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Archive 1Archive 2

Augustine Commission

The establishment of the "Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee", also known as the "Augustine Commission", was recorded in the Federal Register May 15, 2009 as shown here. Members were announced by NASA here. The charter is here. Does it make sense to reference these as sources in any existing wikipedia articles? If so, which? Does a new article make sense? (sdsds - talk) 05:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the best place to begin would be Project Constellation, then when the commission starts getting itself together properly, I guess a new article should be made! :-) Careful to disambiguate between this one and the Augustine Commission following Challenger though... Colds7ream (talk) 11:50, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee

I have created this article – it was a challenge of sorts, long story, but NASA employees themselves kept creating the article with a wholesale copy/paste of the entire NASA microsite. And I kept deleting it. Anyway, see my talk page for more details. I have no idea where to take it now, so feel free to jump in and boldly take it where no article has gone before! – B.hotep •talk• 14:26, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:Spaceflight crew‎‎

I have produced Template:Spaceflight crew‎‎ (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) to replace the tables that are being put into Shuttle articles. It does exactly the same thing, and looks exactly the same, but as it is a template, it should make editing and maintaining consistency easier. --GW… 22:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much! :-) Colds7ream (talk) 22:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Specification table - ISS modules

I think it's a good ide to make a table with the specifications for a module on it's wikipage. Like size and mass. Arkaska (talk) 18:30, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

You might find this useful: Template:Space station module. Colds7ream (talk) 18:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm new to contributing on Wikipedia so don't really know how that works. I don't even know how it works with projects or anything. Maybe someone else can do it? It was missing on both Node 2 and Node 3 atleast.Arkaska (talk) 18:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Neil Armstrong GAR notice

Neil Armstrong has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 03:58, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Neil Armstrong needs help

As we near the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, the article on Neil Armstrong could use just a little work.

  1. Someone has tagged a few sentences "citation needed" - it would be great to get those cleaned-up.
  2. There seems to be a small discrepancy between Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong concerning how much fuel the lunar lander had for landing.

Thanks for your help, JMG (talk) 07:27, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Some mentoring required

Please give D.martorelli (talk · contribs) some pointers in the right directions. See xyr edits to articles like Mario Pezzi (edit) and xyr creations such as Luigi Gussalli and Center for Studies and Research in Aeronautical Medicine (AfD discussion). Uncle G (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Orion missions

Hi all.

We have a vast plethora of articles of the form "Orion xx", dealing with specific Project Constellation missions. One of these - Orion 17 - is listed for deletion, on the not unreasonable grounds that planning a decade out, for a project which won't begin properly flying for five years, is a bit hard to pin down. The discussion seems to be trending towards redirection to the main list of Constellation missions, but it's a bit odd to do that for one of them alone.

So, I thought I'd bring it up here, and see if anyone has any suggestions on how best to go about drawing all these articles together, making sure they best reflect current planning, etc. Shimgray | talk | 16:17, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I've posted a merge proposal (ish) at Talk:List of Constellation missions. Thoughts, please. Shimgray | talk | 23:29, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
This could be particularly relevant given the inevitable schedule shift from the Augustine Commission... Colds7ream (talk) 21:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

White Room

I think we need a stub on the White Room. Am not sure what to title, or where to begin. Just noting notes here, as have no time to research from scratch.

Hope that helps. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 03:10, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I've added a redlink to White room (spaceflight) at the disambiguation page (I wasn't sure how to capitalize, as NASA is inconsistent here). There's a good source of information at www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3408800318.html. Just a nudge. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 03:35, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Some has added a page at Service structure that includes details on the white room. Huzzah! -- Quiddity (talk) 16:48, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Resupply spacecraft and unmanned test flights

Should unmanned resupply spacecraft and unmanned tests of manned spacecraft fall into the scope of this project, the Unmanned spaceflight project (which I am currently trying to restart), or both? --GW… 22:13, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Date formatting test

A discussion regarding date formatting has been started at Talk:Ares I#Date formatting test
— V = I * R (talk) 15:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Help collaborate on Ares I

If anyone has a moment to spare, I would deeply appreciate it if you could come lend a hand with Ares I. It's recently received a Peer Review, which can be found at Talk:Ares I/Comments. Any and all contributions would be welcome, no matter how small or large. Even if you come and change one comma to a period, that would be useful. Thanks!
— V = I * R (talk) 03:43, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Launch Attempts

I'm looking for information on launch attempts, something that lists each attempt, why it was scrubbed, and preferably when the decision to scrub was made. I'm not finding anything in NASA's website with this kind of historical information. When a shuttle mission is scrubbed, the pages are quickly updated with the new target date and time and previous missions are left with information about the successful attempt, looking through the archives on the nasa site, details of previous attempts are hard to find. Anyone know of any other resources that might have this information?--RadioFan (talk) 15:06, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I looked into this when writing STS-8. There's a table in Dennis Jenkins' book which lists all scrubs for flights up to STS-100(?), though usually not their reason; most are, however, noted in the summary for that mission. The Shuttle flight data and in-flight anomaly list (there's a version up to STS-74 on NTRS) has a similar table, which I suspect goes into slightly more detail. Shimgray | talk | 18:23, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
CBS News's archive goes back to STS-81, I'll have to look into that book to fill in the blanks for the Shuttle program. Any ideas on Apollo, Gemini, Mercury, unmanned launches, Soviet, ESA, China, South Korea, etc.--RadioFan (talk) 02:55, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Spaceflight missions by quality

I've hacked together a list of (almost all) manned missions, in a table listing the article quality assessments, at User:Shimgray/Space quality. Might be of interest, if anyone's looking for something to work on! Shimgray | talk | 18:26, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks! :-) Gonna be one heck of a project, what? Colds7ream (talk) 21:55, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Yeah. Almost all Start, though it's interesting to notice that after 2005, the Shuttle articles start being of a generally higher quality - because they're the ones we were writing about at the time... Shimgray | talk | 23:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I've been adding a lot of detail and cites from two secondary sources I have on the Soviet manned space program. I've added quite a bit of detail to pretty well all the Soyuz manned flights starting with Soyuz 12 in 1973, through to Soyuz 35 in 1980 on which I've started a rewrite.

Looking at the later shuttle pages shows an extraordinary amount of information, while most of the milestone missions of the Soviets from the 70s and 80s have almost no information on their pages. It's time to add more information and context to some of these flights.

I plan to continue doing this through to the end of the 80s, and I note that many of the pre-Soyuz 12 manned Soviet flights are rather haphazardly written, so I may start to tackle some of those as well.

One issue here, once Salyut 6 started to have multiple crews, is whether the flight (example Soyuz 32) should also describe the expedition. I've not seen my sources use the expedition numbers universally (EO 1 is used sometimes to describe the first long-duration crew of salyut 6, for example). So I've written the articles detailing the expedition launched by the particular flight. If, down the road, it is decided to split the flight descriptions from the expedition descriptions (like with ISS), then it would be a simple matter in large part re-naming, for example, the "Soyuz 26" page the "EO-1 expedition" page, then doing something with the original Soyuz 26 page. Canada Jack (talk) 17:45, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

In my limited experience, Soviet/Russian station mission numbering was complicated! Perhaps it would help if we had a timeline page showing which expeditions and increments were when, and how they related - does such a thing exist?
As to Soyuz, hurrah! I've some material handy - I'll try and expand some as well. Shimgray | talk | 18:34, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I've found the numbering more straightforward than, say the shuttle numbering system. If it flew, it was given a sequential number. Shuttle numbering, in contrast, is from initial assignment which often changed flight order. The issue I have with "expedition" numbering is I've not seen it consistently used. Sources would describe "expeditions" by Soyuz flight number - one source I have makes no mention I can see of any "expedition" number I've seen elsewhere. It may have been a post-facto assignment here, as the ISS uses an Expedition numbering system that is quite distinct from the particular flight numbers. But we don't generally use Nasa's numbering of Soyuz and Progress flights (the first to ISS in 2000 is "Soyuz 1" for example, when the Soviets assigned that number to a 1967 flight), and I wonder if these expeditions for the Salyut 6, 7 and Mir flights are also Nasa creations. Perhaps someone here knows the answer to this. Canada Jack (talk) 19:37, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I've looked in the voluminous NASA history of Mir, "Mir Hardware Heritage", and the followon "Mir Mission Chronicles". Both use "Principal Expedition" terminology - eg/ "Mir 15", principal expedition 15. I was wondering if this was an odd use by NASA, but it seems to have been the Soviet standard, ever since the second-generation Salyuts:
...permitted guest crews (known officially as Visiting Expeditions) to visit resident crews (known officially as Principal Expeditions). Visiting Expeditions could trade their Soyuz for the one already docked to the station, leaving a fresh vehicle for the Principal Expedition.
Note the "officially" :-) These are reported distinctly from Soyuz numbered flights, though they often overlap closely; I think this might be the standard form we want to aim for. Shimgray | talk | 20:13, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that this is Nasa's terminology, not necessarily the terminology the Soviets and Russians were using. And, given what I said earlier about Nasa's tendency to ignore Russia's numbering system for Soyuz and Progress flights (see, for example, Soyuz 15, and you will see a note is needed at the top as Nasa chooses to number them differently), I hesitate to embrace that numbering system without a Russian source. While this may not be an issue for the ISS, as the Expedition numbers are set in stone (if confusing), I'm not so sure this is the case for Salyuts 6 and 7 and Mir. I have several very detailed books on the Soviet space program and one, while offering voluminous detail on Salyut 6, 7 and Mir to 1990, never mentions these "expeditions" that Nasa talks of. It refers to the "Soyuz 26" crew or "resident" crew, not to "EO-1" or what have you, notation I have seen crop up in various places.

In the end, the issue here is whether we stick to the "Soyuz" pages, or create separate "Expedition" pages (as with the ISS) for Salyut 6, 7 and Mir. There will probably be many cases where the expeditions are identical to the Soyuz pages, particularly with the Mir missions. My preference would be to stick to the soyuz pages.Canada Jack (talk) 20:49, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, hmm. The problem is any English-language source is likely to tend to use a NASA style of "historiography", so we're going to have to dig really hard! I think, pending resolving this with Russian-language sources, your approach of sticking to Soyuz missions is best - list events under the relevant upwards flight. Shimgray | talk | 21:17, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, seems I am wrong on one point, at least. While one major source, Dennis Newkirk's 1990 "Almanac of Soviet Manned Space Flight" fails to ever refer to the missions in question as "EO-1" or what have you, my other main source, Phillip Clark's 1988 "The Soviet Manned Space Program" does. But only in passing. For example, it only calls the Soyuz 26 crew residency "EO-1" before the flight, when a previous crew was to be the "EO-1" crew but failed to dock. For the actual duration of the flights, the mission is called "the Soyuz 26 residency," or what have you, even when said crew lands in another Soyuz. This is similarly done for the EO2 and EO3, but not for anything after, not for the Salyut 7 missions, nor the Mir missions (to the summer of 1988). I have followed that practice in doing those pages so far.

