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spaceflight images up for immediate deletion

Several spaceflight images are up for immediate deletion. See WT:AST, where WPAstronomy was notified of those spaceflight images related to astronomy. Several more are not related to astronomy however. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:32, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Look at Category:All Wikipedia files with unknown source -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 08:28, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Apollo program

I have nominated Apollo program for GA review. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:07, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Need help working on the Mars 3 and Mars 2 articles

So I've been working a little bit on the Mars 3 article, and I was wondering if anybody would like to help me improve it. I've worked a little bit in my sandbox (User:3er40/sandbox) and I'm planning on improving it significantly.


Thanks, 3er40 (talk) 14:43, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Sorry for deleting this message earlier. I thought it'd be better to ask later, but I've since changed my mind.

Neil Armstrong has died

Terrible news, the world has lost a true giant and hero. I think we can expect a lot of traffic over the next few days at Neil Armstrong... SalopianJames (talk) 20:44, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Space suit rename discussion

See Talk:Space suit#To space, or not to space, "space suit". Mangoe (talk) 14:14, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

File:ARES 15.jpg

File:ARES 15.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 02:11, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Ares and Challenger

Several Ares and Challenger explosion images have been sent for deletion, see Category:All Wikipedia files with unknown source -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 03:08, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

ESA logo and ESA "flag"

As the ESA logo is problematic due to copyright issues and should not be used in lists were other nations are represented by their flags, there are now not only one, but two "Not the esa flags":

24px wide, File:Not the esa logo.png

Inspired be the original one, I created the next one to be 22px wide (as all the flag icons are) – unfortunately it is not as beautiful as the first one:

File:Not the esa flag.png

Plus I created a round logo surrogate, for when the blue NASA cookie or the white Roscosmos logo would be used:

File:Not the esa logo 2.png

It can be used like that:

Agency Flights Individuals ISS Crew Notes
NASA 232 133 36 26 women, 55 double, 19 triple and two quadruple flight
Roskosmos 57 38 31 eight double, four triple and one quadruple flight
ESA 18 12 5 one woman, four double flights and one triple flight

In case you should create better versions of these surrogate flags&logos, simply overwrite mine.Tony Mach (talk) 12:56, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the use of icons in these tables needs to be fully reviewed, as I feel most of the logos are either purely decorative, or attempting to convey information which could be done much more easily with text. All of the logos in the template shown above convey no information which is not stated right next to them in the table; they are purely decorative, so per WP:MOSICON no icons should be used. There are some tables which use the logos instead of stating the name of the organisation, but this makes that information unclear, so they would be better replaced with text. --W. D. Graham 14:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
I would tend to agree with the argument presented by User:WDGraham I think the icons add nothing in this particular instance, and should not be used.
Moreover, on spaceflight articles generally, we tend to have a great deal of nationalistic point-of-view. The widespread use of national (or supranational as in the case of the ESA flag icon) flags adds a POV perspective to our spaceflight articles that may not be warranted. This will only get worse as more private non-governmental commercial entities begin to accomplish spaceflight, and the concomitant economic exchanges that have happened wherever humans have operated together in a social system, and the trade that inevitably occurs, takes place in the arena we, today, call "space." Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:25, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
While I think your fight against nationalism is laudable (and I would support anti-nationalism in general), I would like to respond to these points:
  • An little flag is much easier apprehended than a word – it is most certainly not "purely decorative".
  • It were the nations (or supranational organizations) that conducted these efforts, and the results are much more the result of the nation than the results of a sporting competition in comparison. (It was and still is a bit of a Space race and good luck to getting rid of the flags from something comparable like the Lists of Olympic medalists.)
Removing the information that some achievement in spaceflight was the achievement of a nation is IMHO POV – a lie by omission. We may not like who achieved something or how, but we should not omit it – that is NPOV to me as well. Besides it is part of the history of spaceflight – without the competition between the blocks, and the US and Soviet nations (with their allies) facing each other, the space program would probably look different today.
I agree however that with the advent of the new private spaceflight corporations the use of the national symbols for these is not warranted. --Tony Mach (talk) 12:37, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
And from WP:MOSICON: "Icons may be purely decorative in the technical sense that they convey no additional useful information …" To me the operator of a mission is useful information in the context of these lists – adding a link to the operator though might be a good idea. From MOSICON: "Icons should serve a purpose other than solely decoration." that, to me, is the case. --Tony Mach (talk) 12:47, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
While well-known flags might get the point across more easily than the name of said country, that does not take into consideration cases where the reader does not recognise the flag on sight. Using flags or logos instead of text also makes the article completely inaccessible to visually impaired visitors using screen reader software. There's no question of removing recognition of nations' achievements, its just that this would be better achieved by stating the name of the country rather than leaving readers to guess. --W. D. Graham 14:05, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

File:Sts-94 crew.jpg

File:Sts-94 crew.jpg is at PUF for deletion -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 07:25, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I've found a reference.--Craigboy (talk) 12:45, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

File:Apollo11tv.jpg

File:Apollo11tv.jpg has been nominated for deletion at PUF. Apparently the nominator thinks that an image of Buzz Aldrin in space doesn't look like it's from NASA. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 03:13, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay I've added a reference.--Craigboy (talk) 12:45, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

several space probe collages up for deletion

See Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2012 August 30 where several NASA space probe collages have been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 06:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Redirects "RSC Energia", "RKK Energiya" and "RKK Energia"

This is about Korolev's former design bureau, what is toady known here on wikipedia as S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (it is complicated, bear with me).

It's historic names included:

  • Special Design Bureau number 1 of R&D Institute number 88 (Russian: ОКБ-1 НИИ-88 or OKB-1 of NII-88)
  • TsKBEM (*)
  • NPO Energia (*)
  • S.P. Korolyov RSC Energia

It's current name seems to be:

  • OAO S.P. Korolyov Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (Russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация "Энергия" им. С.П.Королёва Raketno-kosmicheskaya korporatsiya "Energiya" im. S.P.Korolyova)

Or short:

  • Russian/Cyrilic: Ркк Энергия (Ракетно-космическая корпорация "Энергия")
  • Russian/Latin: RKK Energiya (Raketno-kosmicheskaya korporatsiya "Energiya")
  • Anglicized: RSC Energia (Rocket and Space Corporation Energia)

Most of these contain several more or less helpful redirects (with and without various spelling "differences"). The problematic redirect (as it is used several times) seem to me to be "RKK Energia", which seems to be a mash-up between the anglicized Energia and the Russian/Cyrillic abbreviation Ркк, transposed to the Russian/Latin RKK (if I am not mistaken).

I would recommend using either RSC Energia or RKK Energiya, but not RKK Energia, but would ask someone to check if this is right.

Any thoughts on this?

(*) If anybody can contribute to the article what TsKBEM and NPO Energia stand for, it would be fabulous.

--Tony Mach (talk) 12:15, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we should delete the redirect as it is not doing any harm, and is picking up these transliterations. Some English language media maybe using the term which may be why it is in so many articles. Redirects from common misspellings, alternative transliterations are good things. Our transliteration guidelines would turn Ркк Энергия into RKK Energiya, but the name we use in the article is a different question to the names of redirects. Wikipedia:REDIRECT wouldn't see this as harmful. Secretlondon (talk) 13:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't intend to suggest to delete any redirects (my comand of the English language is probably not the best). Picking up a spelling commonly used in the media is definitely a good thing, and helpful for editors not involved so much into the Spaceflight Wikiproject.
However the point I was try to make was this: I think we (people involved more in Spaceflight articles) should not use RKK Energia if we are editing an article, and if we see such a use to replace it – instead use on of other two versions instead, with RKK Energiya probably being the most preferable (I haven't seen RSC Energia outside of wikipedia, but others might in their media.). --Tony Mach (talk) 14:07, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with RKK Energiya, since I'm pretty sure I've seen it in print. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:17, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
NPO seems to be a type of company and is used in other bits of the Russian military eg NPO Saturn. Secretlondon (talk) 13:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
TsKBEM is the 'Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building' [1] Secretlondon (talk) 13:20, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

New Ares V Exploded View.PNG

image:New Ares V Exploded View.PNG has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 06:56, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

This needs to find the source for the file it is based off. Secretlondon (talk) 13:04, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Wanted: Illustration of a VA spacecraft mated to Almaz-OPS station

As I have been reworking some articles about Almaz, I noticed something was missing. Initially Almaz stations were being designed so the station and crew would be launched together – for this a VA spacecraft would have been mated to a Almaz-OPS space station hull. Unfortunatly there does not seem to be an free image to illustrate this. An example of an non-free image would be e.g.the first image here or the second image in this PDF. Illustrations of an VA/FGB combination, that formed an TKS spacecraft are available on Commons, but unfortunately not for the VA/OPS combination. While the VA/OPS never flew, I think it would contribute to both the Almaz and the VA spacecraft article.

Can anybody contribute such an illustration with an Wikipedia compatible license? A photo of a model, a drawing, a computer rendering, a modification of an exiting drawing, or some such would do fine, if executed adequately.

One could use the VA part of this TKS cutaway and "mate" it with a Almaz-OPS cutaway, if someone has something like that readily available:

A TKS spacecraft, consisting of VA spacecraft (right) mated to a FGB – what is missing is a (more or less similar) image of a VA spacecraft mated to a OPS hull.

If someone could make a modified image of this cutaway, and replace the FGB with a (very simplified) OPS, then that would do fine as well. I searched the "Mir Hardware Heritage" document, but could unfortunately not find a OPS module with the right perspective… --Tony Mach (talk) 14:38, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Exploration of the moon, mission navbox

Hi there. I would like to point out my proposal at Exploration of the moon, seeing as I doubt it will receive much attention otherwise. Thanks. JamesDouch (talk) 23:54, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

File:Apollo12tv.jpg

image:Apollo12tv.jpg has been tagged for immediate deletion as being unsourced -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 09:57, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Interstellar travel

There's a note at WT:PHYSICS that some recent edits need reviewing at Interstellar travel -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:46, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Timed logo.jpg

File:Timed logo.jpg has been nominated for immediate deletion as being unsourced -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 14:23, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

AfriSpace

The Pan-African Space Agency might be due for an article when it gets fleshed out... [2] -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 09:36, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Spacecraft missions to Mars and navbox

Currently, there are two navbox for Exploration of Mars : Template:Cancelled Mars missions and Template:Mars spacecraft. I propose to merge theses into a single navbox. What do you think ? New navbox :

Cordially. Artvill (talk) 09:06, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we just roll back Template:Failed Mars missions to the April 2012 version [3] ? -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 09:33, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
This separation Cancelled-Proposed-Failed/Succes is not a evident ranking criterion. This is why we must merge the two navbox. See Template:Moon spacecraft, Template:Venus spacecraft... Artvill (talk) 09:44, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Should it include a Russian language link? Shouldn't it only navigate between articles on en.wiki? -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 11:34, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Currently, Mars 5M or Mars-79 does not exist. If it is translated, this ru link will be removed. Cordially. Artvill (talk) 12:19, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
But why do we need it? Other templates don't use non-English links. I know some non-English wikipedias do do this, but I haven't seen this used on English wikipedia. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 23:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
English wikipedia = over 4 million articles. Usually, en.wikipedia.org always has an article before the other wiki, These ru (or other language) links are rarer. Cordially. Artvill (talk) 11:07, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Honestly, all these spacecraft navboxes really need some kind of standardised inclusion definitions or we will keep getting cases where they become a bit ridiculous. For a start I have a problem with calling any mere proposals "cancelled", "cancelled missions" should be kept to those that were actually in development before being cancelled, not simply some science team's wet dream. There are soooooooo many mission proposals that failed selection and have never seen the light of day.
In a similar fashion, this navbox does not make a distinction between simple mission proposals like BOLD and actual selected/funded missions currently in development like MAVEN.
Even more annoyingly for the casual reader, there is no clear distinction between successful missions and the many failed ones. ChiZeroOne (talk) 14:35, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Here is a new proposition :

Cordially. Artvill (talk) 15:25, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

New navbox, Failed at launch criterion is included, the Failed en route criterion is not included because it is not logical, some missions are partial success and partial failure,  :

 Done. Merger between Template:Cancelled Mars missions and Template:Mars spacecraft into Template:Mars spacecraft performed. Cordially. Artvill (talk) 16:06, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

No-importance

Please see the discussion here for regarding the use of No-importance or not. Thank for your time. JJ98 (Talk / Contribs) 19:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

AZUSA radar schematics

File:AZUSA-transponder.png and File:AZUSA-MarkII.png have been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 06:04, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

File:De spacecraftb.jpg

file:De spacecraftb.jpg has been nominated for deletion because it is improperly licensed. -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 07:48, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

File:Cropped Earth with Sunburst.PNG

File:Cropped Earth with Sunburst.PNG has been nominated for deletion. It appears to be from an 1996 Endeavour flight, with the Canadarm cropped out... -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 08:30, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

File:Discovery launches.jpg

File:Discovery launches.jpg has been nominated for immediate deletion as unsourced -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 20:28, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

'EVA'

As has just been pointed out at Talk:Neil Armstrong, the article was using the term 'EVA' without explanation. I've Wikilinked the first occurrence to Extra-vehicular activity, but this appears to be a more widespread problem. Perhaps someone with some spare time could check other relevant articles, and at least provide the Wikilink - though ideally, if the term is being used multiple times in an article, an explanation might be useful too. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:27, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

