This page is within the scope of WikiProject Spaceflight, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of spaceflight on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpaceflightWikipedia:WikiProject SpaceflightTemplate:WikiProject Spaceflightspaceflight articles
Recently, the separate articles for Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 have been merged, as they were really two complementary flights in a single, coordinated event: the first group flight. The two missions also launched and landed at very close times to each other, so it does make sense to treat them together in a single article, rather than giving each launch/landing its own article. This might also be appropriate for other existing articles.
This is something I've been thinking about for several months, especially in connection with early Soviet group flights which were explicitly planned and executed as such, and did not link up with a space station. My initial suggestion (on a broader talk, independently of specific articles) is to merge the following three groups of articles along the following schema, per the above:
I raise the idea of merging certain crewed mission articles here for general discussion, and also to avoid "double work" if others are already working along similar lines (merging Vostok 5 and 6 is the next logical place to go, and perhaps JustinTime55 is already working in this direction). I would also like to distinguish cases: despite the complex crew transfers among later Soyuz missions and space stations, this type of article merger would seem most appropriate to "one-off" events like these earlier group spaceflights (not linking up with any waiting space station) which have definite, concurrent beginnings-and-ends, and not the continuous space station activity which later obtained over several overlapping missions (and crew transfers between craft). I also think that such mergers are most appropriate when the crewed missions have shared launch and landing times very close to each other (hours, say). In principle Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A might be merged along the above lines, but the latter being a much shorter mission would be a point against, in my subjective take on things. Similarly, there is a question of whether stubby-uncrewed target articles like Soyuz 2A and Soyuz 2 might not be merged with their respective crewed mission articles Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 3, and so on.
Another consideration is that other areas of the encyclopedia would manifestly have to (continue to) point to each mission separately (lists, records, etc), but this is easily managed by redirects and clean-up in any post-merge processes, using "what links here".
What do editors think of this general idea, especially the three specific points above? If there is any traction I'll propose merge discussions at the appropriate articles. Are there any other crewed mission articles which ought to be merged with others, or with uncrewed mission/target articles? Pinging JustinTime55Randy KrynSoumya-8974Kees08Wehwalt on same. MinnesotanUser (talk) 05:37, 25 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Could someone who knows about such things have a look over NASA research? This is possibly the worst article I've ever seen on Wikipedia, and there's stiff competition for that title. Given that it only has two incoming links, consistently averages 1/4 of the pageviews of Cats That Look Like Hitler, and that presumably everything here is already covered in English rather than gibberish on the article for each NASA program, I'm strongly inclined to just delete it, but you're better placed than me to say if there's actually anything here worth salvaging. ‑ Iridescent16:26, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yea... In the four sentence lead, I count seven grammatical errors. And the article doesn't get better after that. I can see the value of an article on this subject, but not this article. Unless someone wanted to completely rewrite it (and I'm not volunteering), I'm in favor of simply deleting it. Fcrary (talk) 01:01, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would say delete it. I don't think the article can be made useful. The topic of NASA research is very broad. Several of their facilities do little but that.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:09, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Can we acknowledge that there is a site named Cats that Look Like Hitler real fast? That's just... I know it's off-topic, but that's beautiful! XFalcon2004x (talk) 00:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Timeline
Hello folks
Project Timeline hasn't exactly gone semi-active, but it has gone unmonitored. The progress page hasn't been updated in a decade.
I'm happy to work on it, at least up through 1966, but I'd love it if the other members of the task force could post their updates on the discussion page there. :) (yes, I know we've centralized discussions, but timeline is one of the still active groups.)
Using the location parameter on Infobox spaceflight/IP
Hello, I have a question for using the location parameter for Infobox spaceflight/IP. I wanted to add information on where Hayabusa2's capsule landed, but to use the location parameter, the type parameter had to be set as 'lander' or 'atmospheric'. This generates the results Earth lander or Earth atmospheric probe, which doesn't seem accurate for the capsule. Are there any solutions/alternatives for this? Kind regards, Hms1103 (talk) 11:47, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
| landing_site tag under | end of mission will get you Earth;| location tag under | end of mission will get you the initial destination. So you can set it up as a asteroid lander with its location the asteroid it sampled, and then put the final landing spot on Earth under landing site. @Hms1103: --Neopeius (talk) 15:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You are probably right. Space construction would be things like the building of moon bases and space colonies, and perhaps Dyson Spheres. :) Care to take a stab at it? --Neopeius (talk) 15:06, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Someone else would need to start the stub off. I think I'd get trouted for converting this redir at this point in its lifetime in this manner. -- 67.70.26.89 (talk) 04:43, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Hawkeye7:, @Gog the Mild:, @Balon Greyjoy: I have finally gotten Spaceflight before 1951 into shape, though I would like consensus on how frequently items should be linked. But it has a good, well-researched lede, a comprehensive launch section, and a nice summary section. I'd like to get all the timeline articles to Featured List status, and this is the first. :)
(anyone else is welcome and encouraged to assist, but I've earned review karma with the three pinged folk. :) )
Shouldn't 1950 in spaceflight be split off, so that this can be encapsulated as Spaceflight in the 1940s ? That would cleanly show the decade, and wouldn't have the odd "before 1951". It would also remove any attempts at adding mythological spaceflight from before, as indicated in the talk page.