These Soyuz pages hardly engender heated debates. But here is my justification for doing it this way if it does become an issue. Canada Jack (talk) 00:19, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Use of tables and wake-up calls

I've just removed a table of wakeup calls from an article, on the grounds I felt it was over-detailed clutter, and it got me thinking. I've noticed a growing tendency for information in articles (most generally on recent spaceflights) to be presented as large tables rather than prose. For example, STS-128 has four in-text tables (crew, launch attempts, EVAs, wake-up calls). STS-123 has four including a "mission payload" table, which is a new one to me, and STS-119 even includes a second crew table - if this had the wakeup calls presented in the usual table format, there'd have been six tables.

I can't help but think this is overkill. We're presenting an awful lot of material to the reader, some of it very specialised (the precise location of payloads?), and I wonder if this is actually making these articles less easy to read. It provides a lot of unnecessary information formatted for quick-reference, which draws the eye away from the prose, and breaks up the reader's ability to work through the article comfortably. It also seems to give undue weight to the significance of these fairly technical details, by the way we're presenting them separate from the prose. My feeling is that a lot of it could easily be presented as prose, or cut entirely, but I'd be interested to hear other thoughts. Shimgray | talk | 23:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

...anyone? After some thought, I'm particularly concerned about the wake-up calls section - this really isn't interesting material to the general reader, and it takes up an awful lot of screen space for what is basically a glorified radio playlist with links to mp3s. I'm not wanting to start removing them without some kind of consensus opinion, but I really can't see much justification for keeping them, and they do seem to be lowering the quality of our articles. Shimgray | talk | 00:01, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Right, I've kickstarted a discussion at Talk:STS-8 - hopefully if we can get some general feedback there we can think about what to do more generally. Shimgray | talk | 14:03, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I am against removal. It has been done since Gemini and will probably be continued through Constellation and so on. I don't think it adds any undue weight to the article or makes it longer. In fact I think it makes it easier to see what wake up call was given and to what crew member, who the artist was and links to hear the actual wake up call. It's kinda like the crew section, before it was a plain boring list, now it is a neater, easier to read table with all the important details. Just my 2 cents.--NavyBlue84 14:21, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
The table is nicer than a bare list, I agree entirely on that, and makes it easier to look up what was played for who... but do we really have a non-trivial number of readers who come to our articles to find that out? I'm amazed if so.
Including tables for crew is something I've come around to (at least for non-solo missions) now that we can integrate the table more cleanly into the text and surround it with prose, but there it's something that a reader plausibly will want as a quick-reference. "Who was the CMP on Apollo 15? [tab, scroll] Ah, right." I just don't see the wakeup calls getting used in the same way. Shimgray | talk | 14:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree for people who know about it and follow the shuttle program closely it is trivial. However, someone who doesn't know a lot about the shuttle program, who is scrolling through the articles see's and learns something they didn't know. I think based on that fact alone it should be included. Wikipedia is a place for people to learn new things and we should include all things that have historical significance or are interesting and notable, and I think the wake-up calls fall in both. I think we should keep it the way it is, so people who are new and don't know can find the information easier. Therefore the table and its own section should be kept.--NavyBlue84 19:32, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't really see much harm in including them, they seem fairly well referenced (or at least the examples I have seen do). I would certainally prefer a tabular format to a bare list. It might be trivial information, but it could still be of interest to some people, so I would say WP:NOTPAPER applies. An alternative, if this is determined to be an example of too many lists, would be to include information on the wakeup calls as prose, in each of the flight day sections. --GW… 17:00, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
How about putting the table into a separate list article, for easy reference, and just link to it? Then it can grow however it likes, without weighing down the rest of the article. It seems trivial to me, but I can appreciate that some folks would not want to discard it entirely. Wwheaton (talk) 22:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think the whole wake-up call stuff is very silly, and for me it's been one of the biggest eye-rolling irritations that NASA insists on publisizing. (Another is the scripted "can-do" exchanges often heard. Okay they may not be scripted, they just sound that way.) That being said, however, there is almost invariably media reports on these wake-up calls, so I would say that warrants their inclusion. Canada Jack (talk) 22:46, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I admit that's partly my reasoning, too ;-). That said, I'm really not convinced that "has media coverage" = "warrants inclusion". Allows yes, requires no. Shimgray | talk | 23:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Shuttle–Mir Program FAR

I have nominated Shuttle–Mir Program for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Colds7ream (talk) 19:45, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Experts needed...

Outline of space exploration is a branch of Wikipedia's outline of knowledge. It presents the subject of space exploration as a tree structure (outline), so that readers can easily see how topics are related (parent, child, sibling, etc.) by how they are arranged on the tree.

And because topics are linked to corresponding articles, the outline doubles as a table of contents or site map for Wikipedia's coverage of space exploration.

The outline is incomplete, and needs developers who are interested in the final frontier.

Please take a look....

Is it structured well?

What's missing?

Can you improve it?

For more information on outlines, see WP:OOK, WP:OUTLINE, and WP:WPOOK.

For some specific examples of well-developed outlines, see Outline of the United States, Outline of Vatican City, Outline of robotics, and Outline of classical studies. For examples of even more detailed outlines, see Outline of forestry, Outline of cell biology, and Outline of Buddhism.

The Transhumanist 22:09, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

International Space Station

Just to let everyone know the ISS has been put up for a sixth Peer Review at Wikipedia:Peer review/International Space Station/archive5 - please leave a comment! :-) Colds7ream (talk) 17:06, 24 September 2009 (UTC)‎

Request for Comment

Please see Talk:Shuttle-Mir Program for an RfC on whether NASA references constitute reliable sources or not. Colds7ream (talk) 07:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Relevant deletion debate.

Folks, there's a deletion debate ongoing over at Commons about File:Atlantis Docked to Mir.jpg and related files which is very relevant to us here - please swing by and comment at the deletion discussion. Colds7ream (talk) 14:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

ISS FAC 4

Just to let everyone know that International Space Station is up for a fourth FAC, at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/International Space Station/archive4. Do please comment and make improvements! Colds7ream (talk) 16:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Help on STS-135

Some help would be appreciated on STS-135. An editor has recently greatly expanded this article from a redirect using a single reference, closely paraphrased. Some massive clean-up as well as re-formatting to make the article in-line with other Shuttle articles. -MBK004 21:42, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

As much as we all hope it'll happen, I'd say this violates WP:CRYSTAL at the moment... Colds7ream (talk) 23:24, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
I definitely agree, and have therefore added the appropriate tag. Since I've got finals to study for, if you believe this needs AFD, by all means go ahead. -MBK004 23:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

NASA image datestamps are systematically incorrect

NASA seems to have a systematic problem dating photographs - an image of the Mercury 7, including Gus Grissom, was supposedly taken January 20, 1971, which is impossible, since Grissom was killed in the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967. Another image is titled on the Commons as Alan Shepard before MR-3.jpg, yet the image is dated September 9, 1963. Apparently there are other mislabeled images. Is NASA aware of this, or is it uploading errors on our part? --Jatkins (talk - contribs) 16:17, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Super-vision in space?

Wtf.

I'm currently holding a translation of The Pocket Encyclopaedia of Spaceflight in Colour - Manned Spacecraft (1967) by Kenneth Garland, then vice president of the British Interplanetary Society. According to the book, astronaut Gordon Cooper spotted single roads, smoke from smokestacks, individual vehicles and a train during the Mercury-Atlas 9 mission. It goes on to note that this seemingly defies the laws of optics, and that claims of hallucinations persisted until the Gemini 5 mission confirmed his reports.

The book also calls the confirmation the most important result of Gemini 5, and gives a lot of detail. Apparently Cooper and Pete Conrad could spot the wakes of ships in the oceans, and consistently spot the trail of an airplane that landed on the El Paso International Airport every morning. They once spotted the airplane first. They also spotted two Minuteman missiles and the waves caused by a "water-braking rocket sled" that were all launched to test the astronauts' sight.

The book gives Cooper's visual acuity as 20/12 on the "Snellen scale," on the basis of the Mercury flight. It paraphrases NASA doctor Eugene B. Konecci on several theories: the atmosphere may act as some sort of gigantic lens, long objects may make smaller nearby objects easier to see, and stimuli may (UNTRANSLATEABLE) in the central nervous system. It notes that photographs from space were found to be much sharper than ones from airplanes, when they were expected to be somewhat less sharp, and that Gemini 5 proved that the human eye can distinguish objects as small as half a minute of arc instead of the expected one.

So:

  • Has anyone else heard of this?
  • What turned out to be behind this?
  • Where would I go to learn more about this, aside from this page?
  • Where is our coverage on this? The Mercury-Atlas 9 mission has two sentences and no cites, and I can't find an article. Worth covering, don't you think? --Kizor 20:17, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Mercury-Atlas 9 is actually sitting in a much-rewritten version in a text file on my desktop just now, but I haven't got to that bit yet. Watch this space ;-)
More prosaically, I have heard this before; my understanding is that one contributory factor comes from lines being much easier to see than points, so that things like contrails and pathways will show up better than anticipated. There's some discussion of this in chapter 19[ of NASA SP-45, the MA-9 mission report Shimgray | talk | 20:44, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

ISS ECLSS merge proposal.

Hey folks, just to let you know that I've a merge proposal going on at Talk:ISS ECLSS - weigh in with your thoughts! :-) Colds7ream (talk) 07:36, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

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Moon science

FYI, Moon science has been nominated for deletion via AfD.

70.29.210.242 (talk) 06:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

China National Space Administration

FYI, China National Space Administration has been requested to be renamed.

70.29.210.242 (talk) 05:04, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

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ISS Research

There's a discussion been opened at Talk:International Space Station#Scientific research article needed? with regards to the scientific research section of the International Space Station Featured Article. PLese swing by and see what you all think! Colds7ream (talk) 13:21, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The article Research and Science on the International Space Station has now been created and it's going to be a huge job to make itno something presentable.--U5K0 (talk) 18:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

List of Muslim astronauts

FYI, List of Muslim astronauts has been nominated for deletion. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 05:26, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Wake-up calls: history

Most WP shuttle mission articles have a section called "Wake-up calls", which includes a list of music clips used for that purpose. I was recently curious about when the practice began, and saw that in each case, the article section began with this statement: "A tradition for NASA human spaceflights since the days of Gemini, mission crews are played a special musical track at the start of each day in space." That struck me as worth double-checking, as I didn't remember musical wake-up calls during Gemini or even the early Apollo missions.

I checked the NASA PDF cited as the source, and indeed it did not say that. According to the source, "Use of music to awaken astronauts on space missions dates back at least to the Apollo Program, when astronauts returning from the Moon were serenaded by their colleagues in mission control with lyrics from popular songs that seemed appropriate to the occasion," specifically mentioning Apollo 15 as (apparently) the first instance of a musical wake-up call. In light of that discrepancy, I changed the introductory sentence for the shuttle mission articles to reflect that the tradition apparently began with Apollo 15 (although the case can be made, based on the source, that it really began with Apollo 17).

