story.
When I could find no reasonable sources (glancing at only 30 or 40, of course not 9000), I sent an email, to Dessler, who quickly responded:
I am (sort of) shocked that this is what is reported. It is true that I once made a verbal joke at a meeting where I was making fun of someone (Tom Gold as I recall) to make the point that correlations were not proof of physical causality. You need a viable theory to make the connection. For example, I like this quote, "It has been proven by thousands of experiments that the beating of tom-toms during an eclipse will restore the Sun." This is from E. Bright Wilsons's book (which I read as a graduate student in the early 1950s) Introduction to Research. Wilson did not believe this correlation was true, as I did not believe volcanoes could cause or have any effect on the Van Allen Belt. My point was regarded as funny enough that I believe Wilmot Hess, in one of his books, quoted me in the spirit of a physicist having fun. If he did, the book would have been published in the 1960s. I never put such nonsense in print -- OMG!
The edit that did the damage was:
Lir made many many edits, often on other subjects, for over 6 years before being blocked, many of which probably need to be reviewed carefully. So it is potentially a more general Wikipedia problem. I think this case history needs to be reported (and discussed) on some of the project pages — physics, astronomy, space science,... as many as are relevant, and wherever Lir made many edits.
This is the first clear instance I have encountered of what appears to be an attempt to undermine the integrity of Wikipedia by deliberate covert fallacious editing. It is not trolling, which I think is defined as a deliberate attempt to create destructive conflict by stirring up conflict, outrage & emotion, etc — ie, not hidden.
Some points:
Thus Wikipedia is at least potentially (and perhaps already extensively) threatened by its own remarkable success.
I am basically a wikignome, by no means very well qualified to address these issues. I am certain there are many other editors in our project who are much more aware than I am. I would appreciate it if they could perhaps give us (me) some advice about how a lay wikipedian can best respond to these challenges, or point to existing WP resources for doing better. Thanks to any who respond.
Cheers, Wwheaton ( talk) 03:01, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
OK folks, we've made a great start to the reboot tasks listed above, but just to keep the ball rolling, here are the tasks still left to do:
Colds7ream ( talk) 14:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Continuing on from the discussions above, my personal preference would be GW's suggestion - to abolish the task forces entirely, and create working groups on an ad-hoc basis to carry out specific tasks as required. This will reduce the division of the editor base and keep things moving along, IMHO. Colds7ream ( talk) 14:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Ok, here's one idea.
This is just one provisional idea I had, suggested variations are welcome. Basic breakdown,
Spaceflight main page
The page could be a sectioned list, e.g;
---
Concepts
---
Space probes
---
Etc Etc
Task forces become “Topics”. As simply a subpage of the project, all organisation is discussed on the centralised discussion page and the concept of membership abolished, they are maintained as any other project pages. I suggest however they are given a banner parameter, though no importance. They function to allow general editors not involved in the collaborations (which hopefully will become a main focus of the project) to tackle other specific areas, especially the less obvious ones. By providing specific information, such as sources of information on Comsat operators etc, they provide support for editors. The topics also form the basis of the information for working on the topical collaborations, see below.
As GW touched on before, currently not all working groups are created equal. Ones like Timeline will never be finished, they are ongoing, while ones like Space Stations will end. When a working group is over what happens then, get rid of it and all the banner parameters? Why are features that should be more permanent like banner parameters being tied to a temporary collaboration like the Space Stations working group? These are better performed by the topics.
I suggest that “working groups”/“collaborations” be hosted on a centralised Collaborations page (why create new pages/delete old ones when a collaboration is over?) possibly with its own talk page to keep probably quite active discussion out of the main one. There should be two types with one collaboration each at a time, one topical and one general, for example the first general one could be “Portal:Spaceflight to featured status”. This way all editors are focussed on a small number of tasks which means we can make swift progress. Once one topical collaboration is finished then we would choose another topic (or more normally a small part of one), like the Space Stations one currently, and then use the topic’s resources to accomplish a specific task related to it. After the general one is finished a new collaboration would be chosen also. Preferably collaborations would have slightly smaller scopes than the current one, unless progress is swift and tangible editors will get bored.
Both current collaborations are then advertised in a notes section of the banner template inviting editors to help. Progress can also be related through The Downlink.
Any thoughts? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:56, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
I think in many ways the difference between "task forces", "working groups", and "long-term collaborations" is semantics, and it's not worth worrying about the subtlies. I also think that the main reason for including parameters in the Project banner is to say to other editors "Hello! There are already some people working in this area, come join us, or ask us questions!", so even if they are "temporary" (which could be over a year), it might still be worth having a banner parameter.
It seems to me that separating this project into "Topics" as ChiZeroOne suggested is already done by the Category system (see Category:Spaceflight). Of course the Category system could be reorganized if desired, but I definitely think we should take advantage of the Category system rather than trying to artifically introducing our own.
I think it's useful to create pages (like working groups) for editors who personally plan on improving a specific group of articles (like Space Stations), because they can coordinate their efforts and/or track their progress. Generally I don't think it's useful to create pages which are designed to get other editors to edit a specific group of articles (I'm reminded of many failed collaborations of the week, or Wikipedia:Spotlight). Mlm42 ( talk) 19:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
Ok, so it seems like my proposal has gone down like a lead balloon, so are there any-more ideas on how we can proceed bar just simply removing the task forces? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 00:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Two suggestions that I recall were a banner to put on the talk pages of editors who edit spaceflight-related pages, and to get an interview in the Signpost - we can request one at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject desk, and I'm happy to do so unless someone else has a burning desire to do it. :-) Also, any other suggestions would be appreciated. Colds7ream ( talk) 14:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks, I'd appreciate it if anyone with a fair idea about image copyrights could spend a moment to respond to my question at Talk:Johannes Kepler ATV#Launch image. Many thanks. Colds7ream ( talk) 13:50, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm wondering if there might be any desire/need for a
Category:Satellites by launch vehicle category tree? I.e.