The article about Neil Armstrong also mentions EVA in the infobox twice. The infobox may be the thing visitors look at first to get a general impression of the person. If they don't know what (exactly) EVA means, they would have to Ctrl-f to search for other mentions on the page to find another occurrence that will answer their question. What makes this tricky - at least in Firefox 14.0.1 under Ubuntu - is that the matching text becomes white on green without an underline, making it impossible to tell if that particular match is a link or not. Maybe the first EVA in the infobox should be Wikilinked instead or as well? Either way, thanks for mentioning this here and for adding the Wikilink. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 07:44, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
I'd say that 'as well' makes more sense that 'instead' - people may read the article body first, or the infobox first, and per WP:REPEATLINK, this seems to be approved of. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:25, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
'As well' sounds great. Semi-protection prevents me from making the edits. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 11:31, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Actually, it appears that it is the astronaut infobox template that needs editing, rather than the Armstrong article. I'll look into this further. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:01, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

International Committee on Space Research

In Neil Armstrong, there is an "International Committee on Space Research". What is this ? It is the COSPAR or an other Committee ? Artvill (talk) 12:38, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

It's COSPAR. See here.--Craigboy (talk) 23:14, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, it seems some sources mistakenly capitalise international as if it were part of the official name. ChiZeroOne (talk) 10:02, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

File:Mangalyaan mars orbitter.jpg

File:Mangalyaan mars orbitter.jpg has been nominated for deletion as unsourced -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 20:49, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

May actually not be in the public domain. It may have been created by the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), see here.--Craigboy (talk) 00:47, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
If we decide it's useful, we can convert it to a Fair-Use type image -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 19:50, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Unidentified lunar hardware

Hi all. These photo show lunar hardware: the Modular Equipment Transporter, the Lunar Roving Vehicle and the Apollo 7 RCA Television camera. This lunar hardware are displayed at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

I see two different Lunar Roving Vehicle, displayed at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex ! Someone has any other info on these rovers ? The KSC has truly two rovers ? And the lunar tool cart, the MET, it is a mockup/replica or a flight-ready cart ? Thank you in advance. Cordially. Artvill (talk) 23:22, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

This is not a forum but I will answer your question regardless. The MET displayed at Kennedy SpaceCenter looks to like it was used for training. RCA stands for Radio Corporation of America, they built cameras for the Apollo Program. I'm not sure about the Lunar Roving Vehicles and I recommend asking here.--Craigboy (talk) 17:22, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I can definitely tell you that the second LRV was an Earth trainer, not intended for flight to the Moon. The giveaway is the rubber tires; the actual flight vehicles used wire mesh tires with sheet-metal treads, which you can see on the first one. Try starting with our LRV article for more info; NASA contracted for only four vehicles; this was probably intended for Apollo 16, 17, 18 and 19 (20 being canceled early.) Then two more flights were canceled, which pushed the three flight vehicles up to 15, 16, and 17, allowing them to keep one for spare parts. However, there may be more (replicas?) floating around, in custody of the Smithsonian. Good luck. (BTW, are you asking with the purpose of improving articles (this page's intent), or do you just think the hardware is cool? We do have a reference desk for general questions.) JustinTime55 (talk) 20:07, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Thank you ! I know that wp is not a forum but I was surprised to see these upload on Commons of new photos of lunar material that I have not been able to identify... According to LRV article, a test unit is on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex but we are two photo of two different LRV (one with rubber tires and another with wire mesh tires with sheet-metal treads). The user was terse when I asked him to complete legends on Commons, where the idea of asking contributors here if they can help me do. Concerning the MET, I am dubiously despite my research, I do not know if it is a replica or an original. Thank you for the answers. Cordially. Artvill (talk) 12:36, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
Okay, no problem! I heeartily support your attempts to get people to fill out the Commons descriptions, and wish you godspeed. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:55, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Spaceflight article standards and conventions

Where is the link to the place we keep the article conventions we've agreed on as a project? I can't seem to locate it at present, and I want to confirm the convention for launch time reporting in Wikipedia articles (I think we agreed on UTC, but maybe I'm remembering badly. Thanks. N2e (talk) 12:30, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we have a centralised article convention page, though we have a couple for things like article titles etc. The Timeline of Spaceflight Working Group states that for articles under its remit "All times should be in UTC". I'm not sure there is one discussing launch times in ordinary articles, but it makes sense to use the same convention. ChiZeroOne (talk) 13:07, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
It has been agreed on for events that don't happen in any timezone. For events in specific timezones there is no consistency, however I would strongly support standardising on UTC for all times, as it looks pretty silly when three or four different timezones are used in the same article (e.g a Shuttle with a scrubbed launch in EST, launch in EDT, flight events in UTC, and landing in PDT). I would suggest UTC as the primary timezone, with local time for events happening on Earth provided in parenthesis afterwards. --W. D. Graham 20:17, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Seeing as how most people don't think in UTC, is there some kind of system that we can implement that would allow readers to be able to quickly check what time an event is going to occur or has occurred in their time zone?--Craigboy (talk) 06:41, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
It makes no sense to use anything other than UTC/Z. --WingtipvorteX PTT ∅ 21:05, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
It makes some sense, local time shows whether or not a mission is a night or day launch.--Craigboy (talk) 06:41, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree completely that launches and spaceflights ought to be standardized on UTC for times published in the encyclopedia. I had just thought we had it written down somewhere in sort of a addendum for the Wikipedia manual of style as a broad multi-editor consensus on some key matters related to spaceflight; didn't know that the compendium did not exist.
  • On the specific, time zone convention for launches, I had earlier today (1 Oct, UTC time) reverted a change for the next SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in the Dragon article made by an anon editor to local date/time (before midnight on Oct 7th in the US) from what it had been for some time: after midnite on the start of a new day, 8 Oct). That one is fixed now. (Just checked, and the Falcon 9 article now has the wrong date for that scheduled launch.)
  • On the longer term (strategic) issue, I will just say I would be an advocate for having a few of these key Spaceflight-article related policies/guidelines discussed, consensus developed, and then get them written down somewhere. So if anyone ever starts such an effort, please invite me to join in on the discussion for support of such a compendium of spaceflight article policy/guidelines. Cheers. N2e (talk) 23:51, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
When I've been writing about Russian satellites I've stuck to UTC rather than time in Moscow or Baikonur. It's just too confusing, and standard reference sources use UTC. Secretlondon (talk) 17:11, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

One thing I should raise is launches with more than one craft when the satellites are not that interesting independently. I've started grouping things together which I'm sure some will object to as it becomes more about the launch. An example would be three GLONASS satellites which are launched together. I'm just not sure they are really separable. Another example would be Kosmos 2467 and Kosmos 2468 where we don't actually know which is which. Secretlondon (talk) 17:17, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

While I agree it may be difficult to find content for articles, the satellites are independently notable objects that just happen to launch together; in the GLONASS case yes they are all the same type of satellite, but then so is Kosmos 2474, and it gets different treatment just because it was launched on a different date. I would strongly recommend splitting the articles; if neccessary a generic boilerplate could be used for now and filled out later when more details emerge (such as end-of-life, or any on-orbit anomalies) --W. D. Graham 22:54, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Cygnus 1 citation style

It has become a source of conflict on the Cygnus 1 page. I changed it to match the the citation format used on the Dragon 2+ page. It was reverted and the explanation given was "Please don't change citations formats like this some editors hate that format. Use the first". I don't want to start an edit war so I could use some help dealing with this.--Craigboy (talk) 02:58, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Template:LaunchAttempt correction

I'm posting this here because it affects a number of articles and most likely will not be seen on the Template:LaunchAttempt talk page. The "Weather go (%)" either needs to be removed or changed to simply "no or go" because at launch time no percentage is given. Those percentages are only given prior to launch to predict whether or not the weather will be go or no go.--Craigboy (talk) 00:11, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I think this template seriously overemphasises trivial launch delays. I'd sooner see changes to the launch date described in prose, with only significant delays being gone into in detail - a 24-hour delay due to weather is probably worth about six words; certainly not the amount of space this template affords it, as unless there is some knock-on effect it is insignificant to the overall mission. --W. D. Graham 22:56, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Concur. The weather delay item should be removed from the template. Moreover, agree with WDG that the template puts excessive emphasis on minor/trivial (normal for the business) launch delays. Cheers. N2e (talk) 03:28, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Space Program Infobox

I noticed that a few article for space programs have rudimentary infoboxes, and then saw on the talk page for Project Apollo that one had been removed from that article with the suggestion that someone create an infobox specific to space programs. I have created a template, Template:Infobox space program, and now submit it to this talk page to get the opinion of the members of the Spaceflight WikiProject. I would like to note that I have not transcluded this template into any articles at this time, I wanted to seek the opinion of those who would be most likely to use the template. The template page includes an example using the Apollo Program for the information. I tried to include information that would give at least a decent overview of the program without providing so much information that the body of the article might be ignored. I look forward to seeing what you all think of the template as it stands. MasterSearcy (talk) 01:54, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I want to thank you for starting the development of a common Infobox for Space Programes. I think it makes building pages easier, makes the pages look nicer, and the visibility of WikiProject Spaceflight can be improved with it.
In my opinion you have made a very good start. It looks nice, and it's very useful. But I've got a question how it will work, and I've got some suggestions.
First my question:
'Not all perimeters are applicable to all programs, what will happen when you'll leave a perimeter empty?
Is the perimeter left out of the infobox, Will the perimeter apper appear blank, or will something else happen?'
I'm making a page for the FLPP (Future Launcher Preparatory Programme) of ESA. This program is running currently, no launches will be executed for it. And it is a technology development / maturation program. If I use the Infobox for this program, a lot of perimeters will be left empty, and I can't fill in some program properties that I would like to note. Because of this I would like to suggest the following modifications:
  • Add 'Program Status' as property; Here you can fill in: 'Ongoing', 'Completed' and 'Abandoned'.
  • Add 'Program Type' as property; Here you can fill in, eg: '(Technology) Development, (Human) (Exploration) Mission, Experiment, etc.
  • Add 'sub-programs', and 'main program' as property, Some programes have subprograms or are subprogram of a (another) main program.
  • Add 'Program phases' as property; Some programs are executed in different phases, for Apollo, I think you can devide it in three: technology developent, technology testing and mission execution.
  • I don't like the style of the property 'Governmental / Public'. I think it is nicer to just state if it is Public or Governmental. I couldn't figure out another name for this property, sorry.
I hope my suggestions are helpful and my feedback was intended positively.
Rik ISS-fan (talk) 16:57, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
To answer your question, if you leave a parameter out it simply won't be displayed at all. For example, if you enter a date for "first flight" and "last flight", but not for "first manned flight", then the displayed infobox would list First Flight and then Last Flight as if the "First Manned Flight" parameter wasn't even there. The only parameter in the infobox that this is not true for is the "Previous" parameter. It currently has a default "value" of "None" so that if you make an article for the first space program for a nation, it would automatically display that none preceded it, however, after thinking about it, it may be a better idea to not have a default value for that parameter.
I will definitely add "Program Status" to the infobox, I'm not sure why I didn't include it in the first place. I will also add "Program Type" parameter because I can definitely see its utility. I will list both in the table as simply "Status" and "Type" for simplicity. I think the "sub-program" and "main-program" parameters might could be taken care of with the current "Concurrent" parameter, but I can see where they wouldn't either. I'll add them in under the "Related Programs" section before the "Previous" and "Subsequent", at least for now.
I think that adding a "Program phases" parameter could make the infobox too cluttered as you would have to have at least starting and ending dates for each phase of the program. Also, there could become issues with "when did one phase start and the other begin", or "is this actually a different phase of the program", and so on. Like you said, Apollo could be divided into technology development, testing, and mission execution phases, but you could also divide mission execution into multiple phases that may or may not overlap. You could define an unmanned mission phase (Apollo 4, 5, and 6), followed by spacecraft testing (Apollo 7, 9, and 10), which would also be considered the manned mission phase, then you could define a Lunar Mission phase (Apollo 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17), which could be subdivided into Lunar Landing Mission Phase, which itself could be subdivided into two different phases based on the type of mission performed on the Moon. I just think that there are so many possible ways to divide a program into different phases, that the infobox would become so cluttered as to lose its usefulness
I don't really like the "Governmental" parameter either, but like you said, I couldn't think of a better way to label it, and with the beginnings of commercial spaceflight, it may become necessary to denote whether a program is Governmental or not. Though, it's just occurred to me that with the "Responsible Organization" parameter that may be enough to make the distinction between governmental and public clear enough, so I think I'll get rid of it, at least for now.MasterSearcy (talk) 22:40, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Argh! I seem to have contributed to the creation of a monster, and of course when I'm too busy IRL to stay on top of this, things start moving! I agree with you, Searcy, that it should not get overly complicated with things like program phases. Infobox parameters should be objectively definable, and the box should be as simple as possible to be useful. For reference in this discussion, I would like everyone to please review MOS:INFOBOX (particularly Purpose of an infobox and General considerations), and also the essay WP:Disinfoboxes. The assumption that every article needs an infobox is certainly fallacious, and the possibility is certainly there for them to be misused. Not every topic can be neatly shoehorned into a "one size fits all" paradigm.
I don't really like the Related programs field. Space programs are not necessarily like presidents, prime ministers or monarchs, with a clearly defined line of succession; successions of programs tend to be purely accidental. Case in point: you can't really say Apollo followed Gemini; they started around the same time, and Gemini was actually used to suppport Apollo while it was concurrently being developed.
You also made some factual errors in the Apollo example (which cannot just be put into Apollo program as-is). The most glaring is that Apollo 4 was not the first unmanned mission; that was AS-201 which took place in 1966. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I have removed the "Related programs" section along with all of the related fields. I never believed it would remain in the template long-term. I also removed the "Type" parameter as I realized that it could cause problems, as early stages of a program would be more technology development and testing. I'm not sure that any of the remaining parameters could be considered "subjective" as all can be verified (I believe) from source material. And, thank you for correcting the mistakes. I really only meant it as an example of how the template would look with the fields populated rather than what could be included in the actual article for the Apollo program.
I understand that not every article needs an infobox, nor do I advocate it, but I can see where an infobox could be useful for at least some space program articles (some already have a non-standardized infobox). Assuming that a space program infobox were to be placed on the Apollo program article, what do you feel should, or should not be included. This is why I placed this discussion here, to get ideas for what should or shouldn't be included and to find out if ultimately the infobox should abandoned altogether. I certainly didn't want to create a monster with this infobox, and if it does turn into such, I will raise no objection to it's deletion. I merely wished to try and provide the template should it be deemed necessary and sufficient.MasterSearcy (talk) 22:58, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

She for spacecraft?