Fellow Human Spaceflight WikiProject member RadioFan, however, reverted these changes, commenting that "The reference dates back to Gemini" and that my changes reflected "over analyzing it a bit." I responded that I felt the existing statement in each shuttle article should be changed to accurately reflect what the source said under the WP principle of verifiability; RadioFan then asked that I take the issue to this page for discussion (our exchange can be read on RadioFan's talk page).

Although the cited source does document that music was transmitted to Gemini crews, it does not state it was used to awaken them; further, it does document a "tradition" of wake-up music that seems to have actually begun with Apollo 17. As it seems clear to me that the source does not support the WP article language, I suggest that readers are currently led to believe something that is incorrect, according to the cited source. On behalf of RadioFan and myself, we would welcome your comments and discussion.

Thank you, RadioBroadcast (talk) 16:29, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Since this information is or potentially will be used on hundreds of mission pages, the first change that should be made is move it to a template and manage it from there. I'm neutral on whether the focus should be on these being wake-up calls or simply music played from mission control to the spacecraft, but do feel that the fact that this dates back to Gemini should be noted. The time of day is unimportant here, this tradition and how it is tied to individual astronauts and mission objectives is what is important. It should be noted that NASA calls these "wake-up calls" regardless of the time of day they are used (see reference above) but other opinions are welcome.--RadioFan (talk) 19:06, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, RadioFan, we aren't getting much input here. I like your idea of a common template, and since the great majority of flights had what could correctly be musical wake-up calls, how about this: a "Wake-up calls" template is added to all flights beginning with Gemini 3. For Geminis and Apollos with no music played at all, of course, it would say None. But I think it would then be true to the source for all the other flights until Apollo 15 to have a sentence that said: "Music on this flight was played to the crew as entertainment while awake" or something similar. I would also then add that musical wake-up calls became a tradition starting with Apollo 17, since that's really how it reads to me. Let me know what you think. Thanks, RadioBroadcast (talk) 03:01, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
RadioFan, you are forgetting that crews on orbit are usally in a different wake/sleep cycle then people on the ground. The music played for shuttle crews is indeed a wake up call as the crew is asleep when it is played. As for wether or not the crew was awoken by music during Gemini/Apollo or not is open for debate, as I am not sure if they were awoke by music or not. As for the template idea, I think it is a good idea as it makes less work for whoever adds the wake up call. Another idea for it would be to have the links added automatically if possible. I just read the PDF and I agree that what was there was misleading. A simple re-word of the paragraph about it would work and I don't think it is really that big of a deal.--NavyBlue84 03:15, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

List of manned spacecraft

FYI, List of manned spacecraft (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.193.119 (talk) 06:04, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

A request for input

Hi everyone, just a quick request for anyone who's helped me in the past add Mir to their watchlists - I'm doing some work over there at the moment, beginning the great slog which will hopefully lead to my third FA, and I'm going to need some external input. Cheers, Colds7ream (talk) 16:31, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Expedition article naming convention

(Moved from previous thread) Mlm42 (talk) 23:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that "[Station] EO-[X]" is probably the best option. It would also give consistency with the existing Mir articles. I would also like to raise the question whether ISS expedition articles should be renamed "ISS Expedition X"? --GW… 22:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Good point. Actually, if we're going to make a change like this, I would probably be in favour of the French Wikipedia convention, "Expedition 1 (ISS)" (see fr:Expédition 1 (ISS)). My reason is purely aesthetic, though, so I wouldn't be upset with "ISS Expedition 1", which is used in many other languages. Mlm42 (talk) 23:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, though I'd probably prefer the ISS Expedition X format. Colds7ream (talk) 07:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
I'd prefer the "disambiguation" style, I think - they're formally just called "Expedition X", and if we title it "ISS Expedition X" then it suggests the full phrase is the standard name. But it's a pretty small quibble! Are there currently any disambiguation issues with other topics using "Expedition X" names? Shimgray | talk | 15:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Also, the same convention should be applied to naming the EO-X articles for Salyut 6, 7 and Mir.. and any others? Mlm42 (talk) 16:36, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
I think that's the lot, aye. Colds7ream (talk) 09:41, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Progress articles

On a not totally unrelated note to the Soyuz article discussion above, what is the general opinion on the plethora of Progress spacecraft articles that have popped up recently (see List of Progress flights)? IMHO, the vast majority fail WP:NOTABILITY (with the possible exceptions of M-SO1 and M-MRM2), and they could be merged back into the list. Colds7ream (talk) 08:42, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

  • Strong oppose. There is general consensus that all orbital spaceflights are notable. Relevant information can be found for all of them, and especially with the recent ones, too much information is available to present in a list format. --GW… 10:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
But all they are is hundreds of the same model of spacecraft, the only difference between each being the cargo in its OM - why are they notable? Colds7ream (talk) 15:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Indeed, I recently raised this question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight. GW, could you point to the discussion where consensus was established? Mlm42 (talk) 16:01, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
I can't remember the specific examples, but there have been several discussions. They have mostly dealt with individual instances, and I do not believe there has been a formal discussion to establish an overriding consensus. The spacecraft themselves may not have been unique, but the cargoes and individual mission events were. As for notability, at the risk of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, we have articles for thousands of species of plant and bacteria, for tiny villages that nobody has ever heard of, and for people notable for fairly minor achievements, and compared to this I would say that launching anything, anything beyond this planet is a fairly significant achievement. --GW… 17:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Okay, so lack of a specific discussion regarding the establishment of consensus, I think we need to satisfy WP:N to establish notability. To do this, we need to find "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", to justify having pages of individual spacecraft (such as Soyuz 26, or Progress 1) which are separate from the mission pages. I haven't been able to find, and noone has pointed me to, such sources.
Sorry if it feels like I'm throwing the book at you here, but I really think it's the right thing to do. Even on Encyclopedia Astronautica, the Soyuz 26 page is a disambiguation page. Mlm42 (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
There are plenty of news results for the missions, to use your example, see this. --GW… 22:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Those news results are about the missions not the spacecraft. Mlm42 (talk) 01:23, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
The Progress spacecraft rock up, drop off some cargo, and leave. They all do the same thing repeatedly (with a few exceptions, such as, say, M-SO1, M-MRM2, Cosmos 1669 or M-14, which do deserve their own articles as they did something outside the norm), so why do they need their own articles when the orbital data is perfectly well presented in a list? Colds7ream (talk) 09:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
What about cargo data, detailed descriptions of processing, launch, anything unusual that happened during the mission, etc. As for MLM's argument, I would suggest that the ships are still notable, and the news sources still cover them.
Okay, many of the articles are still stubs, and could do with some expansion, but that is simply due to lack of time to conduct proper research and write more detailed descriptions. --GW… 23:26, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes, like I said, if anything unusual happened, fine, the mission deserves its own article (docking failures/collisions/mission-specific spacecraft configuration), but the ones which went normally and simply delivered a bit of cargo can easily go in the list with a description of the major cargo as in the table we have now. Colds7ream (talk) 07:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
And where do we draw the line? --GW… 08:13, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
If the Progress flew a 'normal' mission profile, i.e. launch, dock, dry and wet cargo transfer via hatch, refill with rubbish, reboost, depart and deorbit, it goes in the list. If there were any docking faults, modifications to the standard spacecraft configuration to carry unusual apparatus (like Pirs or MRM-2, the KRT-10 radio antenna and so on), or specific experiments carried out with the Progress, this would be mentioned in a standalone article (which itself would probably never get beyond stub, but there we go). Colds7ream (talk) 08:28, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

At the risk of setting a precedent, I've finished merging and redirecting Progress 1 and Soyuz 26 into Salyut 6 EO-1. I tried to make sure no information was lost in the merge. Let me know what you think. Mlm42 (talk) 16:59, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Like it a lot - a very neat and concise format, well laid out. :-) Colds7ream (talk) 17:12, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I strongly object to this. I see no consensus for these changes, so re-instate the changes as they were. As I have previously indicated, I have numerous sources which make NO reference to Expedition numbers, yet detail the very missions YOU insist on calling "EO-1". Not sure why you consider E.A as some sort of gold standard on what we should include here. There are many other sources who go by "Soyuz 26" or what have you when referring to a long-duration crew. Canada Jack (talk) 17:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Since this appears to be a contentious issue, it may be best to try and bring more people into the discussion. Canada Jack, as you pointed out, all I have done with respect to Soyuz 26/EO-1 amounts to renaming the page. No content has been lost. The main reason for doing this is to avoid confusion. I agree that some sources appear to refer to the entire mission as "Soyuz 26", even though half of the mission took place while the Soyuz 26 spacecraft was back on Earth. I think this naming convention is a bad idea, and apparently so does NASA (see their Mir Heritage Hardware) and Encyclopedia Astronautica. Renaming to EO-1 adds clarity to the article - even though its not the name that historically came first. Personally, I think clarity is better. Mlm42 (talk) 19:17, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
Agreed; there's no point in having separate articles for the spacecraft when all they will amount to is orbit data; merging this into expedition-based articles, which make more chronological sense, is a good move. Colds7ream (talk) 20:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
In other thoughts, if you want to get more voices, why not try an RfC? Colds7ream (talk) 20:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with some of what you are doing, Mlm but the change you made here - removing the Soyuz 26 page and creating a redirect to EO1, which encompasses the flights associated with that increment - is far too drastic, at least without a clear consensus that this needs to be done. I think your argument in regards to notability is strongest for the Progress missions. Beyond several notable flights - for example, the first one in 1978, the one that collided with Mir back in 1997 or whenever - we don't need separate pages for every or even many of those flights.

However, I don't agree that the Soyuz flights are not notable. They are. The simple fact they launched humans into space is in itself notable, and for the foreseeable future, once STS 135 has come and gone, these crafts will be the ONLY craft capable of launching humans into orbit. So it seems to me to be perverse to suggest an increment supersedes the actual vehicle/s which took those spacefarers to the ISS. There is somewhat of an argument when the Soyuz flight and the increment flight are identical, but that isn't what you've done here - the flight and the increment are two different things. Further, as I have noted, the increments on the ISS are marked by the undocking - or closing of the hatch - of the previous crew's Soyuz. Therefore, by definition, the craft and the increment are different things, similar but not the same.

I see absolutely no issue with leaving Soyuz 26 as a generally bare-bones account of who was launched and who landed, with the various craft parameters. And I have no problem with noting in the lede that this craft launched the EO 1 increment to the Salyut 6 where the bulk of the mission information should lie. There are a good number of flights which had some dock or landing issue, and those, properly, could be covered on the Soyuz page. The actual mission once on board could be covered on the increment page. This demarcation is even more stark on the ISS when the increment is so formalized. There, a crew is more properly the "Soyuz" crew until that hatch has closed and they become the increment crew.

Further, for the sake of continuity, it makes little sense to me when missions up to 1977 are routinely described by launch vehicle to change to increment after that, especially when two of the sources used for the pages I've updated describe the crews not by increment but by Soyuz mission.

So, here is what I propose:

PROGRESS - no need to make separate pages unless an important "first" is established by the flight, such as first launch of one of the series, or a notable docking incident/accident.