Category:Satellites launched by Atlas rockets,
Category:Satellites launched by Ariane rockets,
Category:Satellites launched by giant rubber bands, etc. Thoughts? -
The Bushranger
One ping only
16:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
There are a great many landmarks of note, and they ought to be grouped together. It seems to me we should have at least one, quite possibly more, nav box to accommodate the likes of National Historic Landmarks related to the Apollo program, early space exploration, and the likes. For example, included would be SA-500D, the Saturn V Dynamic Test Stand, the Neutral Buoyancy Space Simulator, and a few other Huntsville landmarks. (Sorry for the Huntsville bias - I know my way around there best.) I'm imagining that the landmarks would be grouped geographically, perhaps by state. Not sure how we'd do similar for Soviet and German places. What boxes should we have? What goes in them? -- ke4roh ( talk) 16:49, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
I know this is irrelevant, but well done for Discovery's good takeoff. Thomas888b ( Say Hi) 22:00, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
I have a question for an article I'm working on (currently at User:E2eamon/ice bridge), I found some images on an npr page here that have been credited to NASA. It would be great if I could use those in the article, especially the one with the airplane wing in it. I think NASA images are supposed to be public domain, but I am not sure about that. If anyone is familiar with using NASA images (thus why I'm posting on this wikiproject), please let me know what the copyright status would be in this situation. -- E♴ ( talk) 05:23, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
I have not been able to locate either an article, nor a category, on derelict/dead/non-functional Earth satellites. Perhaps I've been looking in the wrong places. At any rate, does such exist? If so, would appreciate a pointer. If not, I would be curious as to what the thinking of the more space-connected Wikipedians is on the usefulness of either an article or a category for this purpose. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 14:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Good point on deorbited satellites. But I think I was unclear on my initial question. I'm looking for something on derelict satellites that are still in orbit, and thus a challenge or potential problem for other Earth-orbiting satellites, as they use up some of the common resource space "real estate" and thus create externalities for others who are attempting to utilize space, especially near-Earth orbital space. I'm still surprised that there is neither an article discussing these many satellites (other than space debris which discusses all space debris more generally) nor a Category:Derelict satellites. As for Category:Space junk, hmmm. Let's decide if there is a consensus for such a category first, then we can name it (Derelict satellite, Space junk, or something else) after we get the scope defined. I think we would benefit from such a category. What think others? N2e ( talk) 21:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I am seeing a lot of dead satellites being added to Category:Artificial satellites formerly orbiting Earth for which I see no evidence that this is so. Perhaps I am missing something but for instance as far as I know all the SAS satellites are still in orbit (e.g. Uhuru (satellite)). Mangoe ( talk) 13:06, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
Could somebody please have a look at SA-500D. It has just been listed as a GA, however I believe the assessment was inadequately thorough and lenient. I would appreciate a second opinion before requesting a reassessment. -- G W … 12:24, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
I just posted the revision of the Magellan article. It took forever and I'm sure I still missed some things; the Discoveries section especially needs work. Let me know what needs fixed or feel free to add whatever is necessary. Thanks -- Xession ( talk) 21:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Template:Launching has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.
117Avenue (
talk)
00:47, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
I can not believe this crap. Heads up on the long list of TedderBot edits which removed the templates in question above. Heres the bot page: User:TedderBot, and this list of contribs. -- Xession ( talk) 07:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this has been discussed before but there exists are a fair number of IMAX films discussing various missions/scenarios. I was wondering if these should be included within the project or not?
- List of IMAX films - I may have missed a few
-- Xession ( talk) 19:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
The name of VTVL is under discussion, see Talk:VTVL 65.95.15.144 ( talk) 21:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I was recently reverted when I tried to move Mark E. Kelly to Mark Kelly (astronaut). I've made several page moves like this, to be in line with WP:QUALIFIER. My understanding is that the article titles (e.g. Duane G. Carey, Charles O. Hobaugh, James M. Kelly, etc.) include their middle initial, because this is what they are called in their official NASA biographies, and most of the article content is copied directly from there. I think the use of their middle initial here is not in line with WP:QUALIFIER, because it is rarely used in other sources. Do others agree? I don't want to start moving a bunch of pages, just to have them moved back. Mlm42 ( talk) 17:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
The whole reason we have guidelines over article titles is to try and direct people as clearly as possible to the information they want to obtain. Lets use some common sense. What is the likelihood they at least know the person's profession? Fairly high I should imagine or they wouldn't be looking them up. What is the likelihood they know the persons middle name? It is clear it makes most sense to disambiguate using the persons profession. The only reason why the article name guidelines say it's preferable to use the subject's name found in reliable sources is because that's often the standard form people will search in but in the case of the names of people it's usually a **** poor method of disambiguation. Yeah sure, if the viewer found the biography on the NASA site they might use his name with the initial, but they'll still know he's an astronaut anyway. But most people won't have been on the NASA site. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:58, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Well folks, the RfC came to the consensus of abolishing WikiProject Space, so now it's time to reorganise this project - there are several suggestions for tasks listed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation#Restructuring of WPSpaceflight under Option 2, which we need to decide and then act upon; here's to opening the floodgates on a huge amount of work! Colds7ream ( talk) 15:26, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Space/2010_Reorganisation#Restructuring_of_WPSpaceflight_under_Option_2
In summary, this is a condensed list of the start-up actions that have been proposed in a very rough order of when they should be tackled to reduce workload;
I realise there is a desire to keep momentum moving on this reboot, and I realise some things like the newsletter have started so I suggest we work our way down the list as best and as quickly as we can. Please suggest adding/removal or moving of tasks above as appropriate. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 04:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
A going theory is that we've had all this trouble with endless daughter projects and so on due to a lack of a clearly defined scope for this project, so setting one up is a very important first step, in my view. As for what said scope should be, here's my suggestion: "all hardware (i.e. spacecraft), software and wetware (i.e. astronauts, etc.) designed for operation beyond the Kármán line and placed there by a suborbital or orbital launch vehicle, and the ground-based equipment used to support their missions". Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 08:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
In a way I think both are right. I think what Mlm42 said on the reorganisation discussion is pertinent here, preferably the project should be about editors, not articles. The likelihood is that any editors signing up or at least using the pages will potentially have interests in a wide range of Spaceflight-related articles, from the spacecraft themselves to the launch vehicles, to notable people in the history of spaceflight etc etc. If the subject is likely to receive more appropriate attention from editors interested in Spaceflight than any other project it may be placed under then it should be within our scope. I think while there may be different styles of article (BLP, organisations etc) there is a need to input knowledge of Spaceflight technology, history and politics which is shared across related topics.
