Talk:Spaceflight

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"Launch status check" Wikipedia Entry

Someone please help edit Launch status check? I got the ball rolling. Radical Mallard 6:36 PM EST, April 2, 2009

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Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080108073958/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20030407/ai_n12692130 to http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20030407/ai_n12692130

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Merge (2018) Spacefaring

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight#Questionable article, a lot of the material at Spacefaring duplicates Spaceflight, so should be merged here. Thoughts? — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk)

Support as the suggestor. :-) -PopSci (talk) 19:17, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jim.henderson (talk) 23:51, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment at talk:Spacefaring there's a suggestion to move that page to List of spacefaring nations -- 65.94.42.219 (talk) 17:15, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The merge can take place, which does not stop such list to be created. Rowan Forest (talk) 18:41, 20 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There was an earlier discussion in 2008 about just this matter. See #Merge (2008) from Spacefaring -- 65.94.42.219 (talk) 04:06, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Per nom. —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata (contributions • subpages) 13:45, 16 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Spaceflight is achieved by spacefaring capability. Both articles overlap significantly in content and can be covered in the same article. Rowan Forest (talk) 18:37, 20 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 06:23, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Leaving orbit: original research

This text is not supported by any citation, and in fact is wrong:

Achieving a closed orbit is not essential to lunar and interplanetary voyages. Early Russian space vehicles successfully achieved very high altitudes without going into orbit. NASA considered launching Apollo missions directly into lunar trajectories but adopted the strategy of first entering a temporary parking orbit and then performing a separate burn several orbits later onto a lunar trajectory. This costs additional propellant because the parking orbit perigee must be high enough to prevent reentry while direct injection can have an arbitrarily low perigee because it will never be reached.

Apollo missions minimized the performance penalty of the parking orbit by keeping its altitude as low as possible. For example, Apollo 15 used an unusually low parking orbit (even for Apollo) of 92.5 nmi by 91.5 nmi (171 km by 169 km) where there was significant atmospheric drag.

This is nonsense, which was first added by an electrical engineer (not an expert in spaceflight). The amount of energy required for an "escape" mission is not determined by perigee, but by apogee of the "escape" orbit. (Another common misconception is that a lunar mission requires Earth escape velocity. It does not; it only requires a very high apogee which takes the craft toward the Moon.) A trajectory sufficient for translunar or interplanetary flight should not "care" whether a parking orbit is first reached. In other words, the delta v required for the Saturn V third stage to perform a direct Apollo translunar injection should be essentially equal to the delta v into orbit, plus the delta v required for the injection from orbit (possibly subject to the Oberth effect). It has nothing to do with "perigee"; obviously the perigee of the injection orbit equals the perigee of the parking orbit; "an arbitrarily low perigee that will never be reached" is essentially meaningless. And this was not why the Apollo program chose to use the parking orbit; that was for greater control of the launch window.

I know of no reliable source documentation that says direct injection was ever considered for Apollo. What they considered was direct ascent, which is completely different and has nothing to do with translunar injection. That required a much larger rocket, because of considerations at the lunar landing side, not Earth departure. And that effect was much larger than any possible difference due to the Oberth effect at Earth departure.

The reason the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 parking orbits were especially low was that the capabilities of the Saturn V were being stretched so these missions could carry a larger payload to the Moon than the prior missions did. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:20, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's been six years and it still hasn't been removed. Titan(moon)003 (talk) 02:29, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to get rid of it (I'm new to wikipedia) Titan(moon)003 (talk) 02:30, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article for deletion: International Committee Against Mars Sample Return

There is an article listed at 'Articles for Deletion' (AfD) that may interest you. The article is International Committee Against Mars Sample Return. Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Committee Against Mars Sample Return.

Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 15:42, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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Konstantin Tsiolkovsky 1934.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:14, 30 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

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look...

if you want to do this write wright right or rite... https://imgur.com/gallery/Q4H0Z — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.136.32.55 (talk) 20:51, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"A launch pad is a fixed structure designed to dispatch airborne vehicles. It generally consists of a launch tower and flame trench"

IMHO this is correct : A launch complex consists of a launch pad, launch tower and flame trench. Also see Kennedy_Space_Center_Launch_Complex_39A. OpenStreetMap definition : https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:aeroway#Spaceflight Dulliman (talk) 11:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]