I am writing here to solicit other opinions on whether it is appropriate to refer to a spacecraft as "she". My impression is that most Wikipedia articles do not, and certainly most of the books and good-quality websites I read on this subject do not either. For ships (old-fashioned ships that sail on the sea) I think we use this pronoun; for aircraft and spacecraft, we would use "it" (even though there exist enthusiasts who would call probably any vehicle "she"). Am I right? --MarchOrDie (talk) 19:32, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

A gender neutral term is preferred.--Craigboy (talk) 10:10, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Co-branded communication satellites - what should I call them?

OK this is the problem of how to name the communication satellites in which the primary operator lease out a certain portion of the comsat's transponders to another operator, which then receives another name for the secondary operator. The problem is that - what name should I write in an article?

For example:

What should I call them in each of these cases? There are apparently even more complicated cases, but I want to deal with them one by one, so there you go for discussion!

Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 07:37, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

  • In all cases I've come across, I've used the name the owner (not lessor) uses, unless the whole satellite is leased. --W. D. Graham 13:42, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
  • I think WDGraham's approach is a good one. The owner of the property right in the satellite property makes the most sense. However, if a satellite is leased out completely, then it would made sense to use the lessees name. Cheers. N2e (talk) 02:51, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Good news

A flickr user took some excellent pictures of a recent Long March 2D launch and uploaded them under a wikicommon-friendly license. The reason I posted this here is because we very rarely get quality pictures of Chinese hardware on wikicommons so I just wanted to share these great pics with you guys.

--Craigboy (talk) 06:32, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Commercial spaceports

Commercial travel is becoming increasingly important to the industry, but I feel like our coverage is lacking. There are some issues I would like to bring to everyone's attention if I may.

It looks like there was a lot of excitement, among enthusiasts, at the start which died down after construction took longer than promised, as is always the case with large projects. Unfortunately, attention to the article has died down as well. The port is expected to become operational this coming year, yet the article still reads like a marginally organized collection of newspaper headlines, many out of date.
Also woefully out of date and nothing more than a lead paragraph. Spaceport Sweden is in a much earlier stage and obviously will have less to describe, but there have been many more developments since article creation than it shows. The article is not in a complete state, yet this year only saw two maintenance edits.
All stub and barely start class articles.

I have done some minor cleaning at Spaceport America, but it (along with the others) is still in need of much more attention.
—Sowlos (talk) 13:58, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Golden Spike Company

I'm hoping that some of those who participate with this wikiproject will help me out with this article. At the moment it is still just a stub, but I am anticipating that on Thursday, November 6th 2012 it will be crushed by a huge number of editors and people typically from outside of Wikipedia. If you could help out with maintaining some sanity on the article, watching over it for some blatant vandalism, and possibly requesting some assistance from administrators to semi-protect the article from vandalism, it would be appreciated.

On a personal note, I'm pretty excited about this company and the upcoming news conference about it. It is very possible that it could be something like Galactic Suite Design and be a bunch of vaporware, but I have my reasons to think it will be something much more substantial. If it falls flat on its face and the guys that I've been talking to "on the inside" are just feeding me a bunch of BS, then my concerns are perhaps alarmist. I'm just asking for folks who are regular editors to Wikipedia and have a clue about spaceflight issues to bookmark this article and keep it on your watchlist for a few days... at least until the edit wars calm down and it can fade into the background of an ordinary Wikipedia article. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:29, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Novosti Kosmonavtiki references

Just a quick heads up that Novosti Kosmonavtiki have re-done their website which has broken every link/reference we have to them. Sadly it looks like they've taken most of their early material down, but I suppose they could re-add it. NK is available through Eastview (although without the pictures) but having part articles and picture galleries free online was rather nice. Secretlondon (talk) 21:09, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried using the waybackmachine?--Craigboy (talk) 02:46, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I've found using checklinks in conjunction with this worked. I've not had time to find all articles and some are not in the wayback machine. It seems that none of the photos are :-( Secretlondon (talk) 08:27, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

RS/POV issues...

I have concerns about edits being made by User:Magneticlifeform. He appears to be adding large chunks of information from a self-written, self-published ebook that, judging by his comments here, may also involve POV issues as well as COI/RS. Somebody might want to take a look at what he's been adding to articles... - The Bushranger One ping only 08:58, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this to public attention.
  • His post does indicate he is citing self-published material
  • His post also indicates (even if his autobiographical narrative is true) he is not an established expert on the topic of the article as he gives a history of the rocket industry which would not meet the approval of the PR guys at the NASA history office.
  • The biographical information in his post and user page indicates a distinct bias against NASA.
  • The ebook in question appears to be M. D. Black, The Evolution of ROCKET TECHNOLOGY, p. 54, Native Planter, SLC, 2012, payloadz.com under ebook/History. Though I have not exhaustively investigated his contribution history, I observed him citing that as a source multiple times.
  • On the positive side, Magneticlifeform (talk · contribs) also cites mainstream sources. Perhaps he was simply unaware of the verifiability standards.
    —Sowlos 17:09, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Color pictures from space: priority disagreement?

I'm trying to catch up on Applications Technology Satellite, which I have a draft of improvements for that I'm finally getting around to finalizing and publishing. There are a bunch of novelty claims being made for various satellites in the series, and in particular the claim for ATS-3 that it took "the first color pictures of earth taken from synchronous altitude". Meanwhile we have DODGE, which is generally credited with taking color pictures of the whole earth first, albeit from a slightly lower orbit. Naturally some sources take off all the qualifiers. Are there other claims I need to reconcile with these, and which of these is prominent enough to gain notice in the article(s)? Mangoe (talk) 14:33, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I found another dueling-firsts claim in Gravity-gradient stabilization, which was actually DODGE's primary purpose. (There seemed to be a bit of misinfo in that stub, which I just corrected.) Anyway, the GGS article totally ignores DODGE (it probably was classified at the time?), and says some of the ATS satellites performed the first GGS experiments.JustinTime55 (talk)
DODGE wasn't classified; IIRC correctly its first color picture of the earth appeared in National Geographic. From what I can see there was an effort made towards GGS work at geosynchronous (or nearly so) altitudes in the mid 1960s of which DODGE was one piece and the early ATS models were another (and there were a couple of others). According to Gunter the first satellite to achieve GGS on purpose was Transit 5A. I need to do more work on GGS as well. Mangoe (talk) 19:56, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Space Launch Report

Is Space Launch Report considered a reliable source for verfiability of claims by most other editors of the WikiProject Spaceflight?

I'm not personally familiar with it, but ran into it today via a 2007 reference to it attempting to support a large number of claims in a table in the article Falcon (rocket family). It seems like a reasonable amount of the stuff in that website does not show where it came from, and that some amount of it is merely (apparently, quite intelligent) estimates and calculations based on information that has not necessarily been released by the launch vehicle manufacturers or the purchasers of launches. N2e (talk) 20:02, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

It may or may not strictly meet all of the more formal criteria for WP:RS, but it is a respected and trustworthy source. If it does not, I'd say that WP:IAR can reasonably be applied, and it is one of those sources that can be used as long as anything controversial can be reinforced by other sources. --W. D. Graham 00:45, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks very much for sharing your view on it, WDG. I went ahead and used the source to cite the Falcon Heavy specs in a table in the Falcon (rocket family) article, but did identify it as a tertiary source, which could be usefully improved later if we can find a secondary source to replace it. And Merry Christmas to you. N2e (talk) 13:47, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Audit of spaceflights

A couple of years ago I began, and then abandoned due to the size of the task, an attempt to audit articles about individual orbital spaceflights, in the interests of improving consistency, developing a common format, and clarifying where work was needed. I was wondering whether this is something which could be done by the project, possibly developing a checklist template for talk pages incorporating the B and C class criteria, and other things such as whether an article has an infobox, or needs a rewrite, etc. What do you think? --W. D. Graham 20:12, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

1960s spaceflight engineers and articles

Would anyone here be able to help answer a couple of questions about 1960s spaceflight articles?

  • (1) I recently created Jack James (rocket engineer) (who worked at JPL) and nominated it for DYK (see Template:Did you know nominations/Jack James (rocket engineer)). Any help with the issues raised there would be much appreciated. I got a little bit confused by the plethora of titles and positions held by those that worked at places like JPL and NASA... (Project Managers, various deputies, Assistant Laboratory Directors, and so on). I'm currently working on a draft article on his JPL colleague from the 1960s, Robert J. Parks, and hope to have that up tonight at some point. Both worked on the Mariner program among other things.
  • (2) One of the side issues is that the NSSDC page on Mariner 2 names James S. Martin as Project Manager. Presumably this is James Slattin Martin, Jr. who was Project Manager for the Viking program. Am I going completely crazy, or is the NSSDC page just wrong? My sources on Jack Norval James tell me that he was Project Manager for Mariner 2, not James S. Martin.
  • (3) On a more general note, starting from a few years ago and continuing for the next 10 years or so, there will be a lot of 50th anniversaries coming up. The one for Mariner 2 was earlier this month. Are there any plans here to get any of the relevant articles featured in time for the anniversary dates?

Any help or replies on the above, either here or elsewhere, would be great. Many thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 01:43, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

As regards (3) above, a "Spaceflight 50th Anniversaries Work Group" sounds like a good idea. Failing that, it is reasonably within the charter of the Timeline of Spaceflight work group.... (sdsds - talk) 08:46, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

TIROS Satellite Articles

I've noticed that many of the articles covering the TIROS satellite program have not been written and of those that were, many seem to have been written by a no longer active member User:Sir Jazer 13 whose research/written English skills may no longer meet the current article standards.

I've just partially re-written the article on the NOAA-B launch failure (For a comparison see:User:Sir Jazer 13/NOAA-B, for the original version.), but from the looks of things the whole section needs a going over to identify problem areas.Graham1973 (talk) 13:31, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

"English" astronauts

See WT:WikiProject England where a discussion on Category:English astronauts is occurring -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 07:33, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Psychological and sociological issues affecting expeditionary space missions

A very well-referenced submission is currently stuck at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Psychological_and_sociological_issues_affecting_expeditionary_space_missions ... any assistance would be appreciated. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Some discussion is at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#My article format: encyclopedic vs essay?. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:52, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I think it is probably an important and notable concept, and a worthwhile contribution to Wikipedia. That being said, it remains at this time rather essay-like. I tried to do a copyedit to the lead paragraph of one section of the article to make it more encyclopedic. If any other WP Spaceflight editors would be willing to do the same, then I think that would be quite helpful. It needs a good amount of additional copyediting, and a lot of key concepts referred to in the prose are not Wikilinked. Again, I tried to improve one paragraph with links as well.
There is one other issue that I picked up on only after I made my edits, and I have not yet commented on at the proposed-creation article Talk page. After reviewing the edit history, and the substantial number of edits made by a Wikipedia single-topic and newish editor with a similar name to one of the major sources for the article, I think there may be a potential conflict of interest issue as well. However, it should be noted that, from the Teahouse conversation at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#My article format: encyclopedic vs essay?, the editor is obviously participating in improving Wikipedia in good faith, and we should go out of our way to treat this new editor well. But that is yet another reason why a few more eyes and hands on this article would help improve it, a lot. Cheers. N2e (talk) 20:28, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport

Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport has been listed on the Template:Spaceport. According to its article, Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport is intended "for inhabitants of Jupiter who might wish to take sanctuary in Green River in the event their planet is threatened by collisions from comets or meteors". I don't wanna be a spoilsport, but is that what this template is for? Greater Green River is just another local airport, it's not used for space travel, it shouldn't be listed along the likes of the Kennedy Space Center and Baykonur. 83.80.170.157 (talk) 12:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I've removed this as absurd. A city council declaring it a spaceport does not make it so, especially when there is zero active or intended space-related activities there. It is merely a declared landing point for alien spacecraft. *ahem* — Huntster (t @ c) 23:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
I'd have to agree with this reasoning. If this "spaceport" had a license from the FAA-AST, that would at least be something worth noting and a rationale for listing in the template. There are some "spaceports" that similarly have almost no activity (Oklahoma comes to mind), but at least that formal recognition has taken place. Let's keep this silly stuff out of legitimate spaceflight activity. --Robert Horning (talk) 13:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Absolutely agree JustinTime55 (talk) 16:38, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Tiangong-2

According to this report [4] Tiangong-2 has been cancelled, and will instead be repurposed as the cargo transport it's descendents were supposed to become, and instead Tiangong-3 has become Tiangong-2, the station whose descendents were supposed to become modules of the large multimodule station.

So do we update the articles? (such as move Tiangong-2 to Tiangong-2 (cancelled) and move Tiangong-3 to Tiangong-2?)

-- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 12:50, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmmmm........ I think Morris is reading the presentation (http://www.kacstaerospace.org/2012/en/images/speakers/pdf/14-Liwei.pdf) incorrectly, as it was explicitly stated that TG-2 is slated for launch in 2014, and is defined as a "space lab". On the other hand the TG-3 moniker has disappeared, which seems to indicate that the future Chinese space station core module will come after TG-2.

So hold your horses just now....... ;)

Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 15:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

List of spaceflight records

Help would be appreciated with a certain table on this page which is badly out of date. See the talk page discussion, especially if you know how the table was auto-updating. Rmhermen (talk) 19:13, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review Requested

Greetings fellow spaceflight enthusiasts! Could y'all please review the articles I have created?