How about something like,
"The scope of this project is all topics directly related to spaceflight. Specifically this includes all hardware (i.e. spacecraft), software and wetware (i.e. astronauts, etc.) designed for operation beyond the Kármán line, the suborbital or orbital launch vehicles that place them there, and the ground-based equipment used to support their missions. Individuals, organisations and historical events directly related to spaceflight are also considered to be within the project's scope.
Articles on subjects of space exploration (Mars, Asteroids etc) are not considered within the scope and these are dealt with by WP:Solar System and WP:Astronomical objects."
Any thoughts? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 22:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I've recently added a tab system to the project pages; the style and code is copied from Milhist, but is quite flexible, so the style could change (in particular, the colour?). I'm no expert with these things, so I've probably made some mistakes. Mlm42 ( talk) 23:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
We now have a WikiProject clean-up listing, which shows that 49% of Spaceflight articles are tagged for clean-up. Yikes! Mlm42 ( talk) 22:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
I see articles have begun to be tagged with the new Spaceflight banner, so are we rolling this out now? I'm wondering because we have not yet defined such things as the importance criteria, currently it's in an unfinished state. Wouldn't it be an idea to sort that out first, particularly on what we consider are Top/High/mid articles? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Which banner should we use for newly-tagged articles? -- G W … 11:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I think the discussion concerning new task forces/working groups will take some time to resolve, but we can deal with the existing child projects now. We need to decide whether TLS should be a working group or not, but on the whole I think the four aspects below can be resolved quickly, allowing us to proceed with those areas of redevelopment and restructuring. There was a proposal to abolish Unmanned spaceflight, but I think the general consensus is that it should be retained, at least for now, until there are sufficient members to support more varied groups.
Do others feel that this would be the correct first step? -- G W /P … 14:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Walter Haeussermann died Wednesday of complications from a fall. [1] There's a fair amount of information available about him on the web for free today, but it will not be available like so in the near future. I have updated the article to reflect his passing, but there is a good deal more info that could be included. I'm not sure where else his passing might be mentioned - portal(s) or elsewhere. -- ke4roh ( talk) 01:42, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks, I've added a header to the project's main page, using the HSF image as a placeholder. Two things; can someone please move this into the main header template so that it displays on all the pages, and what image do we all think should go in it? Cheers, Colds7ream ( talk) 18:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
It's looking good; I like the changing images for the different task forces. But I'm not sure about the second layer of tabs? The task forces (GW, thanks for moving these over, btw) are already linked from the Navigation box, and this seems like a more natural place for them.. I guess we can still have the Project header on pages which don't necessarily have a Tab all to themselves? Mlm42 ( talk) 22:31, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
I recently stumbled across the Aerospace biography task force, which claims all astronauts and rocket scientists under its scope. Were other people aware of this? This task force seems pretty inactive; and since it's a task force of WP:Aviation, I'm not sure why they broadened their biography task force to include astronauts. Mlm42 ( talk) 20:19, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to formalise guidelines for the assessment of articles in terms of quality. WPSpaceflight has never set formal criteria for assessing articles, and consequently B and C class assessments are based on the assessor's interpretation of the relevant WP:1.0 guidelines, and due to the lack of criteria or a review process, zero articles have been assessed as A-class. Assessment is always going to be subjective, however I believe that by establishing guidelines for assessment we can limit the effect of a difference of opinion upon this. My suggestion would be:
I would appreciate input on these criteria, I'm sure others have better ideas on how to handle this. We will also need to discuss implementing a review process for A class articles. -- G W … 23:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I just wandered into the Expendable launch system article where the following (partially sourced) assertions are made in a USA-related section of the article:
On October 30, 1984, United States President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Act. [1] This enabled an American industry of private operators of expendable launch systems. Prior to the signing of this law, all commercial satellite launches in the United States were limited to NASA's Space Shuttle. citation needed
On November 5, 1990, United States President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Launch Services Purchase Act. [2] The Act, in a complete reversal of the earlier Space Shuttle monopoly, ordered NASA to purchase launch services for its primary payloads from commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course of its activities.
I was surprised to find no extant Wikipedia article on either one of those two, fairly significant, US laws that made major policy changes in space and space system development. I'm new to the Spaceflight WikiProject. Just wondering if there is a reason for no articles on these important laws, other than merely "no one has ever done it."? Thanks. N2e ( talk) 17:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Since we now have a working group, I think it would be a good idea to establish procedures for dealing with such groups, setting guidelines for establishing, running and abolishing them. Clear guidelines should encourage users to propose them, and should help to prevent undesirable groups, such as ones with only one active editor. My suggestion for establishment would be to require new groups be discussed, and find a minimum number of participants. If there is consensus to set one up, and enough editors are interested, then it can be set up, otherwise the proposal is archived, and can be used in future proposals as a source of editors who might be interested. -- G W … 23:53, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
I've just noticed (thanks to the Recognised Content screw-up) that the new banner does not have "|MAIN_CAT = WikiProject Spaceflight articles" parameter for the overall project. The Space banner sent all articles tagged under Spaceflight to Category:WikiProject Spaceflight articles. As I've tagged all the featured/good article content with the new banner it has now all been removed from that category which is why the bot hasn't found any suitable content. I would just add the parameter to the banner but at the moment the above category is quite useful because it shows all the articles that definitely still need re-tagging. What should we do, wait til the new banner has been applied to all articles and then add the parameter? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 23:04, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
I've redone the importance assessment criteria table ( here), with columns for "Concepts", "Spaceflights and spacecraft", "People" and "Other"; each with an individual description of their importance ratings. Hopefully they are in-line with what others think (much is copied from the HSF assessment scheme, with some modifications); if not, then it's easy to change. Also, more examples could be added.