You propbably won't find a lot of reliable sources about fire accidents in space, because there probably haven't been (m)any. Space fires tend to extinguish themselves (at least in a nitrogen- or helium-buffered atmosphere) because sustained burning depends on natural convection, which in turn depends on gravity to control the flow of gases at different temperatures (densities). (On the topic of deletion, I don't know why we don't seem to have a guideline or policy against conflating fiction with real-world topics. I know Wikipedia includes coverage of fiction, but the scope of this project is real-world space travel, not science fiction.) JustinTime55 (talk) 15:21, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There have been several fire accidents in space, so it isn't "many" but more than "any"; there was that one on Mir, where molten metal floated out of an oxygen generator due to the heat of the fire. IIRC some Soyuz capsules have had minor short circuit fires in space. Apollo 13 had an oxygen tank explosion, so a deflagration or detonation fire. And ofcourse, bipropellant rocket motors are fire in space (combustion), some of which have had accidents in space due to some sort of fiery incident. -- 67.70.26.89 (talk) 04:48, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there's also the kinda obvious examples of fires in space of old solid rocket motors being used in space as upper stages, like with early American launches using the WAC Corporal, I believe. That said, I may also be completely missing the point on this one. XFalcon2004x (talk) 14:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an article about fire experiments on the ISS about a year ago. There used to be more about these experiments on NASA.gov, but I couldn't find it with a cursory look. Here are some DOIs about various fire related tech's for space vehicles:
There are probably many more articles like these and more basic research on the physics of flames in low-gravity if you can find the right search terms--Cincotta1 (talk) 15:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Those sources might be sufficient to write an actual, meets-notability-criteria, article on "Fire in space", or since humans or human-made technology machines are involved, perhaps better would be "Fire in spaceflight."
But either way, near as I can tell no editor has ever tried to write that article. And the redirect being discussed is merely a name of some TV episode, which is also fine for Wikipedia. If some editors chooses to create an article on Fire in space [spaceflight?] I would be happy to weigh in on the RfD discussion. Else, I'll just let it go as TV episodes aren't much of an interest for me. Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:43, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Edit request on the Talk:VERITAS_(spacecraft) page
Hi all- Wondering if someone might be willing to help complete review of some suggested content about the objectives and goals of the proposed NASA VERITAS mission. We have an edit request on the Talk:VERITAS_(spacecraft) page that's partly complete, just waiting for someone to dig into the "VERITAS Objectives and Goals" section. The existing copy is pretty thin, and the suggested replacement content adds helpful detail about what the mission would do, scientifically. Very open to feedback if modifications would make the edits more acceptable to the community. Thanks very much. Zoomanova (talk) 02:08, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Adding to the Apollo Applications Program
The Apollo Applications Program (AAP) page is really short, and it only talks about just a few of the applications that were discussed back in the late 60s/early 70s. Does anyone here know of any good sources that we could use to help beef that page up a little bit? It's not a stub, but I think it only barely qualifies as a page on its own. XFalcon2004x (talk) 14:14, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It would also be worth adding something about the Voyager program (Mars). That would have been a very large, robotic Mars lander, launched on a Saturn V, and part of the AAP. The actual Viking landers and orbiters were a descoped version, and the name "Voyager" got recycled for Mariner Jupiter-Saturn. But the original Voyager was part of AAP, so it's worth mentioning in the AAP article. I think the content could just be copied and edited down for the AAP article.
Hello WikiProject Spaceflight! I'm Ed Erhart, part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications department. (You might know me better as The ed17.)
Have you ever wanted to ask an astronaut a question about living in space or the science that's done on the International Space Station (ISS)? Or perhaps you're expanding an article on human spaceflight and can't find a citation for an important bit of information? We're looking for community input on questions to ask a NASA astronaut.
For Wikipedia's 20th birthday, coming up on 15 January, and 20 years of continuous occupation of the ISS, we're working with Modest Genius to interview a NASA astronaut. Suitable topics would include Wikipedia's coverage of astronautics, scientific contributions made by crewed spaceflight over the last twenty years, and plans for the next two decades of spaceflight. We'll select the best questions to put to the astronaut.