Fatigue and Sleep Loss During Spaceflight
Effects of Sleep Deprivation In Space
Treating An Ill or Injured Crew Member In Space
Illness and Injuries During Spaceflight
Spaceflight Radiation Carcinogenesis
Radiobiology evidence for protons and HZE nuclei
Epidemiology data for low-linear energy transfer radiation
Radiation carcinogenesis in past space missions
Visual Impairment and Intracranial Pressure
Risk of Renal Stone Formation
Team Composition and Cohesion In Spaceflight Missions
Intervertebral Disc Damage and Spaceflight

Jssteil (talk) 03:08, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I made a very quick initial review of the articles, and made an initial assessment of each of the articles for WikiProject Spaceflight. In general, all of them could use some work to rewrite the lede to make them comport with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section; as they stand right now, the ledes seem rather more like research paper abstracts or text from some NASA publication than solid encyclopedic ledes. The details provided on each topic are generally much better, and quite well-sourced. YMMV, but that was my first cut. N2e (talk) 05:32, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for taking a look at them, it is much appreciated! I will definitely work on the lead sections.
If any other users would like to review these articles and provide any input, that would be greatly appreciated as well.Jssteil (talk) 21:35, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Inspiration Mars Foundation

All the images used at Inspiration Mars Foundation except the logo, appear to be copyright violations. The source permission where listed doesn't appear to give permission. The logo itself doesn't appear at the official website, so appears to be an invention of the uploader. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 23:30, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I am looking for the original

Project Daedalus is the name chosen for the British Interplanetary Society's Starship study. - apparently this article from British Interplanetary Society, but I can not find the original. please help. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 10:01, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried contacting BIS?--Craigboy (talk) 01:09, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

NASA Publishing clearout

Just noticed this - NASA's publishing department are clearing out a large number of print histories for free (well, free plus $3 for shipping). One copy each and US only, but still pretty interesting! Andrew Gray (talk) 22:38, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Pretty amazing deal, there. Will have to check them out, but will see if digital copies are available first. — Huntster (t @ c) 01:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

US only - Damnit. Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 09:09, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
These are NASA publications, so in theory if one person were to get hold of each document and share it with everyone else digitally, that would be completely legal. Would any of our US editors be willing to help out? --W. D. Graham 11:30, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Most if not all probably are available digitally already (searching for SP-xxxx usually finds them), but it's often nicer to leaf through a print edition. :-) Andrew Gray (talk) 12:52, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
That was my initial interest if I'm honest. They'd be nice items to own. Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 13:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

template:Inspace

Should {{Inspace}} cover only articles "... in space" or should it also cover articles "space-based ..." ? -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:46, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of what you mean by "space-based"? Currently it does a reasonable job of "... in space" articles which would seem like it is serving it's purpose. Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 08:51, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Inspace&oldid=535619428 -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 23:15, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
In that case, "... in space" is perfectly suitable since the template is specifically about things in space rather than anything space-based. Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 08:39, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Regarding WikiProject:Indian Space Programme

Hello my dear co-editors!
Gaurav Pruthi and I have been thinking over starting a WikiProject for the Indian Space Programme. If you are interested in taking part in the discussion regarding the WikiProject, please do leave a message here.
Regards.
Jayadevp13 (talk) 14:31, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Please, please, please don't do that - this project was assembled out of several subprojects which were completely inactive due to a split editor base. Please simply join in the project work here, you'll be most welcome! SalopianJames (talk) 14:58, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with SalopianJames.--Craigboy (talk) 07:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Lunar mission list pages merger proposal

I was recently brought to the issue that there are FOUR pages dedicated to the list of lunar probes and missions:

To ensure that there is a clear list of missions on Wiki, I suggest to at least merge the first two and last two articles, with the first one dedicated to unmanned exploration of the Moon, and the second one to all kinds of lunar explorations. Perhaps even these two can be combined into one article.

Thoughts?

Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 03:50, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd already started work on a merger of list of lunar probes and list of current and future lunar missions, which has been proposed for a while. See User:WDGraham/List of missions to the Moon. I just haven't had time to reference it yet, so it hasn't gone live. --W. D. Graham 18:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
At first glance, the titles of the first two seem to indicate one focuses on Space probes and the other on Lunar rovers, but closer inspection reveals there is no such distinction in the content. They are all robots after all. Whether the result of an oversight or poor naming, they should be consolidated. However, I do understand the need for multiple pages when dealing with voluminous topics. Perhaps the two should collectively split amongst three articles, for orbiters/flybies, impactors/landers, and rovers (named appropriately).
The third, Exploration of the Moon, is the main article for Lunar exploration and should not have detailed information like comprehensive lists. That is what list articles are for. I say the whole timeline should be removed. Maybe a section highlighting some historically important missions could replace it (if anything).
The fourth, List of current and future lunar missions, does seem silly. Planned missions can be featured in "Future" sections of the lists. There are not enough to warrant a whole article.
—Sowlos 19:48, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I disagree with splitting by mission type. I do not feel that there have been enough missions to require this and types of missions can easily be distinguished in the list. --W. D. Graham 21:46, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I think there has. The list is already very long, which means it is becoming difficult for casual readers to find what they may be looking for and problematic in several ways for mobile devices.
What about a split by era?<P.S.>I won't make an issue of this if others don't agree, but at some point there will be no choice.</P.S.>
—Sowlos 06:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Spacelaunch orbital inclinations and tradeoffs as a function of launch location

Where on Wikipedia might one find an explication of "Spacelaunch orbital inclinations and tradeoffs from various launch locations"? I've looked around a plethora of articles, in Category:Astrodynamics and space launch (e.g., Orbital spaceflight and have not been able to find anything. I would assume that there are tradeoffs in extra propellant required to achieve LEO orbits of various inclinations from various launch latitudes. So not sure if Wikipedia does not describe this at present or if I'm just looking in all the wrong places. N2e (talk) 16:01, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

The article on spaceports has a section on placement consideration that explains what goes into picking a launch site. It doesn't really go into detail on the additional delta-v required to achieve desired inclinations when launching from higher latitudes, though.  — daranz [ t ] 20:49, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks very much Daranz. I took a look there and there's not much on the main part of what I'm asking here. I guess that it looks like Wikipedia may just not, at present, cover this topic very well. This is a bit surprising as there seem to be a lot of fairly geeky, equation-driven orbital mechanics and astrodynamics material covered in a fair number of other articles -- just little to nothing on the energy needed (or delta V, or whatever metric of merit is appropriate) to achieve orbits of various inclinations from various latitudes of terrestrial launch locations. N2e (talk) 06:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Spacefaring

Hello. Could someone try to fix the article on spacefaring? It is presently tagged as OR. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 04:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

NASA Technical Reports server is down

It had to happen sooner or later (typical government SNAFU!) NASA apparently has been neglecting to make sure what it posts isn't in violation of US export control law (ironic). We're dependent on this for much citation. Probably a dumb question, but is there anything we can do (besides wait)? JustinTime55 (talk) 20:31, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

This appears to have been purely a political issue (described as "knee-jerk") pushed by a congressman in response to a security breach. See http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=40365 and http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/03/ntrs_dark.html for some more information. Sadly, given the vast amount of information contained, it could be a very long time before this material is made available to the public again. Which is a shame, since most/all of it is public domain and belongs to the people. (Sorry, my irritation over this issue is getting harder to contain.) — Huntster (t @ c) 21:35, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like a case for the Internet Archive. Or alternatively following WP:DEADLINK until heads return to where the sun shines. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:07, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Given the current governmental contraction and "security concerns" in the US, it might be a while before we see it come back on-line if ever.
Sounds like a case for the Internet Archive.
"Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived. It doesn't seem to be available on the live web, either."
If no one else archived any of this, a lot of articles may be screwed.  —Sowlos  23:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Ouch. Are these copies of actual physical reports? In that case, the articles are fine - sources aren't required to exist on the Web, after all. - The Bushranger One ping only 23:25, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Many, if not all, of the reports on NTRS (especially older ones) were originally published in paper form, and are likely still available in library or university collections. Just because a link goes dead does not mean the citation is invalid. Our articles are not screwed in the least. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
While access to sources need not be easy, references need to be verifiable. WP:SOURCEACCESS If physical forms were published but are now out of print and only accessible in libraries that still hold them, I fear such sources may not be adequate.
If it is a case-by-case issue, then we still have a mess.  —Sowlos  11:21, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
The difficulty of ability of access to the sources is irrelevant; the fact that the sources exist and can be checked, regardless of how difficult the checking actually is, is what matters - which is what WP:SOURCEACCESS acutally says. - The Bushranger One ping only 01:52, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
"...some online sources may require payment, while some print sources may only be available in university libraries." Difficulty of access is irrelevant, but access must be provided. If your only hope of examining a source is to find a library that hasn't thrown it out (yet), how is that accessible?  —Sowlos  21:12, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Sacknoff Prize for Space History

I spotted this announcement today -

First awarded in 2011, the annual prize is designed to encourage students to perform original research and submit papers with history of spaceflight themes. The winner receives a $300 cash prize, a trophy, and the possible publication in the journal, Quest: The History of Spaceflight. It is open to undergraduate and graduate level students enrolled at an accredited college or university. (...)
Although works must be historical in character, they can draw on disciplines other than history, eg. cultural studies, literature, communications, economics, engineering, science, etc. Comparative or international studies of the history of spaceflight are encouraged. Possible subjects include, but are not limited to, historical aspects of space companies and their leaders; the social effects of spaceflight; space technology development; the space environment; space systems design, engineering, and safety; and the regulation of the space business, financial, and economic aspects of the space industry.

- and thought it might be of interest to some contributors here! The restriction is students only, but it otherwise appears to be international. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Soviet space program/me categories

A discussion at CFD may be of interest to the project. - The Bushranger One ping only 10:58, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Mars categories under proposal to merge

Category:Mars spacecraft has been proposed to be merged to Category:Missions to Mars, see WP:CFDALL -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 07:46, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Category:Mars Exploration Rover and Category:Mars expedition

Category:Mars Exploration Rover and Category:Mars expedition have shown up at WP:CFDALL for renaming and deletion, respectively. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:49, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Skylab 2 crew walkout.png

file:Skylab 2 crew walkout.png has been nominated for deletion -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:14, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

It's been moved to commons. See here.--Craigboy (talk) 07:28, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Some discussion on how to classify orbital launches that aren't full successes

I am involved in a discussion with User:C1010 on how to put the outcome of a certain launch in here (specifically the Proton/Briz-M failure last December, in which the satellite was able to reach the correct orbit by itself). We currently disagree on whether it should be called a "partial failure" or a "launch anomaly" (see User talk:C1010 and User talk:Galactic Penguin SST). This is surely an interesting case that deserves more comments, as there are even more borderline cases that are difficult to classify (e.g. the Falcon 9 last October), so I think some kind of input from others are needed.

Thoughts? Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 03:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

IMHO, if the payload is successfully delivered, it's a "launch anomaly", not a "failure". - The Bushranger One ping only 03:45, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Interesting indeed, especially taking into account that the SpaceX 9 launch which put the CRS-1 mission in orbit required a Space Launch Report due to the Orbcomm situation, and thus apparently is being classified as a launch failure. The only source I can find that specifically states this is http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falcon9.html, but I also recall that this was mentioned in a SpaceX press conference during CRS-2. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:01, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
This might be of interest to the discussion. Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 04:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, this is a very important topic, and we really ought to get some WProjectSpaceflight guideline/policy/whatever on it. I don't have time to delve into it just now, but am glad that Galactic Penguin SST brought it up. Where is the best place to have this discussion? Here? Or on the other article Talk pages that GPSST mentioned? N2e (talk) 04:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Given that this may affect all list of launches of various rockets, rather than one single list, this seems to be the best place for such a discussion. Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 06:28, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
I like "Launch Anomaly" better than "Partial Failure" for the reasons I explained here. C1010 (talk) 09:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
The odd deployment of the TDRS on STS-6 comes to mind here... SalopianJames (talk) 16:59, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Partial failure is the more widespread term. I've also seen partial success used - particularly by parties involved in the launch. Anomaly is a more general term covering everything from outright failure ("we have had an anomaly") up to something off-nominal that has no effect on the mission such as the Delta IV problem last year. --W. D. Graham 22:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
I can go with launch anomoly, partial failure, or partial success for the general problem. But I do think there is yet another quite-related topic to consider—which I'll put in the {outdent} below. N2e (talk) 19:53, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I think we also need to discuss how to handle secondary payloads in Wikipedia articles,' and how to do so in a manner that is comparable across launch-related articles. Since primary payload purchaser contracts for the mission, and gets the launch window choice, inclination, limitation-rules-on-secondary-payloads, etc., it seems we create a non-comparable situation if we treat failures on the secondary payloads with the same weight as the primary.

Thought experiment: If many Atlas V and Delta IV launches accept only primary payloads, while SpaceX chooses to support the secondary launch market on a greater percentage of their Falcon 9 and/or Falcon Heavy launches, it seems to me that the secondary launch purchaser is signing a contract, and paying much less price per unit of payload than the primary launch purchaser, in order to buy a service with some accepted probability of not being successful based on restrictions put on the mission by the primary slot purchasers, precisely because that price is so low.

(thought experiment continued:) If then, on the actual mission, the secondary payload doesn't get the "best-case"/"optimal"/"nominal" placement they hoped for, but they do get what was contracted for, and paid for, because they accepted that lower probability of success in the contractual terms they signed up for, then who are we, as Wikipedia editors, to call it a failure?