It occurred to me that the importance ratings are nearly identical (I think) to both the importance ratings of both Unmanned Spaceflight and Human Spaceflight projects. This made me think, maybe we shouldn't bother with individual importance ratings for these projects? They could simply use the quality and importance ratings from spaceflight.. this would make it easier for people doing assessments, without losing very much. At the very least, we could make the HSF and Unmanned importance-assessments optional, and if there is none, then the banners could use the Spaceflight importance-assessment by default. Mlm42 ( talk) 18:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
But back to my original question: is it worth having importance assessment scales for USF and HSF, which are different from the Spaceflight scale? Mlm42 ( talk) 17:12, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks, some input at Talk:Progress M1-5 would be appreciated; I suggested that Deorbit of Mir be merged into Progress M1-5 as there was a lot of redundancy, but some content copying has occurred and the discussion has stalled; input would be appreciated. Colds7ream ( talk) 18:47, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Hey everyone, I see from this week's Signpost that the article alert bot (which we have delivering to the 'Open Tasks' page) has been updated - I'm not coding guru, so does anyone know if we'll need to change anything to keep it working? Colds7ream ( talk) 12:23, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Hello everyone! There's a deletion request at Commons for over 80 files, many of them on the subject of space and space flight. These were thought to be under the copyright of NASA because they were all taken from a remote sensing tutorial on one of its sites. Later it turned out that the author copied the files without noting the sources and many of them might not be free. Now we need to find the original sources, otherwise they will be deleted. Many of these files are extensively used in different Wikipedias, and rescuing them will save everyone a lot of headaches and red links.
The deletion request is here
I've already started working on them and tracked down a couple to NASA and Hubblesite, while others weren't so lucky. Any help in sorting out the rest will be appreciated. Please have a look, you might find something in articles you're working on, that you need to upload locally or find an alternative for, or hopefully find the original free source. Best regards, -- Orionist ★ talk 00:31, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Is there a commons category for unnamed man-made satellites?I recently uploaded a few satellite pictures to Commons:Category:NRO_JR_Satellite_Book, but the source (which is designed for children) doesn't specify the satellite names. Smallman12q ( talk) 02:38, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Would there be any interest in forming a space stations working group, with an aim to create featured topics on the ISS, Mir, Salyut and Skylab, as well as to work on articles for Progress and Soyuz missions, expeditions, etc? -- G W … 15:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Just a quick note to wish a very happy Christmas to everyone! Hope it's a great one! :-) Colds7ream ( talk) 08:42, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
I just wanted to check other's views on the limits of the scope of the project on a few articles I've been tagging. We've separated "astronomical objects" from our scope but would phenomena important to spaceflight (for example hazards) be included such as the Van Allen radiation belt? Also ground stations (specifically ones for satellite communication) and facilities like Yuanwang be included? I suggest there's a good argument for both. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 17:18, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Just to let everyone know, I've merged the SPACEFLIGHT and HSF ToDo lists, and the result can now be found at Portal:Spaceflight/Tasks. I know this is a part of the project's pages which hasn't really been used in the past, but I feel that, if everyone keeps it updated and on their watchlists, it might be an excellent way of letting folks know what needs doing and encouraging collaboration. Thanks, Colds7ream ( talk) 18:40, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
Note:There's a small problem with our alerts at the moment which could be due to a bot bug. If anyone notices an article that should be appearing in Article Alerts but is not could they please notify me as it may give clues as to what's going on. Thanks. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 22:16, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
I think the Article Alerts bug has now been fixed, and the Recognised Content has updated too. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:34, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Whilst in the pub last night, I had a thought that I'd like to share! :-) I have vague recollections of seeing some user pages where editors offer out the loan of their personal book collections to aid other editors in finding sources, and I wondered if there would be any interest in running a shared library within this project, where we could list the books we have and members could request them out on loan? For instance, I've got several space station and space shuttle-related books that I presume would also be useful to others? Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 12:36, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
Hey folks! Just completed my first draft of Mir, and I'd be grateful if someone wouldn't mind doing a B-class assessment for me; I'll be sending it for peer review afterwards, then hopefully GAN. Colds7ream ( talk) 15:09, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Spaceflight to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages.
The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr. Z-man 00:53, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
As some of you may be aware, I have started to draft a project newsletter. I think that it would be best if the first issue sent out is an introduction, and subsequent issues will carry content. I suggest that we release it monthly, in the first week of each month, with each issue carrying news of new members, major discussions within the project, new featured/good/A-class content and items which have appeared on the main page. Does anyone have any comments on the layout of the newsletter, whether or not it should be published, how new content should be decided, and anything that should be added/removed. One idea I had was having a "selected article", but with a twist - it would be a start or stub class page in need of improvement, to encourage editors to contribute to it. Either way, my suggestion would be to get the introductory issue out before the end of the month, and start publication of the newsletter proper in January. Are there any objections to this? -- G W … 21:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
How's about this for a structure for the newsletter?