SOYUZ - describe the mission in reference to the Soyuz number if there is no associated increment. If there is an associated increment, describe the events/crews etc for the launch/land component of the flight, and describe the on-board activities as per the increment. Ensure an obvious and clear distinction between the SOyuz and the increment.

The underlying problem here is that the sources are NOT consistent in terms of describing the crews by either Soyuz or increment. Sources I relied on heavily for the very page you removed do NOT use the increment to describe the crew. So, to say that we should go by Encyclopedia Astronautica's style ignores the fact they are not the only source here. Further, in terms of "notability," I find it hard to swallow that a flight which launches humans into space is not in itself "notable." If this is not intrinsically notable, then there are a lot of space shuttle missions which were, despite Nasa's potent publicity machine, are not very notable. I mean, if we routinely list wake-up songs on shuttle flights, a section which typically is longer than an entire Soyuz page, one wonders how "notable" is defined.

The bottom line for me is if casual readers come here to read Soyuz pages, they will be confused when, suddenly, Soyuz flights are no longer described (if your proposals are accepted) and wonder, for example, why the first space tourist in history has no separate entry for the vehicle which launched him into space, as if this was some esoteric trivia, instead how he is relegated to an "increment" he was not a part of. If it is notable that a particular human has gone to space (and there are pages for every human who has entered space), then it should be notable how that person got into space and in what vehicle. Canada Jack (talk) 20:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Canada Jack, I agree with the much of what you just said. But understand that we already have an article for the Soyuz spacecraft: Soyuz 7K-T. Yes, it's a stub at the moment, but I hope one day it will be expanded to include every tiny piece of information anyone could ever want to know! Do I personally think the Soyuz spacecraft were amazing? Yes, absolutely! Do I want to preserve all the current information about individual Soyuz spacecraft? Absolutely! Do I think individual Soyuz spacecraft together with the short up/down flights to/from the station deserve their own article? Unfortunately no. As I said above, I think our articles should be Astronaut-centric. If the Soyuz 26 page redirects to Salyut 6 EO-1, where it clearly says (in multiple places!) that EO-1 was launched with Soyuz 26, then I think few readers will be confused.
More to the point, my main motivation here is to clear up confusion. I'm still not completely convinced the Soyuz 26 spacecraft itself deserves it's own article as per WP:NOTABILITY.. (I suspect not), but this is a moot point. The move I did was not based on a notability decision. What I'm saying is that the content in the Soyuz 26 article (as well as further content that has yet to come to Wikipedia) is already sufficiently placed between the articles Soyuz 7K-T and Salyut 6 EO-1 (not to mention all the lists). To have another article which is solely devoted to Soyuz 26 seems like overkill, and an unnecessary duplication of information - something we should be trying to avoid.
I think you misunderstood what I said about the world's first space tourist; I suggest that his spaceflight have it's own article (I suggested the name ISS EP-1). I didn't suggest it should be "relegated" to the Expedition 2 article. At the moment the information is in Soyuz TM-32, which suffers from the same confusion problem Soyuz 26 did: Tito didn't land in that Soyuz! Mlm42 (talk) 21:39, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
Since you have already started merging articles without waiting for discussion to end, it is clear that you do not wish to try and reach a solution amicable to all parties. You therefore have my resignation. --GW… 23:35, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
I think Canada Jack's proposal is an excellent compromise, myself. Colds7ream (talk) 23:47, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
GW, I wasn't going to merge any more articles until we reached a consensus (and in particular until any merges had your approval). The reason I made redirects for this one example was so that we could see what we were talking about. It's nothing that can't fairly easily be undone.. I hope you'll reconsider your resignation.. I was just trying to uphold the policies of Wikipedia.. Mlm42 (talk) 23:55, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I've reverted the redirects I made earlier. Let's remember there are two simultaneous discussions here: 1) Merging some of the Progress articles, 2) Renaming some of the Soyuz articles. GW appears to have left because Colds7ream, Canada Jack, and I agree (see discussions above) that we should merge some of the Progress articles. I find this situation deeply unfortunate. Mlm42 (talk) 00:37, 6 November 2010 (UTC)


Guys, I've got to agree with GW here. Also, MLM, starting merges without clear consensus is something I though you would never succumb to (even to make an example, ever hear of your userspace?) You should be ashamed of causing GW's retirement. I agree that ALL Soyuz are notable and deserve articles. On the Progress issue, yes they seem routine, but there is some notability there which warrants more than all but a very few being merged. Of the approximately 100, I can think of about 25-30 with modifications to the basic design beyond the standard of the time-period, several that carried a notable payload, etc. I think we can keep about half of them, but will argue for all of them. The individual articles may not currently support this (and some do not even exist yet), but as GW has described this is still a work in progress. We haven't even finished the entire TLS yet, and I don't know how long it will be if I have to do it without GW. He was working on quite a few different projects including the Progress articles, starting with the stubs that exist before filling them in. Now his retirement most likely means that these articles have no chance. -MBK004 05:34, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The mistake I made of redirecting prematurely has been undone. I'm sorry. My edits were in good faith.. I only want the best for these articles. I'm sorry if I've hurt anyone's feelings. I should probably back off of this whole thing. Mlm42 (talk) 06:42, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment

I added a request for comments tag to Talk:Progress 1 (hopefully I did this correctly). But I plan on staying out of the discussion. Mlm42 (talk) 02:13, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

That was premature and extremely unwise. See User_talk:Colds7ream#Fallout. You've probably sealed the nail which means that our most prolific user will never come back now. Good Job idiot! -MBK004 02:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
.. Wikipedia:No personal attacks? thanks though. Mlm42 (talk) 02:41, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Inflamed passisions and also dealing with a disruptive editor in another portion of the pedia. mea cupla. I've suggested that we table the Progress issue until the Soyuz/Expedition issue is completely dealt with so we can avoid any unfortunate mis-understandings. -MBK004 03:46, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:17, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks! It'll be nice to have the list updated on a timely basis! :-) Colds7ream (talk) 08:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Portals

Hey folks, just been paying a visit to the two spaceflight-related portals, and its come to my attention that neither seem to have the minimum editor base required to keep them properly maintained. Portal:Spaceflight has a large number of empty sections, and is listed in Category:Portals needing attention. Portal:Human spaceflight, on the other hand, has a nice set of articles thanks to Mlm's work on creating a rotating system so they're never blank, but no-one has been keeping the news up-to-date, adding to the article pool or anything like that. I suggest we message the Spaceflight and Unmanned spaceflight projects and see what they think of merging the HSF portal back into the main spaceflight one, then having it run as the responsibility of all three projects - would certainly increase the number of editors looking after it, and if there turns out eventually to be too much content, we can split it up again - thoughts? Colds7ream (talk) 16:11, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

It may just be easier to introduce the rotating random portal components as I did for Portal:Human spaceflight (and also Portal:Space); it's actually easier than you think, especially since there's already a good amount of content in Portal:Spaceflight; for example, there are already 12 biography blurbs in Portal:Spaceflight/Selected biography, so we could just put these in a {{Random portal component}}. Mlm42 (talk) 16:50, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but the other content of the portal (i.e. news and so on) isn't being updated - having three projects deal with the portal rather than one virtually guarantees it'll be updated from time to time - although I would be requesting you set up rotating content on the resulting merged portal too. Colds7ream (talk) 21:44, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Sorry to sound like a broken record around these parts but I think the problems here are just a reflection of the "manpower" issues I've mentioned elsewhere at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight. As one of the very few active USF'ers I'd support more efforts at achieving critical mass and less hierarchical conflict, portals included. ChiZeroOne (talk) 22:55, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
My point exactly; one of the weird things that seems to have come out of the discussions elsewhere on this page is that a few other editors are popping up, which is great. I think unifying the portals and working to get it featured (which would be much easier with more manpower) would be a great way to get more people involved in these projects. We might as well try and get the other spaceflight projects involved too, like timeline and colonisation. Colds7ream (talk) 08:14, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
I've just taken a look at the member lists for all five projects, and we have a total of 149 individual editors listed between them. Unless anyone has any particular objection, I'll start a centralised discussion and message them all about it tonight. As an aside, is there any way in particular to check whether or not these editors are active (other than, say, striking out everyone's name and asking them to unstrike it if they consider themselves active in the project)? Colds7ream (talk) 08:59, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
It would be nice to have a list of active editors; several other WikiProjects do this, and seems like a good idea.. it looks like Wikipedia records "active registered users" (see Special:Statistics), as those who logged in sometime in the past 30 days.. so in principle this tells us who in the wikiproject is active. Mlm42 (talk) 16:51, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
I've opened a thread for the discussion, which can be found at Portal talk:Spaceflight#Portal merge. Colds7ream (talk) 21:39, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Well, lets put it this way there are only 3 other active editors on the Unmanned Spaceflight list who have made any contributions to Wikipedia in the last 30 days (most either haven't edited in years or are blocked). As far as I can see none actually active on the project pages recently. The state of the other projects doesn't appear any better, there's nowhere near 149 contributors! These members lists are hiding the true state of the problem given they don't identify active members and I don't think things will change until the structural problems are sorted out, allowing easier recruitment. In theory I would support separate portals, provided enough content, but currently with the state these projects are in that cannot be maintained. As you say we need to raise the quality to get noticed as well. ChiZeroOne (talk) 02:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
Merge the projects and the portals. Merge, merge, merge! There is far too much segregation among astronomy & spaceflight topics, regardless of the numbers of contributors.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Salyut articles

As I've been going through the Soyuz articles, I noticed articles like Soyuz 26, and Soyuz T-13 contain information that should be in the (yet to be created) Expedition articles. See, for example List of Salyut Expeditions, the see the lack of articles.