I realize of course that we on Wikipedia should be subject to verifiability (not truth) and use the info we have in secondary sources; but when those sources offer both explanations, as I saw on the case of SpaceX CRS-1 last fall, I don't think Wikipedia should go "black and white" on the way we show the launch success in our tables, etc. Cheers. N2e (talk) 20:11, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately there are not a lot of such cases - usually it's either all payloads lost or all payloads delivered. There's at least one case that one of the multiple payloads failed to separate from the upper stage during the past decade (an Russian Kosmos-3M launch), and an early Ariane 5 launch stranded two satellites in an unusable orbit, but one of them was able to reach its planned orbit through ion thrusters. Both, IIRC, are marked as "partial successes/failures" in various sources I have seen. However both are more serious than the Falcon 9 case, which I think is the most difficult one to classify. My opinion: currently such small secondary payloads aren't flown at such a high rate that such an issue would be seen frequently (not yet anyway :P), and I propose that such rare cases can be dealt with using a modified method for describing launch outcomes, which I shall propose one later today. Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 05:10, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Cool, I look forward to your proposal. N2e (talk) 11:40, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Much of this seems to fall into the original research realm that it becomes very subjective. The situation with the CRS-1 flight would be similar to something like baseball statistics with an asterisk: It indicates that some further information is needed to explain what happened. STS-93 is another example of a launch problem where a less than ideal mission happened, yet most of the mission objectives were achieved and certainly a loss of vehicle event didn't happen. Note that on 1999 in spaceflight STS-93 is listed as a successful flight... where perhaps it really shouldn't be or at least should have some sort of flag or note with some further information listed.
The situation really does come from a moving yardstick here, where in previous generations of spacecraft a failure like the ones described in the borderline cases above (STS-93, CRS-1, and the Proton/Briz-M... as well as other similar flights) would simply have resulted in a loss of vehicle event due to problems found in the launch systems. Vehicles are becoming more robust over time as the technology for building these vehicles mature, so I think situations like this will become more common in the future. I agree that verifiability should be the rule here, but then you come up with what happens when different sources even conflict with regards to the success or failure of a launch? All of these "borderline" launches would seem to have conflicting sources as to if they are a failure or success as well so it does become a policy question here. For article composition it isn't a problem as even using the term "success" or "failure" could be seen as a weasel word to be avoided, but for lists and abbreviated summaries that can be much more difficult and seems to be the source of problems here. --Robert Horning (talk) 22:45, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, verifiability is key, but when we have different sources saying different things, and especially on secondary payloads where the signed contract between the two parties defines probabilistic conditions under which the secondary will or will not be released. So I think we will need to get to something here that modifies our existing WikiProject Spaceflight Launch Article GUIDELINES. N2e (talk) 11:40, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Assessment backlog

We seem have a backlog of assessments dating back to 2011.

List of Assessment

I don't feel I have enough information on hand to do these myself (In fact I posted three of them so I'm barred from doing so)

Anyone willing to clear this list? Graham1973 (talk) 10:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Possible Wiki Free-usage rationale problem for several space institutions logos in various articles

Someone pointed out a problem with Free-usage rationale for several logos of various space institutions (e.g. Roscosmos, ISRO etc.) in the pages Exploration of the Moon and Exploration of Mars. Since I am not well versed with copyright on Wiki, can someone take a look and see what should be done? Thanks!

Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 01:33, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Note that those talk page posts were 7-8 months ago, and at this point, none of the icons are actually used under fair-use (that I could see). Regarding individual icons, the Roscosmos logo is covered by "PD-RU-exempt". The ESA icon in use is tagged "cc-by-sa-3.0" (as it was self-made), but could just as easily be "PD-textlogo". The ISRO icon is tagged as "PD-textlogo", and I think I'd agree with that...it's pretty uncomplicated, and is definitely the only one of the group that is questionable, in my opinion. It could simply be changed to the Indian flag, if desired. If there is a concern about any given graphic file, then it should be submitted to Deletion requests on Commons, since all are hosted there; if you do, please let me know, as I'd like to follow the discussion. — Huntster (t @ c) 07:01, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
I have tentatively reverted these two edits:
Link 1
Link 2
Please see if something is wrong with his rationale or with the article.
Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 13:47, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Setting aside the legal issues, I think there is something else that needs to be addressed, which is why these images are in these articles in the first place. Originally we had flags, but then somebody decided that because the flag of Europe is also used by the EU, which is not Europe, it could not be used in case it made people think that ESA was an EU institution, and hence it was changed - first to the ESA logo and then later to a free-use image resembling it. From there it seems, without any discussion that I can find, somebody applied the logic that since ESA used a logo, everything else should too, and changed all the others. The flags were present in the articles as distinctive and recognisable images to identify the nationality of the agencies in question. Changing these to logos completely defeats the purpose of including them in the first place - they are not recognisable (with the possible exception of the NASA logo, the average user would not be able to identify or differentiate icon-sized images of the logos of various space agencies), and they have absolutely no relation to the nationalities of the organisations. I propose that we change them back to flags. --W. D. Graham 15:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Huh it looks like WDGraham nailed it - flags are just more useful than spaceflight organization logos for identifying the country in charge of the mission. ESA is a special case and can be handled perfectly with the word logo.
Any comments?
Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 16:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
I see no problem with using the ESA ball, Roscosmos logo, and JAXA wordmark...they are major agencies and should be fairly recognisable to folks, especially since they link to their respective agencies. I have no problem with using country flags for lesser known entities...CNSA and ISRO logos aren't so recognisable. Singling out the NASA meatball as the sole logo to use seems oddly U.S.-centric, but conversely I would avoid using the Europe flag as probably less recognisable than the ESA ball. — Huntster (t @ c) 20:00, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
I do not support the continued use of the NASA logo in this article - I was arguing that despite it being well known, it still shouldn't be included because most of the others aren't. I disagree about the ESA and JAXA logos; they add absolutely nothing since they are just the names of the agencies rendered in their fonts of choice, displayed right next to the same names in text. Roskosmos might be well known but its logo isn't, the only way a non-expert would identify it is if they happened to speak Russian and make out the text part - given that the logo is 24 pixels wide with light grey text on a slightly lighter background, this is not plausible. I really don't like the idea of using flags for agencies whose logos are not recognisable and logos for the rest - this would look ridiculous and serve no useful purpose so we might as well give the articles some degree of internal consistency. I think we should either have all flags (including or excluding ESA), or remove them completely --W. D. Graham 23:32, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Well, I obviously disagree, but let's see what other opinions are before we act one way or another. I do believe you're not giving readers enough credit in terms of logo recognition, but that's an opinion, of course. Also, there is an English version of the Roscosmos icon, should that be more desirable. — Huntster (t @ c) 01:40, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
I've set up an experiment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight\RTest to see how identifiable they are, and posted on the Village Pump asking some uninvolved editors to participate. That said, the second issue is even if the logos are identifiable what do they add to the articles given that the names of the agencies are provided anyway? --W. D. Graham 10:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Only indirectly related, but probably worth a few other editors starting to think about this with me. Many, many spaceflight articles and lists use the flag icons of nation states, and the icons (or flags) of national space agencies. However, after the first six decades in space we are beginning to see private, non-governmental space initiatives (e.g., Mars One, Google Lunar X-Prize, Golden Spike Company, etc.) and even, broadly considered, space "programs" (e.g., the SpaceX private and self-funded initiatives to go to Mars or develop reusable rocket technology). It seems to me to be POVish to use national flags for these private efforts, even though private companies typically have HQs in one country or another. If you have thoughts, let me know. Or feel free to move this to a new Talk page section if you think that would be more appropriate. Cheers. N2e (talk) 22:17, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. I have always failed to see the problem with using a flag in this situation. To use an analogy, in 2012–13 UEFA Champions League the Spanish flag appears beside Barcelona and Real Madrid's entries, however this does not mean that these football clubs are associated with the Spanish government. ----W. D. Graham(editing from a public network) 06:53, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Well then, thanks for thinking about it. Looks like we'll just have to disagree on that one for now. Seems explicitly POV to represent non-national global initiatives like Mars One and the Google Lunar Prizes as national US efforts, but I totally understand that your mileage may vary. N2e (talk) 01:00, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
The other option would be to remove the flags/logos completely, and replace them with a text description. It would take up more space, but be a lot clearer and not open to interpretation. --W. D. Graham 07:52, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

USCV-1

Hello old Spaceflight friends!

I recently read this article regarding USCV-1, the first commercial crew mission for NASA. It has some good information that could be used across the WP articles covering CCDev, and most importantly, has an actual mission name :) I leave it here for you folks to work with (there may even be enough information to start the USCV-1 article), as I am no longer very active as an editor.

Cheers! --WingtipvorteX PTT ∅ 14:03, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd say we should create an article about the USCV programme itself, but since we don't even know which spacecraft will be flying USCV-1 yet, it is probably too early to start an article. --W. D. Graham 07:53, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Inspiration Mars Foundation

File:Inspiration Mars Foundation working logo.png

The logo we're using now, and the variants of it available on Commons, do not appear on the IMFoundation flickerstream or its website. Do we have any evidence this is actually the logo? -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 09:14, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

The image description says it's 'own work' by EricMachmer on Commons as a 'working concept'. I suspect this image is simply outdated. Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 09:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
The problem is, is that it is unreferenced, so falls afoul of WP:OR and WP:V. If neither their flickerstream nor their website use it, then it also can be considered inaccurate, as it isn't the logo that the foundation uses, so shouldn't be in the infobox, it should be in the history section. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Then be bold and change it Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 13:05, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
 DoneIt appears to have been fixed by someone now; entirely new image/logo is on the article. N2e (talk) 04:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Except the new logo, which is on Commons, appears to be a copyvio. - The Bushranger One ping only 05:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Template:Cubesats2012

{{Cubesats2012}} has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 23:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

MAVEN (spacecraft)

MAVEN (spacecraft) has been proposed to be renamed, see talk:MAVEN (spacecraft) -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 12:00, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

NTRS is back online

Although not all documents are there.--Craigboy (talk) 23:00, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Infobox standardisation

The discussion about WikiData finally gave me enough motivation to put forward a loosely-related proposal that I've been meaning to bring up for a while, but haven't got around to. We currently have about five infobox templates doing essentially the same thing: our main infobox is {{Infobox spacecraft}}, but there's also {{Infobox space mission}} which is a mess of redundant parameters and mostly used for manned missions, {{Infobox space telescope}} which has an over-detailed instruments section optimised for astronomical missions, {{Infobox cargo spacecraft}} which is a derivative of infobox spacecraft optimised for cargo missions to space stations, and finally {{Infobox space expedition}} for resident crews aboard space stations. Each of these have slight formatting differences, and varying syntax. I believe that we would be better off with a single, standardised and simplified template. I also think we should remove the cargo and instruments sections from the infoboxes in favour of covering them in the article body. I've drawn up a prototype at User:WDGraham/Infobox spaceflight - this is a work in progress, and I'm still testing it to find and fix bugs, but I would welcome some feedback on a) whether you would support standardisation and b) how the prototype looks/works, and c) what should be changed. --W. D. Graham 20:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I like standardisation. I think I'd still like to be able to say in an infobox that a satellite has a infrared telescope of x diameter, if that's really what it consists of. I could see that the instrument section could get too much detail, but I think for simple craft at least it seems quite important. I would always cover it in the body too, but I'd cover most of the text in the infobox in the body.Secretlondon (talk) 21:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
It would be fairly easy to add parameters for instruments to the new box if necessary; its just that such sections could get very long for large spacecraft, and since we're looking to standardise, we should be trying to encourage consistency between articles on larger and smaller spacecraft. What parameters would you be looking to retain for instruments? --W. D. Graham 22:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I've been thinking about the Soviet satellites I write about that really only have one instrument, something like Kosmos 2479 which is pretty much an infrared telescope in space. For complex modern craft we can talk about it in the article, but if it is just an orbiting telescope I think the infobox should mention the telescope. However I think this is much less important than standardising parameters and linking in with wikidata. Secretlondon (talk) 23:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I've not really answered your question - it would be one parameter which would be free-form text. It would be used when a craft has one main instrument. Secretlondon (talk) 23:07, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I'd also like to throw my support behind this project. Having a single template that can be reconfigured in this way would much simplify editing.Graham1973 (talk) 01:36, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Seems like a good proposal. I'm for anything that supports clarity and simplification, as it is, some of the infoboxes are on the confusing side with way too many parameters that don't apply, which only encourages editors who may not know what a field/parm is for to use it "incorrectly."
I put incorrectly inside quotes because it is often hard to know. Maybe we should ensure that some brief instructions are left for the editor on appropriate use, inside the template, possibly as hidden comments. Good luck. N2e (talk) 11:38, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
It should go without saying that clear, useful instructions need to be provided in the /doc page that goes with every template.
And I have another comment: I believe it should be called Template:Infobox space flight. The difference may seem trivial, but I think this is clearer usage; the compound word spaceflight refers to the business of flying in space, while space flight clearly refers to a single flight in space, which is the intent of this template. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
I disagree; both "spaceflight" and "space flight" are correct terms for both meanings, however in both contexts "space flight" is somewhat archaic and "spaceflight" is the most common term. --W. D. Graham 16:39, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Since the response seems to have been positive, I've moved it to Template:Infobox spaceflight (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) to begin rolling it out. I've added back the instrument and transponder sections, and I'll restore the cargo section for applicable articles. Kosmos 1484 is the first article with the new infobox. --W. D. Graham 15:53, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks good. Few thoughts: I like end of mission, but wonder if we should have start of mission. I've been trying to do GLONASS satellites and they have a published start date that is obviously after their launch date. I've also been wondering how to handle satellite names/numbers - Kosmos 2456 is known in GLONASS as 730. I've put it in mission identifier but that's not quite right - maybe it belongs in name? Secretlondon (talk) 19:18, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
I've added a new field, "entered_service", to cover this. Could be useful for GOES too, those things can spend years in orbit before they are brought into the operational constellation.
Infobox spacecraft's mission_identifier field was (I think) supposed to be for a mission patch/insignia, but it was hardly ever used. I put the "spacecraft" field into the new template to handle serial numbers - so I would use "|spacecraft=Uranan-M No.730" in the new template. (By the way, it says 733 in the article) --W. D. Graham 01:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. These articles need to be made by script really, humans make too many errors.. Secretlondon (talk) 10:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I used a semi-automated program when I wrote the DS articles. I was about halfway through before I realised I'd put the Perigee and Apogee in the wrong way around... --W. D. Graham 23:42, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Template:Infobox cargo spacecraft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is no more. --W. D. Graham 00:08, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