Obviously, not necessarily in this order... Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 09:08, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
What sorts of requests for assistance from "elsewhere" were you thinking of? -- G W … 16:50, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Given the discussion below regarding the possibility of forming a Space Stations working group and trying to get some FTs, I've pencilled in an editorial on "Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics" for the first issue, with Salyut 2 as the selected article. Does anybody have any objections to this? -- G W … 18:23, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Atmospheric reentry naming is under discussion, see talk:Atmospheric reentry, where the definition, usage, and relation to natural phenomena, and balance is noted. 184.144.161.173 ( talk) 20:15, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
I've just tagged Intercontinental ballistic missile with the Spaceflight WikiProject banner. There appear to be quite a few ICBM-related articles which are not tagged with the Spaceflight banner.. am I correct in assuming all ICBM-related articles are under the scope of this project? The V-2 is often cited, after all, as being the first ever "spaceflight".. but it seems the first successful V-2 flight (in 1942) didn't reach 100 km (according to List of V-2 test launches); the first one to do so was in June 1944, according to Spaceflight before 1951 (although I'm not clear on the references for this).
But according to the article Spaceflight, "sub-orbital flight is not considered a spaceflight in Russia." Really? Is there a reference for this? We should be making sure we present a world-wide view here; so when making spaceflight lists, it's probably best to explicitly say "reaching 100 km", instead of just "reaching space". Mlm42 ( talk) 22:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
According to this source—a panel discussion at the Space Studies Institute’s Space Manufacturing 14 conference in October 2010 [3]—Canadian mining engineering manager and professor Greg Baiden has been working for four years with the Canadian Space Agency in building a "strategic plan for how we are going to mine the moon." This is at approx. 17:30 mins. in the video; but Baiden's talk starts at about 16 mins. in.
Question: Is this really happening? Is it public? If so, is it something that ought to be reflected in the Canadian Space Agency article? ... or elsewhere? I have started a discussion on the CSA Talk page.
I see that the CSA article is of high-importance to the WikiProject Spaceflight project scale, so thought I should let others know about it to see of other's want to weigh in. Or if perhaps we have any Canucks monitoring this project who might have some ideas of how to learn more about the public aspects of this project. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 01:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Space Interferometry Mission needs to be updated following the cancellation of the mission. It is currently a GA, but I am seriously considering sending it to GAR if it isn't updated soon, and I don't have time to do it myself. Can anybody help? Thanks -- G W … 13:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I have conducted a GA reassessment of Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures. The article needs a lot of work, I would currently assess it as being a poor C-class article. Improvements are needed if it is to retain GA status. The review is at Talk:Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures/GA2 -- G W … 22:50, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Naming, and particularly disambiguation of spacecraft names and programmes is currently a mess. I think it would be a good idea to adopt some form of guideline to standardise it. I believe the current issues are:
I've started the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight article titles. By the way, it appears Dragon (spacecraft) already exists as a disambiguation page.. but I think we should move the SpaceX Dragon article there, with a hatnote link to Dragon (rocket). Mlm42 ( talk) 21:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Having just created a few new pages for sounding rockets, I was wondering if maybe the project should have a 'New articles' page like WP:AIR does? Like so. - The Bushranger One ping only 04:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me that Category:Space exploration should be merged into Category:Spaceflight. Does anyone know why these two very closely related categories are separate? Mlm42 ( talk) 00:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
{{ Rocket specifications-all}} has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.14.196 ( talk) 04:38, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks, got a bit of a problem with the List of Mir spacewalks, which I've been reformatting recently; I've only got three references for the article, and, as I'd like to get it up to Featured List standards, that's probably going to be an issue. Thus, I'd like to request some help gathering more citations - in addition, any other comments you have about it (which I based on List of ISS spacewalks) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Colds7ream ( talk) 17:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Most early U.S. Earth orbital missions were launched into a (nearly) circular low Earth orbit, of around 100 nautical miles (190 km), and the initial parameters are usually what people have been putting into the infobox, perhaps assuming that these stay constant for the duration of the mission. But some missions deliberately change orbit as part of the mission requirement; a common example is to raise the apogee. (Examples: Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, which went several thousands of miles (km) out in order to partially simulate the Moon mission.) What is the intent of the infobox, which isn't documented? Shouldn't the apogee given in cases like this be the maximum one reached during the mission? Or was the intent to give only the initial launch orbit? JustinTime55 ( talk) 21:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the ideas, guys. I guess part of the problem is inherent in the "one-size-fits-all" design of a template, but on the other hand we don't want to make the template needlessly complicated. For these missions, I guess the best, simplest solution in this case is to make Apogee a two-line entry with (initial) and (maximum). JustinTime55 ( talk) 17:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
The last of the transclusions of the HSF banner have now been converted over to the new template. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 07:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject Spaceflight for an upcoming edition of The Signpost. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, you can find the interview questions here. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. If you have any questions, you can leave a note on the interviewer's talk page. Have a great day. – Mabeenot ( talk) 23:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
In May 2010, I added a mission timeline section to STS-88. At that time, the article was rated as a Start-Class article. Now, the article is rated as a C-Class article. What changes need to be made to make STS-88 a better article? Basketball123456 ( talk) 16:51, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
With the 50th anniversary quickly coming up of the first man in space, we should try to get his page featured and on the main page that day. And, by we, I mean someone who is better at bringing articles up in quality then I am. I can help write but it has been a long time since I have navigated the Featured processes. Rmhermen ( talk) 22:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
The author of topic “Non-rocket spacelaunch” does not know about many new non-rocket space launch systems which developed in last 10 years. The information is very backward/ I advice him to read the following books and articles:
1) “Non Rocket Space Launch and Flight”. Elsevier, 2006. 488 pgs.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24056182
2)“New Concepts, Ideas, Innovations in Aerospace, Technology and the Human Sciences”, NOVA,
2007, 510 pgs. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24057071 3) “Macro-Projects: Environments and Technologies”, NOVA, 2008, 536 pgs. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24057930 . 4) “New Technologies and Revolutionary Projects”, Scribd, 2010, 324 pgs, http://www.scribd.com/doc/32744477 5) Magnetic-Space-Launcher. http://www.scribd.com/doc/24051286/ 6) Magnetic Space AB-Accelerator. http://www.scribd.com/doc/26885058
7) AB Space Engine. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0803/0803.0089.pdf 8) AB Levitrons and their Applications to Earth's Motionless Satellites.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0708/0708.2489.pdf
9) AB Levitrons and their Applications to Earth's Motionless Satellites.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0708/0708.2489.pdf
10) Wireless Transfer of Electricity in Outer Space.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0701/0701058.pdf
11). Beam Space Propulsion. http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0701/0701057.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.241.97 ( talk) 18:21, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
It has been suggested ( here) that the template {{ Infobox spacecraft}} be expanded to include manned spacecraft as well, such as the SpaceX Dragon, Shenzhou (spacecraft), and Apollo Command/Service Module; all three of these articles have hard-coded their own infoboxes (the Shenzhou one is lower down the page). It seems like a reasonable idea to me; in fact, it may be worth attempting to merge {{ Infobox space station}} into {{ Infobox spacecraft}}; but on the other hand, maybe this is too much. Thoughts? Mlm42 ( talk) 00:08, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Concerns were also raised that the existing infoboxes were not well-equipped to handle spacecraft which operated in more than one orbit, or whose orbits changed over the course of their missions (which in practise is most of them).