Does anyone have an opinion on what these articles should be called? I was thinking something like EO-1 (Salyut 6), and EO-1 (Salyut 7). At the moment the article Soyuz T-5 begins: "Soyuz T-5 was the first expedition to Salyut 7." I think this is incorrect. The expedition was named EO-1, and the spacecraft which launch the cosmonauts has called Soyuz T-5. Have I interpreted this correctly? Mlm42 (talk) 20:38, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

You have, but I always felt that there isn't enough material for two separate articles with the expeditions to Salyuts 1, 3, 4, 5 & 6. IMHO for these the expedition pages should redirect to the Soyuz articles or vice versa, and separate Soyuz and expedition pages should begin when it became possible for partial crew handovers, which was either on Salyut 7 or Mir, I'm not sure which offhand. Colds7ream (talk) 21:02, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Right, so we agree the Salyut 6 and Salyut 7 missions need to have separate Soyuz and Expedition pages. The question is: what do we call the expedition articles? The list List of human spaceflights to Salyut space stations has redlinks such as Salyut 6 EO-1 - this is how the German wikipedia articles are organized (see de:Saljut 6 EO-1). I've suggested the name EO-1 (Salyut 6), but the huge document Mir Hardware Heritage (a NASA reference publication) refers to it as "Salyut 6 Principal Expedition 1".. so maybe Principal Expedition 1 (Salyut 6) is an appropriate article name? More generally, Principal Expedition X (Salyut Y) where Y is either 6 or 7. Mlm42 (talk) 16:50, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
My preference would be for the EO-X option. Colds7ream (talk) 17:03, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
There's a brief discussion here on EO vs. "Expedition", though I don't know if we ever specifically decided on anything. Keeping a consistent "system" between ISS/Mir/Salyut mission numbering is sensible, which would support having separate "flight" and "residency" articles. Shimgray | talk | 19:38, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
Shimgray, thanks for pointing out that discussion; I hadn't noticed it before. Canada Jack may have a point, saying that Russia sources (including, for example, the current Russian Space Agencies website here) use Soyuz X to refer to the resident crews, and not EO-X. But, there's a lot to be said for clarity, and that convention, frankly, is confusing. The convention of numbering the resident crews separately (whether NASA's idea or not) seems much better.
Okay, since there are several redlinks to Salyut 6 EO-1 already, I'll start the page there. Mlm42 (talk) 20:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure any more that Soyuz 26 and Soyuz 27 deserve their own articles.. it may be best to just have them redirect to Salyut 6 EO-1 and Salyut 6 EP-1, respectively, and merge in the appropriate content (for example, the infoboxes could go in a section labelled "Soyuz 26"). This might avoid duplicated information; and if the EO-1 article gets to long (somehow doubtful), we could always separate them again. Because really, what could go in the Soyuz 26 article that shouldn't go in Salyut 6 EO-1? Mlm42 (talk) 23:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

  • I would be inclined to object to that, I would say that all manned spaceflights are sufficiently notable to warrant their own articles. --GW… 23:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
Maybe I'm confused, but I thought Salyut 6 EO-1 would be the manned spaceflight and Soyuz 26 is the spacecraft (even though many sources refer confusingly to the entire expedition as Soyuz 26). And it's not clear to me that each Soyuz spacecraft deserves its own article.. surely any specific information could go in either the EO-1 article (for crew activities) or the Soyuz 7K-T article (for technical things about the spacecraft itself). The main reason to break it would be to avoid unnecessarily duplicated information. Mlm42 (talk) 00:17, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Indeed; again, I would say that if an expedition consisted of one crew launching & landing in the same spacecraft, then the Soyuz and EO articles should be merged to reduce duplication. Colds7ream (talk) 07:20, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
In cases where a single spacecraft was used, I would argue that the spacecraft name would be the more common name than the expedition name. --GW… 07:52, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Colds7ream, I agree; if a single spacecraft was used, them the article about the entire mission should just be named by the spacecraft. But Salyut 6 EO-1 was launched with Soyuz 26 and landed with Soyuz 27, so my question remains: should we merge both those Soyuz articles into the EO-1 article? It certainly wouldn't make the EO-1 article too much longer. Mlm42 (talk) 16:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
I would say not, as Soyuz 27 launched one crew and returned a different crew home. Colds7ream (talk) 18:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem here is the pre-Salyut 6 space station flights were all, in effect, "expeditions" which were known by the craft name. So to roll the flights into expeditions from Salyut 6 on - especially when many of the mid-90s flights were identical in terms of craft/expeditions - means an inconsistent sequence of articles. When it comes to the ISS, we have separate Soyuz and Expedition pages. The same should be done here. So, when expeditions were different from the Soyuz pages, we should definitely keep the Soyuz page, but reduce it to a listing of crew up / crew down, launch and landing info (and any issues with the craft itself which may have happened) with clear links to the expedition pages, and a more complete account of the expedition on those pages. 159.33.10.92 (talk) 19:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, forgot to log in above. I added a lot of material to the 1970s Soyuz articles and my sources almost never referred to the SOyuz flights as anything but "the Soyuz xx residency crew," even when they started to swap out craft in 1978. So, I knew this issue would arise eventually. I am pretty sure that this naming convention is from Nasa who started to refer to "expeditions" once they started to visit Mir in 1995. But, since this has now become a often-used convention, (as is their naming convention for Soviet rockets) we should apply it, though, as said above, retaining the original Soyuz pages with limited launch/landing crew info and any craft anomalies noted (bad landings, etc.). Canada Jack (talk) 19:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean to step on anyone's toes here, but I'm still not completely convinced that these Soyuz spacecraft are notable enough to have articles separate from the mission articles. Colds7ream, the Salyut 6 EO-1 article explains what happened, regarding who was launched/landed in which Soyuz. Together with an article titled Salyut 6 EP-1, containing content from the current Soyuz 27, I don't see a need for the Soyuz 26 and 27 articles. The launch/landing information is also clearly displayed in the List of human spaceflights to Salyut space stations.

Remember individual Soyuz spacecraft can also be discussed in the Soyuz 7K-T article, if desired; Canada Jack mentioned bad landings - these also naturally would be placed in the mission's article. I don't think it's a bad thing if we have an inconsistent sequence of articles.. there's nothing wrong with a redirect from "Soyuz 26" to "Salyut 6 EO-1"; then the Soyuz template at the bottom of the pages would still look pretty, if that's the concern.

More to the point, I don't believe the spacecraft Soyuz 26 and 27 are notable enough (in the WP:N sense) for their own articles. Because let's be honest, has the Soyuz 26 spacecraft (as distinct from the mission, which was also often referred to as "Soyuz 26") received "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject"? Personally, I don't think so, but if you can find such sources then I may be convinced otherwise. Mlm42 (talk) 23:49, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

But given that Soyuz 27 carried two crews on two separate expeditions, where would you put the data and where would you redirect Soyuz 27 to? I think we need to more views on this, I really don't know what to suggest... Colds7ream (talk) 08:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Redirect Soyuz 27 to Salyut 6 EP-1. The launched crew of Soyuz 27 seem to often be referred to as the "Soyuz 27 crew" anyway. Then the EP-1 article could have an infobox containing much of the data you are referring to. Look, if you read the Soyuz 27 article, it's not about the spacecraft, its about the EP-1 mission, which ended when the EP-1 crew landed in Soyuz 26; the only mention about the actual return trip of the Soyuz 27 spacecraft is that final sentence: "The original Soyuz 26 crew used the Soyuz 27 craft to end their record-breaking 96-day mission on 16 March." This might confuse the reader; as I say above, I think it's more natural to split it up based on the missions, not the spacecraft. Mlm42 (talk) 16:13, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

But if we extend the argument, why have, as we do now, separate Soyuz/Expedition articles for the ISS? The same logic applies. Canada Jack (talk) 16:17, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe we're usually better off including this information in the expedition articles, with a redirect from the Soyuz articles. It would avoid duplication of information. Mlm42 (talk) 16:23, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Notice that the (reliable source) Encyclopedia Astronautica doesn't have articles for individual Soyuz spacecraft/flights. Mlm42 (talk) 16:48, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Part of the problem here is that, in the case of the ISS, an Expedition starts, if I am not mistaken, when the previous crew undocks from the station, NOT from a launch/landing. So the Soyuz flights here are not identical to Expeditions. Formal control of the station is marked by the Expedition. Which is not a space flight per se, but a command designation of a space vehicle, the ISS. The actual launch and landing is, as far as I can tell, not part of the Expedition itself. I'm not sure this idea was so explicit with the earlier Soyuz flights which is why I hesitate to simply swap one for the other. To be consistent, we should list all the flights, which means we should list the Soyuzs. Canada Jack (talk) 17:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

While that's true, Expeditions are from docking/undocking, and the Soyuz are from launch/landing, this isn't justification to have articles for each, because of the considerable overlap! I'm suggesting we switch to the astronaut-centric view instead of the spacecraft-centric view. Let's take a specific example to see how this would work. The article Soyuz TM-31 at the moment appears to cover four topics: 1) The flight to the space station starting Expedition One, including launched crew and payload 2) The time it spent in orbit, including docking/undocking activities over two different expeditions, 3) The flight down (which occurred in the middle of Expedition 2), landing the crew of Soyuz TM-32, including the world's first space tourist and 4) The technicalities of the spacecraft itself.
In this example, I think it makes sense to incorporate (1) into the Expedition 1 article; to split (2) between Expedition 1 and Expedition 2; include (3) into ISS EP-1, with some information in Expedition 2; and anything regarding (4) into Soyuz-TM.
ISS EP-1 is the name of the Encyclopedia Astronautica article about the nearly 8 days spaceflight carrying the world's first space tourist. Currently Wikipedia does not have an article with this spaceflight as its subject. Now NASA seems to call Dennis Tito's spaceflight "Soyuz 2 Taxi flight", and I'd prefer "ISS EP-1", but whatever its called, it shouldn't be "Soyuz TM-32"; the fact that NASA refers people to Encyclopedia Astronautica for this kind of information, is an argument for the name EP-1.
More generally, I think we'd do well to follow Encyclopedia Astronautica's example, in terms of article naming (including which topics actually deserve to be articles). Mlm42 (talk) 19:25, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Mlm - you have failed to gain consensus for these changes - and I see you have gone ahead and made the changes yourself, removing the Soyuz 26 page entirely. Please revert the changes until you have gained consensus. Canada Jack (talk) 17:26, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Above all, article should be given meaningful names. This is a particular challenge with the Soviet-> Russian space program due to some names appearing in multiple contexts (e.g. Soyuz) The naming convention generally followed for articles in other space programs is to identify the program followed by the mission identifier, e.g. STS-133, Apollo 11, Salyut 6 EP-1, etc. Spacecraft get their own articles where they discussed as vehicles, not by missions. Soyuz is a class of spacecraft. Soyuz 27 is essentially a version of that class that was used on a specific mission ( Salyut 6 EP-1 ). The mission should be covered on the mission page ( Salyut 6 EP-1 ) any intricacies (which I see nothing significant in the Soyuz 27 article) should be covered in the article on that spacecraft (Soyuz (spacecraft) . This is along the same lines of covering the mission itself in Apollo 11 rather than have an article titled Saturn V SA-506 as well. This keeps things consistent among all articles on spaceflight. ISS, Mir and any other station articles should have their own articles on individual missions in addition to the article on the craft itself. These article should be in addition to the mission articles that brought personnel to the station in the first place because the station mission lives on past the ferry mission.

Its probably oversimplifying it way too much but perhaps it's a place to start future discussions and considerations the the topic: If there is a patch on an cosm/astronaut's spacesuit, it probably warrants its own article.--RadioFan (talk) 19:31, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

A message from GW

Hey folks, I sent a message to GW via NSF, and here's what he sent back:

Thanks for your message.

Reflecting on my actions last night, I may have acted somewhat hastily. The merger conducted by Mlm made me believe that implementation of the proposal was underway, and that further discussion would not change the situation. Further, since the article used for this "test" was one which would not have been merged under any of the compromise proposals which were on the table, I assumed that the original merge-everything option was back on. Also, recalling your past hostility towards these articles in a previous discussion which upheld the status quo (can't remember which page it occurred on though), I think I read too much into this being done whilst I was effectively on a partial wikibreak.