File:All PZT Mach effect thruster test unit.jpg

File:All PZT Mach effect thruster test unit.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 07:53, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata

I'd like to scope out how we might use wikidata in project infoboxes. It would seem a good thing to use for satellite articles. I'm not finding wikidata guidelines massively helpful. There's Wikidata infoboxes task force. I think we would have terms for satellites (similar to planets), and events for missions - could we have the same in one infobox? I've asked on the wikidata wiki for advice. Secretlondon (talk) 09:58, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually Russian wiki seems to have started. There are wikidata objects for COSPAR ID, launch vehicle and SCN. We have Kosmos 419, although I don't think it's used in the article. Secretlondon (talk) 11:59, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Wikidata space proposal Secretlondon (talk) 12:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
I am brand new to Wikidata and don't yet have a full appreciation for how Wikidata should be used, or how it will be used. Having said that, I think that it willcould have a major effect on spaceflight-related articles. Therefore, it seems to me that it is important that and that WikiProject Spaceflight editors from the English Wikipedia Spaceflight project get over there and participate in the creation and delineation of the data element tables that will could very well affect us in a big way over time. I just did so, for the first time, today. N2e (talk) 14:15, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
After reading WDGraham's comments, I've moderated my comments above. I have no idea if the existence of Wikidata—and the emergent use of it on Wikipedia—will be a good thing or not. I'm pretty sure that we will have to deal with it, one way or the other. It is probably one of those things where we can do so proactively, or else we may get hit with reacting to its use later on. N2e (talk) 23:46, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
While it is useful for things such as interwikis, I have huge misgivings about using WikiData for actual article content. Firstly, there are certain areas where sources conflict and as a result disagreements or disputes can arise. This is hard enough to resolve for one site with one language, so on a multilingual project that's going to be a clusterf**k. Secondly, I'm not entirely sure how the referencing system works, but it seems very user-unfriendly, and I suspect that this will encourage lazy referencing. I don't know if you can put a {{cn}} tag on WikiData... Thirdly there's the question of dialect: for example, someone has put an entry on the Mars 7 page that it is "part of" the "Mars program", however our article on Mars 7 is written in British English (where the spelling is "programme"), so is that going to force the WikiData editor's dialect preference on all associated articles? Finally, I cannot, for example, correct the "launch vehicle" field on the Kosmos 419 page to say "Proton-K/D", and if I could I'm pretty sure it would mess up the linking - and if we were to put in separate fields for rocket and upper stage, how could we put that into the infobox?
That said, I feel there are a select few fields in Template:Infobox spacecraft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) which could benefit from its use: Launch date/time (in UTC per last October's discussion - this would actually help standardisation), landing time/date (if applicable), possibly reentry date, SATCAT number, International Designation (as long as editors agree to avoid ridiculous anachronistic designations such as 1957-001B for Sputnik 1, and pseudo-designations like 2013-F01A for Intelsat 27), and orbital parameters for satellites which are in their operational orbits. --W. D. Graham 20:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
In short, I think we should limit the use of WikiData to situations where there can be absolutely no possible scope for ambiguity, interpretation, preference or dispute. Mostly quantitative ones... --W. D. Graham 20:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
WD -- I've moderated my comments above, based on the perfectly plausible rationale you presented. How do you suggest we, WikiProject Spaceflight, respond to this new capability in the Wikiworld? Is there something we should do to attempt to develop a broader consensus, or maybe test some limited subset of it on a few articles, or what? Cheers. N2e (talk) 23:46, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
I've been playing with it on Kosmos 2485. I think we have the basis of a satcat with this, though we lose some detail. Secretlondon (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I've added Proton-K/D to Kosmos 419. You do it by having more than one entry for launch vehicle. I've also added various pads in Baikonur and Plesetsk to deal with the problem with losing detail. Secretlondon (talk) 17:59, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

—There has been quite a lot of activity over on Wikidata with respect to these proposals, and few English Wikipedians are weighing in. I fear we may get some badly thought-out and poorly-designed Wikidata data elements if more Spaceflight-interested editors don't get over there and begin to offer input. Cheers. N2e (talk) 02:39, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

File:Jiuquan Satellite Lauch Center assembly tower, China.JPG

commons:File:Jiuquan Satellite Lauch Center assembly tower, China.JPG has been deleted, so, articles using File:Jiuquan Satellite Lauch Center assembly tower, China.JPG will need to be fixed either by replacement image or removal of the image link. -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 06:12, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

50 images from the Science Museum collection

Hi

I'm the Wikimedian in Residence for the Natural History Museum and Science Museum in London. The Science Museum have agreed to release 50 of it's images (at a medium resolution) under a Wikimedia compatible license. The 2 websites that the images would be available from are:

I'm hoping this is the start of something larger but could just be a one off so am trying to come up with a most wanted list.

I've started a list of images to release on my talk page, please feel free to add to it, I'd like to get over 50 so if there are any problems we still have a good list.

--Mrjohncummings (talk) 10:39, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

William pogue.jpg

file:William pogue.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 04:24, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

RedSea.jpg

image:RedSea.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 06:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Transferred to Commons under the same name. Thanks IP for finding the source. — Huntster (t @ c) 08:36, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Bot Request

I've requested approval for a new bot to replace PALZ9000 in updating orbital elements - PALZ was operated by Penyulap and has become defunct since he has been blocked. I would welcome the project's input on the proposal - Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AstRoBot. --W. D. Graham 16:35, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

An editor has deleted nearly all my contributions from Manned missions to Mars and for the Mars project

Just want to draw your attention to this. He won an AfD against me for my article on concerns for an early Mars sample return, and declared that it was his intention to remove all my contributions from the Mars project, which he has now done (removed nearly all).

For details of what he has deleted so far (along with one other editor), see User talk:Robertinventor#Other sections deleted by the opposing editor

See also: Contamination Concerns section - how it came about as a response to a request to restore balance to an article perceived by other editors as imbalanced

I believe this amounts to censorship of wikipedia as there is now, as far as I know, no mention in the Mars Project of concerns about forward contamination issues for Mars, hardly any mention of backward contamination concerns (and that biased), and no mention of recent research since Phoenix in 2008 on the possibility for present day habitability of the surface of Mars for micro-organisms. Robert Walker (talk) 10:38, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

He is now proposing to remove all discussion of interplanetary contamination issues throughout wikipedia except for the one article on planetary protection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Interplanetary_contamination#Merger_proposal_III

In the material I wrote so far (now all deleted) I often had to summarize a paper or a chapter in a book in a single sentence or a few sentences at most, there is so much on it. Robert Walker (talk) 08:33, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

File:STS068-258-80 Sydney.jpg

File:STS068-258-80 Sydney.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 03:20, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

File transferred to Commons. Thanks for providing the source, 76.65. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:21, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
You're welcome, though, I would say that "NASA STS068-258-80" is a sufficient source to avoid have it tagged for deletion in the first place. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:16, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Dragon COTS badges

the copyright status of image:SpaceX Dragon COTS Demo 1 logo.png , image:CRS SpX-1 emblem.png , image:SpaceX COTS 2 emblem.png are under discussion, see WP:NFCR -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:20, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Viking spacecraft biological experiments#Labeled Release, i.e. Life on Mars claimed to have been discovered

Can someone add more views to that section? Smacks of WP:FRINGE. It's currently mostly based on Levin's publications. A search in Google Books finds plenty of material... Someone not using his real name (talk) 21:24, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Interkosmos patch for GDR Cosmonauts.svg

image:Interkosmos patch for GDR Cosmonauts.svg is being discussed at NFCR, see WP:NFCR -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Apollo 16 rover stills from video

The copyright status of some Apollo 16 images is up for discussion at WP:NFCR. The images are:

-- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:35, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Infobox (spaceflight) standardization

I just gave W.D. some feedback on his phase 1 rollout on Template talk:Infobox spaceflight. I hope I'm not the only one here who cares about the early manned missions. Could y'all check it out and maybe weigh in? Thanks. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:46, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Replied. I think part of the problem here is that those Gemini articles are at phase 1 - not yet fully converted. They'll be my first priority once I've reconfigured the conversion tool for Infobox Space Mission, in the meantime if you want to revert to the old infobox I haven't got a problem with that - in fact it would probably make conversion easier with the new tool. --W. D. Graham 22:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
I've also replied. I would have commented sooner on standardization but I've just been too spread out between work, home and other projects.--Craigboy (talk) 11:48, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Hello,
Please note that Unmanned spaceflight, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
Delivered by Theo's Little Bot at 00:06, 5 August 2013 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

AstRoBot update/input wanted

AstRoBot has now entered trial, for now editing the four pages worked by Penyulap's bot up until it was blocked. Are there any other pages (some of the major observatories, perhaps), which could benefit from being included in the trial? Adding a small number of pages to the trial would be useful as it would give a clearer picture of how the bot is working. --W. D. Graham 18:59, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposed additions to trial

Further to my last post, I would like to propose adding the following articles to the AstRoBot trial:

--W. D. Graham 12:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
Seems reasonable. I watch most of these, and will add the rest to help observe. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:56, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
USA-240 and IRIS were added successfully, will add the others over the next 2-4 weeks. --W. D. Graham 07:28, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

PlanetEarth.jpg

image:PlanetEarth.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:42, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Launch Complex Items

The mod 4 sequencer used in LC 16 is operational at the Space Walk of Fame Museum in Titusville FL. The consoles from LC 36A are also at the SWOF. Also an Air Force report detailing costs and other items about the various LCs. 97.68.139.157 (talk) 15:59, 17 August 2013 (UTC) G McLain 17 Aug 013

Missing topics page

I have updated Missing topics about astronomy and other space-related topics - Skysmith (talk) 08:55, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Infobox space expedition

see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 August 30#Template:Infobox space expedition. Frietjes (talk) 17:00, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

NTRS Documents

It's looking like a lot of the NTRS links taken down after the security scare have been restored.Graham1973 (talk) 03:54, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know which documents you're looking for, but I believe many from the Gemini / Apollo era (and probably Mercury too) are still missing. Would they have been recataloged (different URL's)? JustinTime55 (talk) 21:18, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
It seems to be running in tranches, so it may be that they've not yet returned. I don't think there's any obvious reasons the URLs would have changed, but it might be worth running a search again for a couple of examples in case they did. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:37, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:Launching/Falcon

Template:Launching/Falcon (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion. The issue brought up has applicability to all Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Launching templates -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 07:39, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

There's nothing to worry about here, just a new editor who didn't understand how to handle this template. — Huntster (t @ c) 13:48, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

SpaceHub Southeast Logo.png

image:SpaceHub Southeast Logo.png has been nominated for deletion -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 09:28, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

SpaceHub Southeast

I converted SpaceHub Southeast (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) from Indian English to American English, because this is an American company based out of Atlanta, Georgia. If you think that MOS:RETAIN is more important than MOS:TIES, feel free to revert me. -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 09:31, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Date format issue

Could someone possibly provide a third opinion on a discussion ongoing on Talk:Intelsat 5 regarding date formats in the article. --W. D. Graham 16:47, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Automating launch tags

Somebody has just gone through and removed all of the pre-embedded {{launching}} tags from articles. It's not the first time this has happened, and there have been a few other problems with the preembedded tags as well - sometimes pages get missed in an update, and the tag shows on the wrong rocket or launch pad, or an old payload which was launched years ago and never detagged. I'd like to propose automating the process. I'm thinking put a parameter on the template page to set how far in advance of a launch it is shown - defaulting to around a week - and have the AstRoBot place the templates on the articles linked to from the template - possibly with additional whitelist and blacklist sections in template so if a less-relevant page is linked it won't get tagged, or a relevant page isn't linked then it will still get tagged. Then, a day after the specified launch time, the bot can remove the templates - with some way to override this in the event of a delay, and perhaps a longer wait if the launch fails. It's just a vague idea at the moment; I'd be happy to code it and open a BRFA if people thing it's a good idea; does anyone have any input? --W. D. Graham 15:37, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

To clarify the process for, say a Delta IV launch from SLC-6:
  1. A user updates {{Launching/Delta (Vandenberg)}}
  2. Seven days (or a predefined period) before the launch, AstRoBot adds {{Launching/Delta (Vandenberg)}} to the top of each article linked in the description on that template
  3. The launch occurs
  4. Noticing that the template hasn't been updated to reflect a delay (or it has been edited to confirm a launch/failure has occurred), the bot removes the templates from the articles 24 hours after launch.
  5. If the launch fails, the bot will wait longer (time to be discussed, or until some kind of "remove=yes" parameter is set on the template
  6. If the launch is delayed, some kind of parameter can be set on the template to prevent the bot removing it
--W. D. Graham 15:42, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for third opinion - Atlas (rocket family)

Could someone please give a third opinion on a content dispute I am engaged in on Talk:Atlas (rocket family) with User:Ajh1492. --W. D. Graham 11:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Orbit elements for defunct satellites