I've noticed the new {{ Spaceflight sidebar}}, which currently appears at the top of the article spaceflight. I think this is a good idea; quite a few topics on Wikipedia have a similar sidebar. There seems to be a trend to make the sections in these sidebars collapsible (see, for example {{ War}}); maybe we'd like to do the same? Mlm42 ( talk) 07:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Just a heads-up, I have started a collaboration page in my user-space. It's in its preliminary stages and I'm sure it will evolve with expanded content as I push on. I have started to assess the articles involved according to the B-class criteria to give a head start in looking at what to improve. Anyone who wishes to help out in the push is welcome to join in. See User:ChiZeroOne/Collaboration. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 03:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
VTVL, VTHL, etc. terms for Spacecraft and Rockets: Should they be kept separate (and cleaned up)? Or merged into the aircraft related term articles? Or what?
There is a poor quality "rocket"-specific article on VTVL, which also briefly mentions VTHL and HTHL. In addition, there are a series of articles that are aircraft-specific (e.g., VTOHL, VTOL; plus see the template bar that is the bottom of each of those articles).
The rocket/spacecraft definitions are unclear. Is the Space Shuttle and the X-37B a VTHL? According to a definition from what source? Or should VTVL be reserved for non-staged craft like the small Lunar Lander Challenge vehicles?
Given the new CCDev phase 2 proposals announced yesterday, at least of couple of which appear to be VTHL spacecraft, I'm thinking it would probably be useful to think about this at a project level soon and see if a consensus might not be reachable as to how to improve the extant articles. What do others think? N2e ( talk) 15:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, as I said earlier, I think I'd be happy to go with whatever is proved by sources to be both notable and cited. However, in my reading over the years, I do think that the acronyms with the "O" in them (STOL, VTOL, VTOHL, etc.) tend to be used in the aircraft community and aircraft literature, while those without the "O" (VTHL, VTVL, HTHL) tend to be used in the space community. Clearly, there is a large recent, if informal, use in the alt.space ( NewSpace) community to use these terms to compare the wide variety of design concepts, and even vehicles in development or in use: VTHL (the new Orbital lifting-body spaceplane proposal for CCDev2 fits here, but so does the X-33, X-37B, and the Space Shuttle); VTVL (e.g. Blue Origin New Shepard, all the Armadillo Aerospace rockets, all of the Masten Space Systems rockets, and the SpaceX plan to equip the Dragon spacecraft with a vertical landing capability in a future version); and HTHL ( Reaction Engines Skylon, Rocketplane XP, SpaceShipTwo, etc.)
At the end of the day, Wikipedia ought to reflect whatever is descriptively verifiable, and not be force-fit to use whatever language we might prescriptively prefer. I don't know for sure just yet what that language is, but my sense tells me that there will be a distinction between the terms used by the two communities, and that it will be a distinction with a difference. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 18:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
STATUS (two months on): Neither a proposal to merge, nor a later proposal for a process we might follow to clean up the articles, achieved consensus. So these articles will stay as is for now, and rather than some sort of planned/orchestrated change, will no doubt improve over time through the natural spontaneous order of Wikipedia. If anyone wants more details, the full discussion has the entire record. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 22:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
The above article could use some neutral outside contribution.-- Novus Orator 12:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks, I'd like to set the ball rolling on developing a procedure for reviewing articles from A-class, and, to that end, here's a proposal for how it could work. I suggest that we simply run the review in a similar manner to the FAC process, with some changes. This would mean that:
Thoughts? Colds7ream ( talk) 10:53, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks, just to let you know I've put Mir up for WP:GAN. I realise its very short notice, but it'd be great if someone could please review it by 19 February, the 25th anniversary of the launch of the core module. In other news, I've also got List of Mir spacewalks up for Peer Review, any input would be appreciated. Colds7ream ( talk) 18:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
We need an article about this. [2] Neat! 71.141.88.54 ( talk) 02:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
This article has been created via what appears to be a google translation of the Japanese article, with unsurprisingly poor results. We don't seem to have an article on this at the moment though - Japanese space program redirects to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency but this doesn't seem to discuss anything prior to ten years ago. Could someone here take a look and redirect/merge/clean up as you see fit? Thanks SmartSE ( talk) 14:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I am improving the Japan's space development (where somebody entered a google translation...) by translating manually from the Japanese article. I stumbled upon a strange sentence and wanted to confirm whether it is true. According to the Japanese source, Americans and Soviets decreased the size of their rockets in the 1950s. Is this true? bamse ( talk) 09:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Last night I removed an unsourced claim, attributed to Alex Dessler, that the Van Allen radiation belts may be due to volcanic activity. I think this is physically very unlikely, and not at all main-stream, though I am not an expert on Van Allen radiation. A little Google search found ~9000 hits on {'Alex Dessler' 'Van Allen'}, but looking at the top few I see only things that seem to quote our previous Wikipedia article verbatim — almost all having all or part of the phrase:
"while Alex Dessler has argued that the belt is a result of volcanic activity".