Having re-read the HSF page today, I think Mlm's new proposal shows a good way forward for the Soyuz articles, and I would favour option 3. That said, the Progress issue is still my primary concern. While I can see your point about their missions being somewhat routine, I would argue that simply being routine does not necessarily make them non-notable. Google News returns plenty of results for the most recent one, and I am fairly sure that, certainly for the more recent missions the articles could be taken beyond stubs with fairly little difficulty. I believe the difficulty with the older missions is that they were launched in an era when the Soviet Union/Russia was less open about its space programme, and most of the relevant information that does exist is probably in Russian and hard to access.

I think I will take a few days to collect my thoughts and then I will decide whether to reconsider my retirement. I am happy to discuss this with you and any other editors who this may concern, and I am happy for you to relay this message or any parts of it which you feel pertinent to any individuals whom it may concern.

Thanks for your concern.

— GW Simulations

Here's hoping we can all cool off and get a proper discussion going again. Colds7ream (talk) 12:37, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Awesome, I hope so too. Mlm42 (talk) 15:23, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, and hopefully GW can participate in the Progress discussion. His viewpoint is certainly welcomed (the more the merrier). -MBK004 03:57, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Just had another message on NSF:

Having reviewed available sources, I am confident that every Progress article could be taken beyond a stub. Obviously this would not happen overnight, but in the meantime I feel that merging them would be counterproductive, as it would take relevant information away from the articles in question, and discourage expansion. I believe that some of the more recent missions can easily be taken to at least B class, and it may even be possible to pick up one or two GAs.



If the discussions on the Spaceflight WikiProject and Progress 1 talk pages are closed (using templates such as "discussion top"), in favour of continuing the centralised discussion at HSF, the merger tags are removed from Progress 1 and Salyut 6 EO-1, and they are removed from Proposed Mergers, then I will agree to return.

Since my usual editing style is to create stubs and then fill them later on, and since Mlm's more recent proposal regarding Progress articles would make this virtually impossible, I will reserve the right to retire again should it become impossible for me to continue editing in my usual manner.

— GW Simulations

I've added such templates (it was just housekeeping discussions that had already been closed and moved back here), so hopefully we've managed to restore the status quo ante bellum! :-) Colds7ream (talk) 16:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

GW, Hope your reconsider and come back to Wiki, your dedication and past work has been absolutely priceless. Best reqards, LanceBarber (talk) 18:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

merging articles in wikipedia

Taking Colds7ream's suggestion to keep discussion centralized, I've removed the RfC tag on Talk:Progress 1.

But I would still like to start an RfC here. I just want to reiterate that the proposed merger(s) have nothing to do with notability. My understanding of merging at wikipedia is that if a stub could be naturally merged into a larger article, then it should be merged and redirected. In particular, from Wikipedia:Merging: "If a page is very short and is unlikely to be expanded within a reasonable amount of time, it often makes sense to merge it with a page on a broader topic." I don't quite know what a "reasonable" amount of time is.. but if someone wished to expand the stub, then they could unmerge the articles at some later date without difficulty. I thought this was a fairly widespread view across wikipedia, but this view is apparently not shared amongst the editors here.

Merging reduces duplicate information, and may provide better context. The resistance to merging by some editors here seems to be based around the idea that the stub article should be expanded. It would be great if they were expanded.. but Rome wasn't built in a day.. in the mean time, while we're waiting for this expansion, I think it makes sense to merge. Yes? No? Mlm42 (talk) 16:38, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

The issue is that it is actually rather difficult to un-merge without performing a copy-paste move which is not allowed per the attribution guidelines (it is difficult, time-consuming and requires admin tools to perform the operation correctly; I've done it several times and do not want to have to do it for 50+ articles if needed for the Progress flights). It is easier to let the articles say as they are for future expansion instead of making hurdles for future expansion. And not all Progress articles will be able to be "naturally merged" into other articles, and not all progresses stay at a station for just one expedition (in fact very few, just like the Soyuz issue). As to the duplicate information, if you did not completely copy content we would not have the duplicate issue, would we? Why don't we suspend this part of the discussion until we can get the Soyuz issue dealt with and hopefully GW returns? Dealing with both at once brings up too many passions and can also confuse the consensus between people (I think this is why GW retired). -MBK004 03:30, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
I thought a copy-paste within wikipedia was allowed (see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia), as long as you say where you copied from in the edit summary? (I've done this a couple of times, so I hope it's not wrong..) Mlm42 (talk) 04:52, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
In addition to the technical issues (which certainly are valid), from an editorial standpoint I've found that article merging tends to equate strongly with deletion in most cases, where the merged article doesn't really cover the topic at hand very effectively. This is particularly true when the article being merged in is only summarized where content and even references are lost in the transition. If you end up having to shorten the content after the merge, I would say that is very likely a good sign that the merge wasn't needed or that in fact it is being counter productive to the development of Wikipedia in general.
Also, by concentrating the various components into a single article, you open up many more opportunities for editorial conflict where different participants involved with Wikipedia may want to organize the information differently. By spreading content out into multiple articles, you give more "room" for other editors to come in and expand Wikipedia... in fact I consider this to be essentially a goal to be more friendly and to encourage wider participation. Anything that encourages more people to participate and to provide more opportunities to participate is something useful to do.
All this said, I think Wikipedia would get real boring if every time a FedEx or DHL delivery truck makes a run is recorded as a separate article, and it sounds like many of the Progress flights have about as much equivalent excitement. There does reach a point where you need to use some common sense here and perhaps some of the Progress (unmanned resupply flights) certainly could be merged together into a series of flights doing mostly the same thing. Just don't go overboard and perhaps the best thing to do is to come up with a short list of suggested articles in a common grouping. I certainly think that each series of somewhat similar flights ought to be in completely separate articles, and any flight that has something unusual or notable in terms of having more than a paragraph that distinguishes that flight from another one ought to be kept as separate articles too. Inaugural flights of a series might qualify here too.
If you need a comparison to a similar series of articles, I don't think that there will ever be a time for every single identified asteroid currently recognized by the IAU will receive an article on Wikipedia. Perhaps I'll be surprised in 100 years but it seems like a boulder in space the size of the couch I'm currently sitting in is not really going to be worth expanding into a major featured article, particularly when there are thousands of other rocks that are pretty much look the same and even have the same general composition. Are there notable asteroids? Absolutely! And there are notable launches too. The question is where do we draw the line on notability? Rethinking what is notable is useful here too. As spaceflight becomes more routine and common, there will have to be a point in time when there will be launches, even manned launches, that will not be noteworthy for separate coverage. Are you sure you want to have an article about every single flight of Spaceship Two when Richard Branson gets it into regular service? The first few flights, certainly, and notable flights will be happening, but I'm not even sure a summary or "list of flights" will even meet general notability requirements. This is an issue that is going to be persistent and problematic in the future for other situations, so I think it would be a good thing to nail down this issue regarding the Progress flights sooner than later. It is a useful test case for the general issue of how common spaceflight is becoming. --Robert Horning (talk) 04:20, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
At the moment, I don't think it's productive to discuss whether or not these spaceflights are notable. I think there are times when merges are appropriate, regardless of notability; Robert, I agree with what you said, that if content has to me trimmed to perform a merge, then it shouldn't be done. Mlm42 (talk) 23:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
I do not support the merge of Progress 1, or any Progress flights, into any of the early Salyut or ISS missions. To be able to peruse sequential Progress flights or Salyut missions or ISS mission is important to be able to do... as I was researching sequential flights of Progress during 2008-2009 ISS missions, and was most easy to do with separate sequential articles. As an example of support: some time ago I wanted to know the history (by dates and events) of the once known country of Prussia, prior to not having access to the internet, I used then current public library editions of Britannica and World Book encylopedia... the history was too brief. I then found a 1968 Britannica set, and found the most interesting history and dates of Prussia and then WWI, and with "See..." notations. Merging articles of historical sequences, like Progress, dilutes ones' studies or research. Sequential Progress flights should contain all its details, with a "Main" ref in the Salyut and ISS articles, with appropriate one or two sentences to complete the continuity of the article. Let's not loose or dilute history, whether it is a full or stub article. Thank you. LanceBarber (talk) 18:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
I see; but I would have thought List of Progress flights, with relevant redirects, would solve your problem? Mlm42 (talk) 18:53, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
If you do that, you will bloat the list. The articles were created because there was too much information to put into one list or article. --GW… 18:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

What we've learned

I'm going to try to summarize what we've learned in the above discussions. There are two topics: Progress articles, and Soyuz ferry / expedition articles.

Progress spacecraft

Some editors feel very strongly about this subject. If we leave the Progress articles as they are, (one article per spacecraft) then the only downside appears to be the possibility of duplication of information. In reality, this isn't much of a problem. Rereading the above discussions, I don't quite think we have consensus that every Progress spacecraft deserves it's own article.. that said, given several editors' emotional investment, I personally don't think it's worth arguing over, so I'm happy to suspend this discussion indefinitely, and proceed with the status quo.

Soyuz ferry / Space station mission

Everyone seems to be in favour of "Option 3" above, regarding the Soyuz TM-X / Mir EO-X articles. I think we can conclude there is consensus to have separate articles: one for the individual Soyuz spacecraft and one for the associated mission. I think it is important to notice that the agreement around Option 3 in the Soyuz TM-8 / Mir EO-5 case, shows that even in the case when the launching and landing crew were the same, people think the articles should be separate. RadioFan pointed out that we should be consistent with the Apollo missions, and this is an good point. There is no article on Apollo 11's spacecraft which is separate from the mission - the content on this spacecraft is split between the articles: Apollo 11, Apollo spacecraft, Apollo Command/Service Module, and Apollo Lunar Module. I wonder whether we are setting a precedent that Apollo LM-5 should be created? Canada Jack pointed out the launching/landing crew are usually different for the Soyuz/Mir missions, so the analogy doesn't exactly apply.

In summary, there appears to be consensus that every individual Soyuz spacecraft which visited Mir should have its own article, which is kept separate from the mission's article. And I suppose a similar argument would extend the same policy to the Soyuz which visited Salyut 6 and 7. But for Salyut 1-5, it may be best to keep things as they are, and keep the missions and spacecraft in the same article, named by the Soyuz spacecraft (most reliable sources seem to do this).