I noticed that Huntster enabled automatic updates to elements on NEE-01 Pegaso, and it made me wonder whether or not we should stop updating orbital elements once a spacecraft ceases operations. Is it better to have up-to-date orbit data in the infobox, or data which was representative of the spacecraft during its mission? I think there could be good arguments for both, and a discussion could be beneficial to the project. --W. D. Graham 11:23, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The only reason I set that is because the spacecraft still exists up in orbit. While it may no longer be operational, it has not yet reentered the atmosphere. A general orbital profile can be included in the prose, but until such a time as the spacecraft falls from the sky, it seems most appropriate to show how it exists in the current moment (relatively speaking, of course). — Huntster (t @ c) 11:32, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I tend to think that any man-made object moving around the inner solar system, or in Earth orbit, at tens of kilometres per second is worthy of having updated information on its orbital path in Wikipedia. The question is, are these orbital elements easily accessible? I'm not really familiar with the space object databases (e.g., Heavens Above used in Astrobot, etc.), but if the data are there, then I believe that population of each satellite's orbital elements, even for derelict satellites, is justified in the encyclopedia of knowledge that Wikipedia is supposed to be. Cheers. N2e (talk) 14:14, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
BTW, WDG, your point is a good one. It may also be quite appropriate for the Wikipedia article on a non-functioning satellite to also have some representation of what it's orbital elements were (range of...?) during its operational lifetime. But I don't believe it is an EITHER/OR question, so much as a BOTH/AND construct. Let's have the actual/true/correct orbital elements for dead orbital sats, and ALSO have some representation of the sats range of OE's during it's life, at least if some editor wants to do the work necessary to abstract and source that range of OE's during the sats active life. (or perhaps it is is something that could be automated by some bot that runs through the OE data during the operational lifetime..., I don't know). N2e (talk) 14:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
If you'll look at what I did in the NEE-01 Pegaso article, I found a source which gave the general orbit and placed it in the prose. Once the spacecraft deorbits, such information can go in the infobox to replace the "live" orbital elements. — Huntster (t @ c) 14:57, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
Cool, thanks for sharing how you chose to handle it in a real article, Huntster. That would seem to be a good way to handle it, given today's state of the spacecraft infobox and the generally poor completeness of Wikipedia's coverage of derelict satellites. Of course, it would be possible to incorporate a subcategory of fields/parms in the infobox that identifies the satellite as derelict, and if yes, then the presentation-layer words change slightly indicating that the orbital elements are in the long-term decay state; and finally, after weeks/months/years/centuries, when the satellite has deorbited (most common) or hit another celestial body (likely unknown for derelict sats, given the state of our current tracking technology), the infobox field could change again to make it clear that the sat is no longer derelict, and perhaps replace the orbital elements with the range of OEs during operational life of the sat. I know this is rather long-term thinking, and might not be easy to implement in any non-manual wiki-editing way, but it does seem to describe the reality of the satellite states that now exist—operational/derelict/deorbited (and maybe also: debris cloud/unknown)— on hundreds of artificial satellites, so that the Wikipedia fount of knowledge is reflecting reality for our readership. N2e (talk) 19:34, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I'll have a look at the AstRoBot coding and see if it would be possible to create some kind of table showing elements over time. My main concern is referencing, but it might be possible to tie it into WebCite somehow and generate citations that way. Pre-bot data could be difficult. --W. D. Graham 20:53, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
Did you ever get a look at AstRoBot and see if you thought it might be extensible to this mission? I realize you may have a lot of other projects going in the short term, but am interested to know if you think it likely that extensions might help us keep track of large man-made derelicts in orbit, especially in the inner solar system and around Earth, even if it may be some months out before that aspect of the bot can be worked on. Cheers. N2e (talk) 20:55, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Still a few things I need to iron out before I can start coding it. Referencing is going to be the main problem - both HA and n2yo only display the most recent data. That's fine when it's only being used with the current data, but I need to find a way to make older data verifiable. --W. D. Graham 21:03, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Article naming for Launches and Satellites

A discussion has gotten started, in two different sections, of the CASSIOPE Talk page about naming the launch article, and about whether secondary payloads should even be mentioned in the primary payload/launch article.

Interested WikiProject Spaceflight editors should probably take a look, and weigh in if you have an opinion on the matter. N2e (talk) 03:23, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

The guidelines for the WikiProject Spaceflight- Launch Articles need to be revisited. Currently in the CASSIOPE article, the information about the launch is overwhelming the main content of the article, which is about the satellite and its missions (Scientific payload ePOP and store &forward packet communications demonstration).
The CASSIOPE launch itself may be considered notable as it was the first attempt at demonstrating technology for landing the spent first stage booster for reuse. I am of the opinion that the information about the launch contained in an article for a satellite or satellite mission be restricted to stating the launch date, the type of vehicle on which it was launched, other payloads on the launch, mentioning any anomalies from the nominal flight path, and mentioning any delay from the initial launch date. The rest of the information on the launch should either be in an article about the launch itself, if it is notable, or in a launch history section (or article) of the main rocket (if not notable). If the purpose of the launch was mainly as a demonstration launch, with and 'dummy' satellite then more information about the launch vehicle would be in order. --66.41.154.0 (talk) 17:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

With an active discussion (see below on this Talk page) going on the refactoring of WP:LAUNCHES, and the emerging consensus seeming to be that specific launches may also be, and even generally be, notable in and of themselves, separate from their spaceflight payload, I'm wondering if the CASSIOPE/Falcon 9 Flight 6 (mission payload/notable launch) should not just be split right now, and a non-redir Falcon 9 Flight 6 created, just like 66.41.154.0 was suggesting. There truly is no doubt that that particular launch, the first of the Falcon 9 v1.1 is very notable, totally separate from the low-priced (20 percent of list, since it was a demo launch) CASSIOPE payload?

Anyone else have an opinion on this? Should we go ahead and create Falcon 9 Flight 6 now? Or should we wait, per the current (but outdated) WP:LAUNCHES essay and not create an independent launch article until the new essay is complete? Cheers. N2e (talk) 20:15, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Undercarriage or landing gear?

Does a spacecraft capable of landfall have undercarriage or landing gear or can one use either term? I guess the scope ranges from the legs of the Apollo Lunar Module to spaceplanes like the Space Shuttle to re-usable VTVL boosters. The current Undercarriage article is mostly about aircraft, but a section on spacecraft has recently been added. It has been suggested that the article name be changed to Landing gear. So far only aircaft enthusiasts have contributed to the discussion here - your comments would also be welcome. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:41, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I have weighed in over there. Could definitely use input from a few more WikiProject Spaceflight folk. N2e (talk) 00:02, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Lynx (spacecraft)

Would appreciate some additional eyes on the Lynx (spacecraft). From the sources I've seen, the little spaceplane is clearly "in development" and not mere vaporware "concept" like many space ideas. That said, the Lynx is way behind its original schedule, and the article needs a lot of cleanup work. Another editor has now added the phrase "concept" three times, and I've reverted her/him three times, and I'd like to not run afoul of WP:3RR (fourth revert is a no no). Cheers. N2e (talk) 13:54, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I've had a look at the discussion and I can't see much merit to his position - I've asked him to present some kind of evidence to support his position. He also seems to have reverted you again - I'm inclined to leave it as-is for now until the discussion settles down, but I have sent him a warning about edit warring. --W. D. Graham 14:56, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, although I believe he has violated WP:3RR, I do not intend to notify the administrator's about it at present. I'll leave his (readded) claim that it is a "concept" in the article for now, until the Talk page discussion develops a consensus, or else leave it for some other editor to revert that this time. N2e (talk) 15:23, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, N2e. More eyes on this article is exactly what we need. There seems to be one source of information: XCOR's website and press releases. WDGraham, I'm not sure why you chipped me for removing sourced information, when the link given leads to a 404 page. Perhaps you could help look into the article? We're righting an encyclopaedia here, not acting as press agents. N2e, If you think I've violated 3RR - I haven't - take it to the appropriate place, please. --Pete (talk) 15:27, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I've raised this matter at Reliable sources/Noticeboard with the aim of getting some wikipolicy discussion going. --Pete (talk) 15:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
And I posted there pointing out that there are sufficient third-party sources... - The Bushranger One ping only 21:47, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Hey User:The Bushranger, I do not see your comment over there on the Talk page. Perhaps you wrote it, and it didn't get posted? Cheers. N2e (talk) 13:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
It's here. - The Bushranger One ping only 13:58, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm going to take a step back. I've tried to get Pete to engage in the discussion but it seems to be making things worse, he just keeps accusing me of "not listening" or "not looking into his side of the dispute", but still hasn't provided anything to listen to that isn't based on his own opinion. I'm wise enough to know when I'm being trolled, so I would suggest that if he doesn't accept the AfD outcome you should proceed on the assumption that he is being deliberately disruptive. --W. D. Graham 09:40, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Not wise enough, it seems. You're not being trolled. Not by me, anyway. I raised the AfDs because I was given advice to do so, and getting more eyes on a matter is a great way of getting a matter away from being a squabble between individuals to a consensus position. Just looking at the discussion(s) it looks like Lynx is going to stay and Xerus will go. I have no problem with that. Wikiprocess in action. That's what keeps this community of nerds working together. Woot!
My problem is with your behaviour, WDG. I don't know if you deliberately set out to be abrasive or it just happened that way, but whatever, we're going to be working together on getting the article into better shape, so you might like to follow the pointers I gave you earlier and we'll get along just fine. Cheers. --Pete (talk) 10:01, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
This is the last comment I'm making on this matter. I have repeatedly asked you to provide evidence to support your case. Every time you have come back with a criticism of me, or a personal attack. I have highlighted this but you have done nothing to change your attitude. That is trolling. --W. D. Graham 10:49, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
My position is well-evidenced:
  • The Lynx spaceplane does not yet exist, except as a few parts, a plastic model, an artist's rendering or two.
  • The company's website says flight testing will begin this year.[5]
  • Since we began our article in 2008, we've been continually following the company line that flights will begin within a year, advancing our estimates every so often. In some cases we give the impression that flights have already begun when in March 2013 we say, A Lynx prototype called Mark I is expected to perform its first test flight in late 2012,[6]
  • We list 31 sources, of which 14 are from the build company or its ticket seller. That's thirteen primary sources too many, going by Wikipolicy. There were more, but I trimmed a few. Other articles give even more links and discussion pages more yet.
  • I'm concerned that we are providing high-value links to the build company, promoting their ticket sales over the past five years by giving encyclopaedic gravitas, and generally spruiking up a project that may well be pie in the sky. Certainly there will be no operational flights any time soon. The article has been repeatedly tagged as having issues, it currently presents an overly optimistic view of the project, and it needs a lot of work.
That's my position. Cheers. --Pete (talk) 20:12, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Summary to this point ...

I have added an extensive summary of both the article content goofiness now, and the editing disruption that has occurred to the normal process of constructively editing the article, over on the Talk:Lynx (spacecraft)‎ Talk page.

Since I am out of the game due to the three revert rule, and since User:WDGraham has said he has made his last comment on the matter due to perceived trolling by Pete (aka User:Skyring, the editor name used in making many of the recent contested edits to the article), I would very much appreciate some other editors taking a look and considering next course of action to get the Lynx (spacecraft)‎ article improved. N2e (talk) 13:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Would someone please comment on Talk:Lynx (spacecraft)

The AfD is over (result: Keep). I am attempting to get a consensus on the Lynx (spacecraft) Talk page on a single word in the lede sentence. Some other editors going over there and weighing in would be much appreciated. N2e (talk) 16:38, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The tsunami appears to be over

Things have settled down over at Lynx (spacecraft)‎. Three BRD discussions have been amicably (if arduously) resolved; the AfD discussion is over (result: Keep); the active editing disruption is over; and an essay for how to utilize primary sources in Spaceflight articles has been drafted, and seems to be gaining consensus; others would be welcome to offer their thoughts.

Many thanks to the editors who joined the discussion to help improve that article! N2e (talk) 09:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Anachronistic Soyuz titles

Starting a central discussion since more than one page is affected; can we look to move "Soyuz 18a" and "Soyuz T-10-1" to titles which haven't been made up. The Soviet Union never used this type of numbering - it's a Westernised anachronism used to identify missions which were in reality unnamed; There was never a mission called "Soyuz 18a" - there was a mission which would have been called "Soyuz 18" had the USSR announced it, but they didn't so it wasn't. In all other cases of this rather than using made-up designations we have used the hardware designations - so in these cases Soyuz 7K-T No.39 and Soyuz 7K-ST No.16L. --W. D. Graham 17:09, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

This has been open for a month with no objections, so I've moved both pages. --W. D. Graham 12:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Unfortunatly, I didn't see this before...wouldn't these have fallen under WP:COMMONNAME? - The Bushranger One ping only 12:58, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
    • I don't think there is one particularly common name for these missions, I've seen each called by four of five different names. In any case, my understanding of WP:COMMONNAME is that the name still needs to be "correct", so-to-speak, as well as in common use. The wording has changed somewhat over the last few years and it no longer says this explicitly, however that is how I would interpret the spirit of that guideline. --W. D. Graham 13:48, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

"Space programme" navboxes becoming unmanageable

I'm starting to get a little concerned about the "national space programme" navboxes (such as {{Indian space programme}}, {{Japanese space program}}, {{European Space Agency}}, etc). No inclusion criteria have been set and people just keep adding things to them and in many cases go into far too much detail than seems appropriate for top-level templates. The Japanese one is probably the worst of the bunch, and the Indian one is also in particularly bad shape.