Most appear to be blogs & other lightweight material, nothing that looks like a reliable source. A full-text search of the Astrophysics Data System for {"ALEX DESSLER" "VAN ALLEN BELT"} found no hits between 1952 and 2003. (Where would one search for older space physics information, I wonder?)
At first glance it appears to me as if there may have been an avalanche or loop of citations stemming from that very early (~2002) Wikipedia mention. The editor who made the claim was blocked indefinitely in 2008 as a troll, although that was not at first enough to convict the edit. Although "Alex Dessler" is redlinked, he is a reputable worker in space science.
I looked around a bit for a proper source, and commented out the dubious claim, thinking that if there is a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal that supports the claim, we should probably restore it. But I now it looks like this is a classic Wikipedia horror story.
When I could find no reasonable sources (glancing at only 30 or 40, of course not 9000), I sent an email, to Dessler, who quickly responded:
I am (sort of) shocked that this is what is reported. It is true that I once made a verbal joke at a meeting where I was making fun of someone (Tom Gold as I recall) to make the point that correlations were not proof of physical causality. You need a viable theory to make the connection. For example, I like this quote, "It has been proven by thousands of experiments that the beating of tom-toms during an eclipse will restore the Sun." This is from E. Bright Wilsons's book (which I read as a graduate student in the early 1950s) Introduction to Research. Wilson did not believe this correlation was true, as I did not believe volcanoes could cause or have any effect on the Van Allen Belt. My point was regarded as funny enough that I believe Wilmot Hess, in one of his books, quoted me in the spirit of a physicist having fun. If he did, the book would have been published in the 1960s. I never put such nonsense in print -- OMG!
The edit that did the damage was:
Lir made many many edits, often on other subjects, for over 6 years before being blocked, many of which probably need to be reviewed carefully. So it is potentially a more general Wikipedia problem. I think this case history needs to be reported (and discussed) on some of the project pages — physics, astronomy, space science,... as many as are relevant, and wherever Lir made many edits.
This is the first clear instance I have encountered of what appears to be an attempt to undermine the integrity of Wikipedia by deliberate covert fallacious editing. It is not trolling, which I think is defined as a deliberate attempt to create destructive conflict by stirring up conflict, outrage & emotion, etc — ie, not hidden.
Some points:
Thus Wikipedia is at least potentially (and perhaps already extensively) threatened by its own remarkable success.
I am basically a wikignome, by no means very well qualified to address these issues. I am certain there are many other editors in our project who are much more aware than I am. I would appreciate it if they could perhaps give us (me) some advice about how a lay wikipedian can best respond to these challenges, or point to existing WP resources for doing better. Thanks to any who respond.
Cheers, Wwheaton ( talk) 03:01, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
OK folks, we've made a great start to the reboot tasks listed above, but just to keep the ball rolling, here are the tasks still left to do:
Colds7ream ( talk) 14:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Continuing on from the discussions above, my personal preference would be GW's suggestion - to abolish the task forces entirely, and create working groups on an ad-hoc basis to carry out specific tasks as required. This will reduce the division of the editor base and keep things moving along, IMHO. Colds7ream ( talk) 14:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Ok, here's one idea.
This is just one provisional idea I had, suggested variations are welcome. Basic breakdown,
Spaceflight main page
The page could be a sectioned list, e.g;
---
Concepts
---
Space probes
---
Etc Etc
Task forces become “Topics”. As simply a subpage of the project, all organisation is discussed on the centralised discussion page and the concept of membership abolished, they are maintained as any other project pages. I suggest however they are given a banner parameter, though no importance. They function to allow general editors not involved in the collaborations (which hopefully will become a main focus of the project) to tackle other specific areas, especially the less obvious ones. By providing specific information, such as sources of information on Comsat operators etc, they provide support for editors. The topics also form the basis of the information for working on the topical collaborations, see below.
As GW touched on before, currently not all working groups are created equal. Ones like Timeline will never be finished, they are ongoing, while ones like Space Stations will end. When a working group is over what happens then, get rid of it and all the banner parameters? Why are features that should be more permanent like banner parameters being tied to a temporary collaboration like the Space Stations working group? These are better performed by the topics.
I suggest that “working groups”/“collaborations” be hosted on a centralised Collaborations page (why create new pages/delete old ones when a collaboration is over?) possibly with its own talk page to keep probably quite active discussion out of the main one. There should be two types with one collaboration each at a time, one topical and one general, for example the first general one could be “Portal:Spaceflight to featured status”. This way all editors are focussed on a small number of tasks which means we can make swift progress. Once one topical collaboration is finished then we would choose another topic (or more normally a small part of one), like the Space Stations one currently, and then use the topic’s resources to accomplish a specific task related to it. After the general one is finished a new collaboration would be chosen also. Preferably collaborations would have slightly smaller scopes than the current one, unless progress is swift and tangible editors will get bored.
Both current collaborations are then advertised in a notes section of the banner template inviting editors to help. Progress can also be related through The Downlink.
Any thoughts? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:56, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
I think in many ways the difference between "task forces", "working groups", and "long-term collaborations" is semantics, and it's not worth worrying about the subtlies. I also think that the main reason for including parameters in the Project banner is to say to other editors "Hello! There are already some people working in this area, come join us, or ask us questions!", so even if they are "temporary" (which could be over a year), it might still be worth having a banner parameter.
It seems to me that separating this project into "Topics" as ChiZeroOne suggested is already done by the Category system (see Category:Spaceflight). Of course the Category system could be reorganized if desired, but I definitely think we should take advantage of the Category system rather than trying to artifically introducing our own.