Remaining problem

The question now becomes how exactly to we divide up the content between the Soyuz articles and mission articles, when they are separate? This is a question I think we still need to resolve, with an eye towards reducing duplicate information. Let's take a specific example: during Mir EO-2, there was an incident (the Kvant-1 docking) which required the crew to retreat to the Soyuz lifeboat, Soyuz TM-2. Should this event be detailed in both articles Mir EO-2 and Soyuz TM-2? (the event is also already in Mir and Kvant-1) More generally, how can we decide which content goes where? Mlm42 (talk) 22:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  • The first issue, I think the Progress articles can, and will be expanded. It is just going to take a little time. There is more then enough info on them to support keeping them separate.
Second, your argument for the Soyuz article problem has a flaw. For the Apollo missions, there was no docking and extended stay at a station. While yes there were docking's of the LM and CM, they were occupied by the crew at all times. The Apollo mission pages are about the mission itself, not the craft. Kinda like the STS articles.
Finally, if you look at how the ISS articles are done up, there is one article for the Soyuz craft and one for the expedition. Anything taking place while the Soyuz is docked is covered in the expedition article, and anything taking place pre/post docking is covered in the Soyuz article. Any major events involving both, like relocation of a Soyuz, is mentioned in both articles. That is just my opinion.--NavyBlue84 00:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Navy Blue. Also, I am happy to begin expansion of the Progress articles as soon as the merger option is off the table. --GW… 14:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

For the Kvant question, we can mention that the Soyuz craft was also used during the Kvant docking, AND we could also mention the occasions when they swapped ports, which typically involved the cosmonauts going into the Soyuz, undocking, the station rotating 180 degrees, and redocking. There may be some overlap, but it would be minor. Canada Jack (talk) 14:53, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, that sounds good. Regarding major events, like the Kvant docking, while some information should go in the Soyuz article, maybe it's a good idea to link the relevant section from the Soyuz article to the Expedition article with the template {{main}} (as I've done in the Soyuz TM-2 case).—Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlm42 (talk • contribs) 02:06, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Given that discussion seems to have settled down, can I take it that we have consensus to retain the Progress articles or at least retain the status quo, in which case I can start expanding them. --GW… 12:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Yup, that's my understanding. Mlm42 (talk) 18:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Project banners

Hi folks - me again. Just wondering what people are thinking with regards to the duplicate article banners we seem to be running - anyone got any objection to abandoning the project-specific banner and moving back to using the WPSpace one? Colds7ream (talk) 14:15, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally I would have said the opposite: just look at WikiProject Astronomy and Solar System, they don't seem to take much notice of the Space banner when tagging articles and use their own. This makes sense, using the Space banner reduces the presence of the other projects on talk pages, a means of advertising, and yet seems no better at that job. There should be 3 banners; Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight, each with the options for daughter projects/taskforces within them. ChiZeroOne (talk) 14:32, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I think functionally, the WPSpace banner does essentially the same job as any project specific one, but takes up less space, as ChiZeroOne points out, and it also adds articles to WikiProject Space (these are the reasons I made the banner in the first place, as I recall). Maybe Astronomy and Solar System aren't using the banner because of the concern raised on the template's talk page last year.. I don't know if this is still a concern, or how easy it is to fix this problem.
I think it would be useful to have lists of articles combining all three WikiProjects: Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight.. such as combined assessment tables, and a list of popular pages (this page only contains articles tagged with the WPSpace banner). Judging from the number of members of WikiProject Space, I'm guessing there's demand for this. In short, I'd favour a single banner. Mlm42 (talk) 18:44, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
I have to say, I like ChiZeroOne's proposal very much - anyone else got any thoughts? Colds7ream (talk) 19:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
I think this should be discussed at a higher level project, with an aim to standardise usage across all space projects. --GW… 20:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
I started a thread at Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Astronomy, to find out the situation there. I also think it would be nice to standardize banner use across all space-related projects. Mlm42 (talk) 21:29, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way, as ChiZeroOne noted, there is a definite preference in Astronomy to use their own banner; in fact according to the discussion on the project's talk page, it would seem there is a preference to remove Astronomy from WikiProject Space (2 editors appear to be in favour of deparenting, another one is agaist the use of the WPSpace banner, and noone has spoken in favour of keeping Astronomy under WikiProject Space). This seems to call into question the use for WikiProject Space at all. Maybe it does make more sense to have Astronomy and Spaceflight separate, with the 'parent' projects as Science and Technology, respectively. But I agree with GW, that maybe it's time to move the discussion higher. Mlm42 (talk) 17:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah it does call into question the point of WikiProject Space, and also the wider structure including the relationship between Spaceflight and its daughters. Again at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've brought this up before too; Stand-alone banner template. As the re-evaluation of member numbers is showing, things aren't as healthy as they might seem, there needs to be a root and branch re-thinking of how space-related projects are structured. That might require greater devolution from parents or perhaps for example for Spaceflight's daughters to become taskforces of that project. But yes, this is a bigger issue than just banners. ChiZeroOne (talk) 23:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Agreed - as I'm going through these member lists, its becoming more and more obvious that we have pointless splitting of projects here - I've got a feeling that by the time I'm done I'm going to be suggesting all the spaceflight projects merge into WikiProject Spaceflight - and I agree, WP Space (and, for that matter, its portal) do seem to be somewhat redundant... Colds7ream (talk) 08:53, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
I would favour merging everything into WPSpace, and having one monolithic project like MILHIST with task forces where necessary. Hopefully that would give us enough active editors through the astronomy side of the project to implement some of the more editor-intense activities such as A-class reviewing, and to get the collaboration off the ground again. --GW… 10:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Although that's a nice idea in principle, GW, I don't think the Astronomy editors are on board; so we'll probably have to settle for unifying the spaceflight wikiprojects. This is, after all, a natural division between "science" (astronomy) and "technology" (spaceflight). Mlm42 (talk) 18:49, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
I've made a post on WT:SPACE mentioning both proposals and asking for input on the future of that project. --GW… 21:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
I don't think Astronomy should be part of WPSpace at all. It's a science wikiproject, and WPSpace isn't a science wikiproject. Astronomy already mostly tags articles without the WPSpace banner either with one or both banners on the talk page, having only the Astronomy banner.
As for what to do between the various subdivisions, I see "Astronomy" (already almost completely separated from WPSpace), "Spaceflight", "Solar System" (as a "regional" wikiproject, like WPEurope, or WPAsia), "WPSpace" (as a "popular" space project, covering popcultural space, and popular space topics (like Zeta Reticulli aliens, Martians, killer asteroids, and the like) ) ... these four remaining projects would be independent of each other, with no heirarchical links. WPSpace would be a subproject of WP:WikiProject Popular Culture, Astronomy would be in the Science wikiproject heirarchy, Spaceflight would be under the Technology wikiproject heirarchy, Solar System would slot under the regional wikiproject heirarchy.
76.66.194.212 (talk) 06:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Mir / Soyuz

I'd like to improve the articles Soyuz TM-8 and Mir EO-5. At the moment they are attempting to cover the same content (i.e. the same problem we were discussing above). I see five possible directions the articles could go in:

  • 1) Mir EO-5 is redirected to Soyuz TM-8 (and content merged)
  • 2) Soyuz TM-8 is redirected to Mir EO-5 (and content merged)
  • 3) The articles are reworked so Mir EO-5 contains information about the expedition only, and Soyuz TM-8 about the spacecraft and flights up and down only.
  • 4) Nothing changes.
  • 5) Something else (suggestions welcome).

I'd prefer either 1) or 2), but I have a feeling consensus says 3). If people vote for option 4 I think I'll cry. Anyone want to weigh in? (you'll notice I haven't edited either of these articles) Shall I start making changes in the direction of option 3? Does anyone strongly oppose option 3? Mlm42 (talk) 20:25, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

If you are to make changes, perhaps try to use your userspace first. As to what I prefer, no merges and redirections, but I agree that the overlap is too much. -MBK004 20:54, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
MBK, to be clear, you're okay with option 3? Mlm42 (talk) 21:28, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
I think so, but I would prefer to be able to see a mock-up in userspace before the changes go live. -MBK004 21:32, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
I think the third option is better. It will be more inline with the ISS articles. It will bring some consistency across the project. Like MBK said, do the changes in userspace first, that way it will be perfect (or almost perfect) when it goes into the article space.--NavyBlue84 23:50, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Okay, how about the articles User:Mlm42/Soyuz TM-8 and User:Mlm42/Mir EO-5? There's obviously a lot of content that still needs to be added to the EO-5 article. I am worried about the duplicated launch/landing information, but since most people seem to not share these worries, I'll just have to deal with it. Mlm42 (talk) 23:56, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
I'll put my support in for option three I think, given the situation at the moment. Colds7ream (talk) 09:44, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Can I also point out that I was suggesting that this discussion became an RfC, not one specifically at Talk:Progress 1. Probably not the best of ideas. Colds7ream (talk) 09:45, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Mlm: Let's get a bit specific here. WHen we are talking about the Mir permanent occupancy from 1989 to 1999 (Soyuz TM 8 being the first mission), the question has to be asked - how often were the Soyuz craft crew AND the expedition crew identical? i.e, a Soyuz launched a crew, that crew's tenure is a particular increment, and the same Soyuz landed the identical crew?

Well, here is the list: Soyuz TM-8, Soyuz TM-9, Soyuz TM-22. So, over the course of a decade, a grand total of THREE Soyuz flights can be matched with the increment.

Which Soyuz flights over the same span launched crews, but included personnel who landed on a different flight, or crew who were launched on a different flight? Soyuz TM-10, Soyuz TM-11, Soyuz TM-12, Soyuz TM-13, Soyuz TM-14, Soyuz TM-15... you get the picture. EIGHTEEN flights, if I have my numbers correct. THIS is why the Soyuz flights and the increment flights MUST BE SEPARATE.

ISS? It gets worse. First off, you seem to not be aware that the majority of ISS increments were launched on the shuttle, not on the Soyuz. Further, once the Soyuz started to launch increments, they frequently launched people who were NOT part of an expedition. Which Soyuz launched people not part of an increment? Soyuz TM 32, 33, TMA 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16. How many Soyuz flights to the ISS can be "matched" with their increments? Only THREE completed flights: Soyuz TMA 15, 17 and 18.

This is why what you have done is so wrong-headed and beside the point. If it was the rule and not the exception that Soyuz flights matched Expedition/increments, then you might have an argument. But when a grand total of SEVEN flights (including Soyuz TM 30) in TWENTY-ONE YEARS can be matched, while THIRTY-SEVEN are not matched, we can see why there need to be separate pages.

Therefore, since the issue you raise fails to be supported by the facts - i.e. Soyuz flights frequently match expedition flights and therefore should be merged - we should have SEPARATE pages. As I suggested above, there is no need to sweat this, we can put the bulk of the mission information on the Expedition pages, with the more bare-bones information on the Soyuz pages. In the end, for the entirety of the 1990s, there will only be three pages which have near-identical pages. Big deal.

So, option 3. Canada Jack (talk) 01:15, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

So we all agree on option 3 then.. more generally there seems to be consensus to have separate pages for most (all?) of the Soyuz / Expedition articles, with the expedition information (i.e. activities by the astronauts on the station) on the EO-X page and not on the Soyuz page. I'm not quite sure why you're getting so angry? Are you disapproving of something in the articles as I've modified them on my talk pages: User:Mlm42/Soyuz TM-8 and User:Mlm42/Mir EO-5? Mlm42 (talk) 01:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Anger? Probably frustration seeping through as I was walking my nine-year-old through her math as I wrote the above. I merely want to emphasize why soyuz pages can't or shouldn't be replaced by expedition pages, and vice-versa. You actually have seem to have come around to my thinking, and I commend you for putting the effort into doing this, though I thought your initial approach was going in the wrong direction.

