Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Galactic Suite

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. Patton123 (talk) 20:57, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Galactic Suite

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Failure to demonstrate WP:NOTE --Robert Horning (talk) 23:22, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Spain-related deletion discussions.
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions.

This is a start-up proposed space hotel based out of Barcelona, Spain, which was mostly a press conference and a website that is mostly dead. While it is true that this company actually existed and a Google search can produce several news reports about this press conference, the effort appears to be dead and indeed can be considered vaporware. There is not even a single mention of this project since the original press conference over two years ago. Essentially, this is not a notable project and there does not appear to be any reason to believe that this space station or hotel will ever be built. Nobody who is associated with this project either before or since has achieved any sort of notability either. Simply put, this article is about something which is nothing, and certainly in the space development community they have not achieved anything that would merit an encyclopedia article or for that matter even a reference on any other article that would be related to outer space and its exploration and development. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:22, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep. Also, it would have been nice if you could have notified me (the creator) of this AfD. International overage of the station has continued since the August 2007 announcement:

September 2007
October 2007 (Spanish)
November 2007
December 2007 (French)

...

Planning advances mid-2008, [1], [2]

Furthermore, the Galactic Suite company keeps a list of news articles in Spanish that have been published about the company that extend well into August of this year. I strongly urge you to reconsider this nomination. Bsimmons666 (talk) 00:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Talk:Galactic Suite#Delete for extended discussion. This isn't exactly something newly discussed. Also see Template talk:Space stations#Galactic Suite for additional discussion... where this article was removed from the Space Stations template due to non-notability. Both I and the rest of the community monitoring these pages would have appreciated some input prior to this request for an AfD. This company mentioned still smell like vaporware to me, and in the numerous technical forums about space technology, space geek blogs, and space technology conference proceedings, I have never heard this company mentioned except for the initial announcement. I might have missed something, but I still fail to see anything new here, or any reason to believe this company may actually be doing what they claim. It is not a notable space station, and there is no reason to really believe it will be built. I'd love to be proven wrong. All of the links posted above are about the initial press conference and a follow up press release claiming visitors have signed up for the station. At what point does vaporware become simply non-notable? This isn't even notable for being one more aborted space project that never happened. Should somebody with a press release and a website be considered notable?

BTW, this is one of the reasons for an AfD too, to see if somebody can come out of the woodwork and provide something new to the discussion, and perhaps significantly improve the article. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:31, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As a compromise, how about renaming this article to Galactic Suite Design, the name of the company who originally proposed the concept? It would require reworking the content of the article, and I would assert that the company is legitimate (even if the project isn't). Particularly given that most of the recent news about the company is regarding their attempt to enter the Google Lunar X-Prize competition, which seems to be their primary focus recently. I'm also curious, what team does GSD support or represent? --Robert Horning (talk) 01:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See, my problem here is that people are making the assumption that this project is dead in the water with no evidence other than a lack of word from the company. I rather see this as a reverse-WP:CRYSTAL. That said, it might be a reasonable thing to move to an article about the company, but the issue is that coverage has almost always been about the station rather than the company, so I'm not sure how much data we actually have on the company itself. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:37, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that does get back to a lack of sources and rationale for failure of notability. If we can't find data to write the article, it makes it difficult to create the article in the first place. The blog listed seems to be mostly explicit verbatim copies (technically a copyvio, but not our problem) of Spanish-language editorials and news articles from a variety of sources, so it isn't too awful as a place to start. Unfortunately, to read Spanish I have to use the babelfish machine translation tools, and that tends to give a distorted view of what is happening as well. Even more curious (but not necessarily rational for deletion by itself) is that the Spanish-language Wikipedia does not have anything written about this company or this project, in spite of the fact that so much material about it is in Spanish, and the company is located in Spain. There might, barely, be enough material in Spanish to write this article, and I'd rather try to translate it from Spanish into English (as many English-language articles have been translated to other languages) as that is where the source materials are. That isn't necessarily a solution, but rather an observation. A Google search really doesn't give you too much more than what is already listed in the article, and certainly doesn't say anything other than what is on the website.

My main question is: How long should a company who only produces a press conference for a product or idea be permitted to remain in an article about a technological device or product that is never made or built? I understand stubs written about future projects or products is fairly standard on Wikipedia, but what about maintaining those articles when it never actually happens? Sometimes there is notability in terms of an announced product that gets changed into something else, or those involved in a project move onto something else that is clearly notable. That is why I suggested that this article be reworked to focus on the company, Galactic Suite Design, as it does seem to be continuing to do other things. For the money it takes to go into space, there certainly would be discussions and announcements in terms of major parts contracts, land purchases, or other similar moves within the industry that would get press coverage if these guys were being serious and getting this project moving to completion. Even very secretive companies like Blue Origin occasionally get into the news for real, tangible and verifiable acts that are nearly impossible to keep out of the news, and these guys (GSD) seem to have no fear of publicity. --Robert Horning (talk) 09:49, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. While a case might be made that this was a one-time news flare, I think Bsimmons' statement above would put that to rest. This was a very widely (and internationally) covered topic, and does express its notability regardless of the possibility of it being vaporware. Quite frankly, however unlikely this is to succeed, the fact is that reliable sources clearly state this company has significant funding and we simply don't know if they will pull this off. It wouldn't be the first time that a company chooses to develop something in relative secrecy. — Huntster (t @ c) 01:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article has bothered me for some time. It has some coverage in (supposedly) reliable sources, but it's all fluff pieces. For example all the sources say it will be operational in 2012, which is obviously not true. I wouldn't mind keeping this if we can make an accurate article, WP:OR be damned. If the sources don't allow us to do that, then we are better off not having the article. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Rename and rewrite per Robert Horning suggestion. Click23 (talk) 19:20, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.