I think a lot of these templates could do with a rewrite, and many of the series of individual satellites should be split into their own navboxes to avoid cluttering the main boxes. I've had a play with the Indian one at User:WDGraham/ISP, but it might be helpful to set out some kind of standard format for every country. Any ideas? --W. D. Graham 21:43, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I believe the present format of the European Space Agency navbox is largely my fault. What was originally there was atrociously organised and piecemeal in the topics it provided. I sought to make what was there logically flow and provide a broad overview of the programme in a similar nature to the better-developed navboxes like {{NASA space program}}. That said there's certainly room for improvement, the date clutter was there largely as a result of me organising into an approximate chronological order but could easily be removed. (in fact I'll give it a test now) The issue is though what sort of inclusion criteria do we think is appropriate? ChiZeroOne (talk) 23:16, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
The ESA one isn't that bad, although the second half of the template could probably use some pruning. The NASA one is okay, although I'm not sure about the "featured missions" section - COBE and GALEX aren't quite on the same level as MA-6 and Apollo 11. There's also a huge trend towards recentism and a few obvious mistakes ("Space Shuttle" listed as an individual mission, "Mercury 3" instead of MR-3, several NOAA spacecraft listed as NASA missions, and NPP listed as future when it launched a few years ago. --W. D. Graham 23:28, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
"Mercury 3" would fit WP:COMMONNAME, actually. - The Bushranger One ping only 03:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Given the lack of objections I've implemented streamlining of the Indian template. I'll try to get the Japanese one done soon and then look over the rest. --W. D. Graham 18:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
My only request would be to keep a link as a footnote in all Space Agency templates to List of space agencies or {{Public-sector space agencies}} which helps in navigating a lot to other Space agencies unless the usual method of remembering their names & searching it. For Eg., I am viewing the {{Indian space programme}} & need to view ESA & JAXA, in this case, I need to search them one by one or go to List of Space Agencies. - Ninney (talk) 13:50, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
@WDGraham: & @Nickst:: Any thought/updates on this ? - Ninney (talk) 14:00, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether it would be better to include a link in all top-level templates, or simply ensure that the title of each navbox is linked to a page transcluding the navbox with the full list. Either way it's the same number of clicks, and I'm not sure that someone reading about some of the more intricate parts of Japan's space programme would be looking for an article on the UK Space Agency, for example. --W. D. Graham 14:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I think there are no sense to add such links in all space agency template. Good navigation between space agencies with {{Public-sector space agencies}} now. NickSt (talk) 15:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:LAUNCHES – needs work

I agree with 66.41.154.0, who commented above that WP:LAUNCHES needs work. I believe WD Graham has also commented to me, on another page, that he, too, thinks we probably need to revisit that page. It was last discussed, and adopted, two years ago, in later 2011.

I can't lead that effort right now, but will definitely participate in the discussion. Anyone else want to get involved? ... and, perhaps, kick it off with some tangible thoughts? Cheers. N2e (talk) 03:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I think a good start would be to have a separate, real talk page at WP:LAUNCHES rather than redirect back here, so I went ahead and did that. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:04, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I've been drawing up a couple of concept articles for typical launches, to see whether it could be practical to create launches for individual rocket launches. These are obviously incomplete, but I'm fairly optimistic that if we wanted to, it should be fairly easy to get decent-sized articles from most launches - and some of the more interesting ones could probably be brought to GA or even FA standard. From an organisational standpoint, it could make some sense to place detailed launch information in a central article, with a summary and a link in payload articles, rather than repeating paragraphs of text. Certainly for more recent launches the sources are there to establish notability; for older launches a little digging may be required, but it is doable. I've drawn up a couple of examples: a six-payload Dnepr launch and a typical Ariane launch with two comsats. I would welcome some feedback on this. --W. D. Graham 21:00, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposed essay

I've put up a suggestion at User:WDGraham/Spaceflight notability for a new notability essay to replace WP:LAUNCHES. I would welcome input. --W. D. Graham 18:15, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Happy to do a review. Do you want comments-only, on the Talk page? Or should we just edit the draft (if minor, or thought to be constructive/not-objectionable) with only more limited discussion on the Talk page. N2e (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I'd suggest keeping discussion here. Feel free to edit it, we can always invoke BRD if there's any disagreement. --W. D. Graham 20:38, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposed adoption of Spaceflight notability guideline in place of WP:LAUNCHES

I'd like to formally propose that we adopt the notability essay that N2e and myself have been working on in place of the current WP:LAUNCHES guideline. --W. D. Graham 10:46, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
It's had a month, so I think the next step is to create a few articles and see how things evolve. --W. D. Graham 00:25, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal change to assessment criteria regarding copy-and-paste articles

We currently have a number of articles consisting largely or entirely of material taken word-for-word from public domain sources such as NASA and NSSDC. I'd like to propose changing the project's C and B-class criteria to discourage this practise. I suggest adding a fourth C-class criterion: "The majority of the article does not appear to have been copied from another publication, regardless of whether it is appropriately-licensed and referenced"; and appending to B-class criterion 4 "The article contains no passages of text, other than quotations, which have been copied from any other publication." --W. D. Graham 20:04, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I second the proposal. I find the practice very annoying. Unfortunately most readers don't seem to care and most editors cannot be bothered to check.Graham1973 (talk) 02:03, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't know that it's reasonable to expect all editors to check everything, but I certainly agree it's annoying, having just discovered a large bit of copy-paste in Gus Grissom's Mercury flight page Mercury-Redstone 4. In fact, I'm embarrassed to find that, though I just added a tag to a section I recognized as copied, I missed the glaring, more strongly worded cleanup tag right at the top which apparently has been there since 2009!
WD, your propsal implies we bust all such articles down to Start class, correct? JustinTime55 (talk)
Articles where the amount of cut-and-pasted text outnumbers the amount of original text would be reduced to start-class, however in practise only a small number of articles would be affected by this criterion since a lot of the copy-and-paste articles are only stubs - its as much, if not more, about encouraging editors expanding the articles to rewrite the offending portions, in the knowledge that the article cannot progress beyond start class unless this happens.
Articles with smaller amounts of text - a few sentences here, a paragraph there - would fail a b-class review and hence become stuck at c-class until those sentences were rewritten. I would advise common sense in applying this retrospectively - I am aware of at least two FAs tagged as containing information copy-and-pasted from (unspecified!) NASA sources - I'm not suggesting they be downgraded overnight. --W. D. Graham 00:37, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Here is a list of assessed articles which have been tagged as containing copy-and-pasted text - which is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Disturbingly the list contains two featured articles, one featured list and nine good articles. I have not assessed the extent of the problem in the individual pages. --W. D. Graham 13:30, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Support the proposal, both as to new criteria for Class B and Class C. I think that is well within the process by which we encourage article improvement. Anything that is copy and paste is a Start, and no better until real content improvement has been undertaken. N2e (talk) 00:48, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

JPL images

There is a potential problem with regards to JPL images and their copyright. This might affect many images of the various spacecraft operated by JPL. I posted a notice on Commons:Commons:Village_pump#JPL_images, as I didn't know where else I should post this. I would be happy if users from here would participate in the necessary process. Tony Mach (talk) 00:12, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Specific impulse "convert" macro

I've written the data for the convert macro to do the specific impulse/effective exhaust velocity conversion. It's live, but not permanently installed yet, but it does work, although it's still a bit experimental.

Simple use:

  • {{convert|350|isp}} → 350 seconds (3.4 km/s)
  • {{convert|3.4|km/s|isp}} → 3.4 kilometres per second (350 s)

Simple with wiki-linked units:

  • {{convert|350|isp|km/s|lk=on}} → 350 seconds (3.4 km/s)

Support for tsfc conversion:

  • {{convert|1.2|tsfc|isp}} → 1.2 lb/(lbf⋅h) (3,000 s)
  • {{convert|5000|isp|tsfc}} → 5,000 seconds (0.72 lb/(lbf⋅h))
  • {{convert|33|si tsfc|isp|lk=on}} → 33 g/(kN⋅s) (3,100 s)

Support for ft/s, miles/s, km/s

  • {{convert|452|isp|ft/s|lk=on}} → 452 seconds (14,500 ft/s)
  • {{convert|451|isp|mi/s|lk=on}} → 451 seconds (2.75 mi/s)
  • {{convert|451|isp|km/s|lk=on}} → 451 seconds (4.42 km/s)

Note that tsfc is a bit buggy at the moment, you can't go to standard units. Isp doesn't have this problem.

  • {{convert|1.2|tsfc|m/s}} → 1.2 lb/(lbf⋅h) (29,000 m/s)

But you don't need that much for rocketry stuff anyway.GliderMaven (talk) 16:55, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments requested

There is a dispute concerning whether the article Apollo 11 should be tagged with the {{story}} template, or indeed whether it suffers from the issue implied by that template. I would welcome comments from interested editors, particularly those with subject-matter expertise, at Talk:Apollo 11#Story style. Thank you. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:11, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Possible update to WIND (spacecraft)

After a lot of searching, I've managed to locate several documents relating to an incident in early 2001 where the WIND satellite was mistaken for an Apollo asteroid and given the designation 2001 DO47. I've linked the material I found to the talk page of the article, I'm not sure how to integrate it into the article as it stands and any help would be gratefully appreciated.Graham1973 (talk) 03:47, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

GSAT-6 listed at Redirects for discussion

I had asked for a discussion to address the redirect GSAT-6. Anybody having some involvement with the GSAT-6 redirect, might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if not already done so). Ninney (talk) 00:00, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Reminder

Just reminding you that the deprecated template {{TLS-H}} is still in use on a few pages, namely: 1973 in spaceflight, 1974 in spaceflight, 1981 in spaceflight, 1991 in spaceflight and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Timeline of spaceflight/101107. Debresser (talk) 07:35, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

The project-namespace page can probably be deleted. The problem with the rest is that each individual transclusion takes at least 3-4 hours to replace as the page needs to be rewritten completely. --W. D. Graham 09:33, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
If I would nominate the Project page for deletion at Mfd, would you be willing to come along and with argumentation support the proposal?
As far as the 4 articles are concerned, if one or two editors would take even a fe days for each page, it still could be done in a week. I would call that a success. Debresser (talk) 14:51, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm not convinced deletion is the best option. Because of the role the template plays in formatting the articles, their entire page histories would become completely unreadable should it be deleted. --W. D. Graham 15:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
As you say. I only worry about the deprecated template being replaced. :) Debresser (talk) 18:24, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 Works for me: @Debresser, @WDGraham - I can work on all 4 articles (1973, 1974, 1981 & 1991). I am providing a sample tabular data worked out in my sandbox, check 1973 in spaceflight. Do let me know at earliest whether to proceed ahead or not ? - Ninney (talk) 00:09, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
I see no reason not to do this. All agree, and the template says so itself, that the template is superseded by another one. In short, you have my blessing. :) Debresser (talk) 00:15, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Looks good. One minor thing, could you possibly swap the order of the launch site and launch pad (e.g. Cape Canaveral LC-13 instead of LC-13, Cape Canaveral), and use "Site" instead of "LC" for pads at Baikonur and other Soviet sites - a couple of conventions used in other articles which never seem to have reached the 1973 page. --W. D. Graham 01:18, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 Fixed as per conventions. Do check & confirm here. - Ninney (talk) 02:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Nice. Good work. Debresser (talk) 11:51, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I've taken care of 1981, I'll take 74 as well to reduce your workload --W. D. Graham 18:19, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Task Status
Year Status Notes
1973 in spaceflight  Done
1974 in spaceflight  In progress Doing offline --W. D. Graham 15:16, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
Do you want me to work on (July - Dec.) ? - Ninney (talk) 02:48, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm not doing it sequentially, so I'll keep going and get something up early next week. --W. D. Graham 10:43, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
1981 in spaceflight  Done
1991 in spaceflight  Done Bifurcated into two articles
1991 in spaceflight (January–June) & 1991 in spaceflight (July–December)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Timeline of spaceflight/101107 Not sure Do let me know at earliest whether to proceed ahead or not ?
Nominated for deletion --W. D. Graham 10:44, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Please update the table. - Ninney (talk) 14:50, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

See also, the old WikiProject Timeline of Spaceflight status board, WP:TLS/S. --W. D. Graham 15:16, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
@Debresser, @WDGraham - WoW ! Regarding WP:TLS/S ... Somebody should take a lead & assign work, say, Work for the Week, kind of ... As we did with above deprecated template {{TLS-H}} ... & I would then be happy to select assignments ... Meanwhile, I am randomly picking tasks which suits me best & marking the year with  In progress clock marks so that no 2 persons work on the same articles ... Also, I had already started marking the pages with YELLOW background, which says, Attention: Expert Review needed for this year, so that a Senior/Expert/Lead can Review the year & update the Progression bars accordingly. Awaiting Reply. Thanks ! - Ninney (talk) 02:48, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Undercarriage and landing gear pages

There is a request for multiple page moves at Talk:Undercarriage#Multiple_pages_move_request. You are invited to participate. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:15, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Human population in space in size and time

Hi,I am not a big reader of this part of wikipedia (spaceflight) but I was searching for something like size of "human population in space" in numbers and I find few data in wikipedia, I see that we have List of countries by population, List of countries by past and future population (1950–2050), World population, Demographics_of_Antarcticaand McMurdo Station capable of supporting up to 1,258 residents, but in a fast search I dont see the word "population" in Timeline of Solar System exploration or Human spaceflight, or ISS, aniway I find a nice source http://www.space.com/6503-population-space-historic-high-13.html ,maybe the numbers are tiny today but that still is big data that deserve being posted in a enciclopedia, sadly I am not educated about this issue, I cant choose in which corner of wikipedia it deverse get posted. Aniway you all do a great work--Feroang (talk) 03:05, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

In order for a Wikipedia article to exist on a topic, the topic has to be clearly and rationally defined. The definition of population is "the number of people who live in a place" (Merriam-Webster). This implies permanent residency. No one lives permanently in space at the current time, despite the fact people are spending, and have spent, long periods of time in the International Space Station. We don't yet have the technology for people to live permanently in space; everyone who has gone (even to the Moon) has returned to life on Earth. Therefore the "human population in space" would be zero. The concept will have no meaning until such time as people do establish permanent residence in space. Wikipedia is not a repository for science fiction.
(Which is not to say that the transient population of the ISS over time wouldn't be an interesting thing to track, if anyone has access to the data.) JustinTime55 (talk) 15:23, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
There is an article on the topic of Space colonization, covering speculative work on future population of space. You might also want to check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Space Colonization. Always keep in mind our policy: Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
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