As for the issue of "stubs," I started to expand the Soyuz articles from 1969 or so to 1980, it's a big job. But I believe once these articles are filled out, it will be great, as one will be able to trace the movement of space-farers on their launch craft, through the various expeditions... ideally, we should get a continuous narrative going for the space stations, and for the rather complicated sequence of events in terms of the crews coming to and fro. Cheers.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Canada Jack (talk • contribs) 02:39, 8 November 2010 UTC)

And GW was working on the Progress stubs until he was driven away. (I could not resist doing that)... -MBK004 03:39, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Seriously, as Canada Jack has clearly pointed out, what you were trying to do will not really work well and it is indeed better for there to be separate pages for ALL Soyuz and Expedition articles. Docking/undocking issues, safe-havens (this is an issue with ISS flights), relocations, landing, belong with the Soyuz; activities on the station with the Expedition page (safe-havens being one thing that can safely be duplicated). Also, I've noticed that you are not using the template for the crew on your pages: {{Spaceflight crew}}. That needs to be rectified regardless of how the discussion goes if you are writing these articles. -MBK004 03:39, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
As I've said, separate Soyuz / Expedition articles are fine, as long as the information about activities on the station (at least activities that don't involve the Soyuz) are only in the expedition article. But it sounds like we all agree on this, so it's all good.
I'm glad you brought up {{Spaceflight crew}}.. I'm not a huge fan of this template. There are several improvements that could be made.. the main reason I didn't use it was because of the unnecessary vertical space it takes up. Also, the lack of dates of launch/landing leaves you wondering how much time elapsed between launch/landing; you're also left wondering, if someone was landed on a different flight, how long were they up there? I was thinking more something like (for the Soyuz TM-8 article):
Position Name Spaceflight Launch Mission Landing Duration Notes
Commander Soviet Union Alexander Viktorenko Second 5 September 1989, Soyuz TM-8 Mir EO-5 19 February 1990, Soyuz TM-8 166 days
Flight Engineer Soviet Union Aleksandr Serebrov Third 5 September 1989, Soyuz TM-8 Mir EO-5 19 February 1990, Soyuz TM-8 166 days

Then if the launch/landing vehicles are different, they are naturally linked from the table. Just an idea; any thoughts? Feel free to shout me down. Mlm42 (talk) 17:38, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

A more complicated example, that could go in the Soyuz TM-3 article:
Position Name Spaceflight Launch Mission Landing Duration Notes
Commander Soviet Union Alexander Viktorenko First 22 July 1987
TM-3 		EP-1 30 July 1987
TM-2 		8 days
Flight Engineer Soviet Union Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov Second 22 July 1987
TM-3 		EO-2 29 December 1987
TM-3 		160 days
Research cosmonaut Syria Muhammed Faris First 22 July 1987
TM-3 		EP-1 30 July 1987
TM-2 		8 days
Commander Soviet Union Yuri Romanenko Third 5 February 1987
TM-2 		EO-2 29 December 1987
TM-3 		326 days
Research cosmonaut Soviet Union Anatoli Levchenko First 21 December 1987
TM-4 		LII-1 29 December 1987
TM-3 		8 days
There are probably mistakes here, since I don't know what these missions were actually called. Mlm42 (talk) 18:07, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the vertical-space problem, I've experimented with floating the template to get around this - see the use on STS-8#Crew. Shimgray | talk | 19:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Oh, that's a nice trick, I hadn't noticed that before. But I'd still prefer more clarity in the case when the launched and landing crews are not the same.. Mlm42 (talk) 22:14, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a whole other can of worms I was avoiding looking at when I did it - one problem at a time! :-). Shimgray | talk | 22:36, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm not hearing opposition to this, so I'm tempted to start using these crew tables, such as the ones above, in Soyuz / Soviet Expedition articles. Also, I think maybe it's time to move User:Mlm42/Soyuz TM-8 and User:Mlm42/Mir EO-5 to article namespace, unless there is opposition? Mlm42 (talk) 02:33, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

My only issue with it is that I don't like the bold text. I also think that the existing template is sufficient for Soyuz articles, and the new format should only be used in the Expedition articles. --GW… 08:24, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
I am opposed to your version of the crew table. I think the current ones are clear enough and should stay. For the TM-2/TM-3 they are both listed in the MIR article and people can go to them to see who launched and landed on what craft. I just think that table is a little too much.--NavyBlue84 13:47, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
I agree with GW on this one. Colds7ream (talk) 14:57, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
In the above example, I've removed the bold text, and slightly changed the formatting; while I agree the existing template is sufficient for the Soyuz articles, don't you think it could be improved upon? Mlm42 (talk) 19:06, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
I'm going to move these articles from my user space to the article mainspace now, since nobody has opposed anything except for the crew table (I've returned the old one for the Soyuz mission, but I still think this template could be improved upon). Mlm42 (talk) 03:39, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Human spaceflight articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Human spaceflight articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Uh-oh.. looks like we didn't do anything about this. There are 183 articles chosen for version 8.0 for this wikiproject.. the problem is 80 of them are Soyuz articles. All 80 are listed as TOP priority articles in this wikiproject as well as wikiproject Russia; also, all 80 are START class articles. This is a problem, and I'm not sure what to do about it. I think these articles should not all be Top priority; maybe some of them, such as Soyuz 1, but not all.
I'd like to tell the version 0.8 team to not include the Soyuz articles; does anyone have other suggestions for which ones we should / shouldn't be including? thanks Mlm42 (talk) 07:52, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree entirely with you, Mlm42 (in addition, thanks for your kind words about ISS, and I'm thrilled you got lots of hits on Expedition 1) - I would suggest that most of the STS articles are in a better state than the Soyuz ones; we need to let the 0.8 team know that this is an issue, and push to downclass all of the Soyuz articles which aren't up to standard. Colds7ream (talk) 14:09, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
This might be a good moment to dust off this old proposal for assigning importance ratings - "top" is something like Vostok 1, Apollo 8 & 11, and a couple of others we can quibble about; it's unlikely many Soyuz flights would be up there. I would say perhaps a quarter should be "high", and most "mid" - the same proportion as would hold for STS flights. Shimgray | talk | 17:28, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
I'd love to see my old proposal actually see some use! Colds7ream (talk) 18:36, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Alright, I've started going through the Soyuz articles, starting with Soyuz 1, and reassessing them. I'm also rating most of them as Low for WikiProject Russia, Low-Mid for WikiProject Space, and Mid-High for WikiProject Spaceflight. Mlm42 (talk) 19:00, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

(UNINDENT) OK, thanks for the feedback and the reassessment. Based on that we are deselecting the following articles, on the grounds that they had been assessed too high (by WP:Russia_: Soyuz 11, Soyuz TMA-12, Soyuz TMA-15, Soyuz TMA-16, Soyuz TMA-17, Soyuz TMA-11, Soyuz TMA-13, Soyuz TMA-10, Soyuz TMA-9, Soyuz TMA-18, Soyuz 5, Soyuz 3, Soyuz 4, Soyuz 2, Soyuz TM-31, Soyuz TM-32, Soyuz TMA-5, Soyuz 18a, Soyuz TMA-2, Soyuz TMA-6, Soyuz 23, Soyuz TMA-8, Soyuz 10, Soyuz TMA-7, Soyuz TMA-3, Soyuz TMA-4, Soyuz 28, Soyuz TMA-1, Soyuz 9, Soyuz TM-34, Soyuz 6, Soyuz 27, Soyuz 7, Soyuz 13, Soyuz T-15, Soyuz 33, Soyuz T-10-1, Soyuz 31, Soyuz 8, Soyuz TM-21, Soyuz 12, Soyuz 21, Soyuz 40, Soyuz 14, Soyuz 17, Soyuz 18, Soyuz TM-33, Soyuz 16, Soyuz TM-6, Soyuz 25, Soyuz 30, Soyuz 32, Soyuz 15, Soyuz 29, Soyuz 22, Soyuz 37, Soyuz T-2, Soyuz T-3, Soyuz T-4, Soyuz T-11, Soyuz TM-5, Soyuz T-5, Soyuz TM-4, Soyuz 34, Soyuz 39, Soyuz TM-20, Soyuz 35, Soyuz TM-24, Soyuz TM-3, Soyuz 24, Soyuz TM-18, Soyuz TM-29, Soyuz TM-7, Soyuz 36, Soyuz T-7, Soyuz TM-11, Soyuz TM-2, Soyuz TM-27, Soyuz 26. Please, if I've made a mistake - or if you think I'm a tool of the corrupt western capitalists trying to underrate the glorious achievements of the people's Republic - please let me know! I will contact the other affected WikiProjects soon. MANY thanks, Walkerma (talk) 01:27, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Reorganisation of space WikiProjects

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation regarding the future of WikiProject Space and its child projects. The discussion is aimed at defining the roles of projects, and improving the activity and coordination of the projects. The input of members of this project is requested as it is one which may be affected by the issue. --GW… 22:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Nomenclature for 1984-86 shuttle missions

First, thanks to GW Simulations for reinvigorating these projects. Second, does anyone else think it's odd that Wikipedia articles insert (what seems to me to be) an extra hyphen for the shuttle flights from STS-41B through STS-51L? On Wiki, the usage is STS-41-B and STS-51-L. I can't find any "official" NASA nomenclature like this.

Thanks, RadioBroadcast (talk) 17:34, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I have noticed that, and thought it odd.. sources seem a bit inconsistent on the matter. On a related note, articles like Soyuz TM-8 maybe should be called "Soyuz-TM 8". Mlm42 (talk) 23:20, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
I've seen both types of designation used on NASA websites, sometimes both on the same page. As for Soyuz missions, I've never seen one hyphenated in that way. Same goes for Progress-M. From, for example, the TMA-7 patch, it is obvious that having the hyphen before the number is the correct format for those missions. Unfortunately none of the Shuttle missions from that era had mission designations on the patches. I had a look at the press kit for STS-51-D, and that did seem to use hyphens between the number and letter. --GW… 23:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
NASA's document Mir Hardware Heritage hyphenates after Soyuz with a space before the number. Mlm42 (talk) 16:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
I think the mission patches carry more weight. --GW… 16:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Including Ground Operations

Are ground operations such as Mission Control, Mission Control Center (NASA) and Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Some are included only on talk pages, others are members of subgroups that have outdated links to Portal:Spaceflight and so on. I would be happy to undertake updating and including these pages along with counterparts around the world, but want to run it by others here so I don't step on any toes. --DizFreak talk Contributions 00:46, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):


{{cite journal |author=John Smith |year=2000 |title=How to Put Things into Other Things |journal=Journal of Foobar |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |arxiv=0123456789 |asin=0123456789 |bibcode=0123456789 |doi=0123456789 |jfm=0123456789 |jstor=0123456789 |lccn=0123456789 |isbn=0123456789 |issn=0123456789 |mr=0123456789 |oclc=0123456789 |ol=0123456789 |osti=0123456789 |rfc=0123456789 |pmc=0123456789 |pmid=0123456789 |ssrn=0123456789 |zbl=0123456789 |id={{para|id|____}} }}

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

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