I think it's useful to create pages (like working groups) for editors who personally plan on improving a specific group of articles (like Space Stations), because they can coordinate their efforts and/or track their progress. Generally I don't think it's useful to create pages which are designed to get other editors to edit a specific group of articles (I'm reminded of many failed collaborations of the week, or Wikipedia:Spotlight). Mlm42 ( talk) 19:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
Ok, so it seems like my proposal has gone down like a lead balloon, so are there any-more ideas on how we can proceed bar just simply removing the task forces? ChiZeroOne ( talk) 00:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Two suggestions that I recall were a banner to put on the talk pages of editors who edit spaceflight-related pages, and to get an interview in the Signpost - we can request one at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject desk, and I'm happy to do so unless someone else has a burning desire to do it. :-) Also, any other suggestions would be appreciated. Colds7ream ( talk) 14:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Hi folks, I'd appreciate it if anyone with a fair idea about image copyrights could spend a moment to respond to my question at Talk:Johannes Kepler ATV#Launch image. Many thanks. Colds7ream ( talk) 13:50, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm wondering if there might be any desire/need for a
Category:Satellites by launch vehicle category tree? I.e.
Category:Satellites launched by Atlas rockets,
Category:Satellites launched by Ariane rockets,
Category:Satellites launched by giant rubber bands, etc. Thoughts? -
The Bushranger
One ping only
16:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
There are a great many landmarks of note, and they ought to be grouped together. It seems to me we should have at least one, quite possibly more, nav box to accommodate the likes of National Historic Landmarks related to the Apollo program, early space exploration, and the likes. For example, included would be SA-500D, the Saturn V Dynamic Test Stand, the Neutral Buoyancy Space Simulator, and a few other Huntsville landmarks. (Sorry for the Huntsville bias - I know my way around there best.) I'm imagining that the landmarks would be grouped geographically, perhaps by state. Not sure how we'd do similar for Soviet and German places. What boxes should we have? What goes in them? -- ke4roh ( talk) 16:49, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
I know this is irrelevant, but well done for Discovery's good takeoff. Thomas888b ( Say Hi) 22:00, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
I have a question for an article I'm working on (currently at User:E2eamon/ice bridge), I found some images on an npr page here that have been credited to NASA. It would be great if I could use those in the article, especially the one with the airplane wing in it. I think NASA images are supposed to be public domain, but I am not sure about that. If anyone is familiar with using NASA images (thus why I'm posting on this wikiproject), please let me know what the copyright status would be in this situation. -- E♴ ( talk) 05:23, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
I have not been able to locate either an article, nor a category, on derelict/dead/non-functional Earth satellites. Perhaps I've been looking in the wrong places. At any rate, does such exist? If so, would appreciate a pointer. If not, I would be curious as to what the thinking of the more space-connected Wikipedians is on the usefulness of either an article or a category for this purpose. Cheers. N2e ( talk) 14:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Good point on deorbited satellites. But I think I was unclear on my initial question. I'm looking for something on derelict satellites that are still in orbit, and thus a challenge or potential problem for other Earth-orbiting satellites, as they use up some of the common resource space "real estate" and thus create externalities for others who are attempting to utilize space, especially near-Earth orbital space. I'm still surprised that there is neither an article discussing these many satellites (other than space debris which discusses all space debris more generally) nor a Category:Derelict satellites. As for Category:Space junk, hmmm. Let's decide if there is a consensus for such a category first, then we can name it (Derelict satellite, Space junk, or something else) after we get the scope defined. I think we would benefit from such a category. What think others? N2e ( talk) 21:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I am seeing a lot of dead satellites being added to Category:Artificial satellites formerly orbiting Earth for which I see no evidence that this is so. Perhaps I am missing something but for instance as far as I know all the SAS satellites are still in orbit (e.g. Uhuru (satellite)). Mangoe ( talk) 13:06, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
Could somebody please have a look at SA-500D. It has just been listed as a GA, however I believe the assessment was inadequately thorough and lenient. I would appreciate a second opinion before requesting a reassessment. -- G W … 12:24, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
I just posted the revision of the Magellan article. It took forever and I'm sure I still missed some things; the Discoveries section especially needs work. Let me know what needs fixed or feel free to add whatever is necessary. Thanks -- Xession ( talk) 21:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Template:Launching has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at
the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.
117Avenue (
talk)
00:47, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
I can not believe this crap. Heads up on the long list of TedderBot edits which removed the templates in question above. Heres the bot page: User:TedderBot, and this list of contribs. -- Xession ( talk) 07:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this has been discussed before but there exists are a fair number of IMAX films discussing various missions/scenarios. I was wondering if these should be included within the project or not?
- List of IMAX films - I may have missed a few
-- Xession ( talk) 19:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
The name of VTVL is under discussion, see Talk:VTVL 65.95.15.144 ( talk) 21:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I was recently reverted when I tried to move Mark E. Kelly to Mark Kelly (astronaut). I've made several page moves like this, to be in line with WP:QUALIFIER. My understanding is that the article titles (e.g. Duane G. Carey, Charles O. Hobaugh, James M. Kelly, etc.) include their middle initial, because this is what they are called in their official NASA biographies, and most of the article content is copied directly from there. I think the use of their middle initial here is not in line with WP:QUALIFIER, because it is rarely used in other sources. Do others agree? I don't want to start moving a bunch of pages, just to have them moved back. Mlm42 ( talk) 17:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
The whole reason we have guidelines over article titles is to try and direct people as clearly as possible to the information they want to obtain. Lets use some common sense. What is the likelihood they at least know the person's profession? Fairly high I should imagine or they wouldn't be looking them up. What is the likelihood they know the persons middle name? It is clear it makes most sense to disambiguate using the persons profession. The only reason why the article name guidelines say it's preferable to use the subject's name found in reliable sources is because that's often the standard form people will search in but in the case of the names of people it's usually a **** poor method of disambiguation. Yeah sure, if the viewer found the biography on the NASA site they might use his name with the initial, but they'll still know he's an astronaut anyway. But most people won't have been on the NASA site. ChiZeroOne ( talk) 19:58, 4 March 2011 (UTC)