This page is within the scope of WikiProject Spaceflight, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of spaceflight on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpaceflightWikipedia:WikiProject SpaceflightTemplate:WikiProject Spaceflightspaceflight articles
I've been working on a tool for the past few months that you may find useful. Wikipedia:Sandbox organiser is a set of tools to help you better organise your draft articles and other pages in your userspace. It also includes areas to keep your to do lists, bookmarks, list of tools. You can customise your sandbox organiser to add new features and sections. Once created you can access it simply by clicking the sandbox link at the top of the page. You can create and then customise your own sandbox organiser just by clicking the button on the page. All ideas for improvements and other versions would be really appreciated.
Huge thanks to PrimeHunter and NavinoEvans for their work on the technical parts, without them it wouldn't have happened.
Neopeius thanks very much, please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements in both the tool and the documentation, also if you look in the wikicode you'll see I've tried to add comments to make it easier to customise. I'm thinking there might be a couple of useful versions of this for different kinds of user. John Cummings (talk) 14:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Template:Il has been nominated for deletion on Commons. It seems likely it will be deleted as it seems to require a fair-use rationale, which Commons does not accept. It needs to be re-uploaded to English Wikipedia, with NFURs added for the capsule article and the mission article. -- 65.93.183.33 (talk) 02:44, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A textlogo [1] that does not meet the threshold of originality, and is thusly public domain, can be uploaded to Commons to replace the mission patch, for use on various other language Wikipedias, without any of us needing to know the language in question to write an appropriate NFUR for other languages. -- 65.93.183.33 (talk) 02:44, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @Terasail: -- quite frankly, I've never liked this new one. The letters are so muddy against the planet. I won't revert it without consensus though... :) --Neopeius (talk) 13:24, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Scope of template Satellite and spacecraft instruments
Hi! I have opened a discussion on Template talk:Satellite and spacecraft instruments about the scope of that template. It would be far too large to include all Earth observing instruments, and indeed most listed instruments observe other planets, except there are a few Earth observing instruments. Inclusion criteria are unclear. I think we need some guidelines here. --GerritCUTEDH10:27, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have been making a push to get all of the Timeline of Spaceflight articles up to snuff. After all, they are classified highest priority, and they serve as good hubs for the project.
While folks have done a good job of keeping the modern timeline articles up to date, pre-2009 has pretty much lain fallow for a decade.
I've gotten a few eyes on the first article and none on the second. If my spaceflight brethren could peek in and give reviews, that'd be great. I would love to be able to have High priority FLCs in the next Downlink :)
Ah, thats fine. @Neopeius: If you ever want FLC / FA nominations listed on the newsletter just ping me and I can add a section for it, I don't really understand the process but its good to try to get more spaceflight pages featured. Terasail[✉]14:27, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure, I will definitely be following FLC/FAC more closely in the future and attempt to understand it better, but I do best with minor article updates, and with Templates/Scripts which is why my mainspace edit % is so low. Terasail[✉]14:56, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Tereskhova was a uniformed member of the cosmonaut corps, and was trained in the operation of the Vostok, like other cosmonauts. Isaacman and Arceneaux are going on an autonomously operated SpaceX Dragon 2. They're more like Richard Garriot or Mark Shuttleworth who are classified as space tourists, even though they went into space. And not like Yi So-yeon, who was doing experiments in space, and had full cosmonaut training, and government support. Though a case could be made for them to be similar to Christa McAuliffe, being spaceflight participants. The question though is not if they are "astronauts", but if they are "commercial astronauts", which is where they are currently categorized. They are unlike the others currently so categorized, employees of space companies. Do you mean we should recategorize them into Category:Astronauts (or rather Category:American astronauts) instead of Commercial astronauts ? -- 65.93.183.33 (talk) 14:19, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How about Konstantin Feoktistov? Isaacman and Arcenaux are the only crew of this flight. They are presumably being trained for it. If they were just passengers, I could see them being tourists. A case could be made for Arcenaux being a participant (essentially filling the role of payload specialist). --Neopeius (talk) 14:26, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Feoktistov seems to be a Soviet Deke Slayton, cosmonaut corps medically sidelined. We've already had a candidate space tourist medically sidelined, Enomoto. So, that leaves Isaacman, as a tourist, commercial astronaut, astronaut, spaceflight participant, or soemthing else. -- 65.93.183.33 (talk) 01:36, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sources for orbital elements in the info-boxes of crewed missions ?
Hi everyone,
I have a question regarding the apogee and perigee indicated in the info-boxes of crewed missions (missions linked in List_of_human_spaceflights).
Some do not have sources, so I wonder where the info does come from. Some others have sources that link to obscure websites.
Taking for example the crewed missions to the ISS, it reveals an obvious mismatch with the known altitude of the Station. (Click attached homemade graph)
ISS missions apogee according to their articles
How can the apogee be so low compared to the ISS ? Maybe I am missing something ?
Most recent missions do not have these elements in their info-boxes. I think it would be a reasonable solution if you think, like me, that a lot of those could be inaccurate.
First time posting in a wikipedia Project. I did not know where to post this, and stumbled upon this page which seems to be the perfect place to post something like this ?
I've always been a bit confused myself about the need for the orbital elements in the Apollo article infoboxes, and feel they are of limited utility. The one-in-a-thousand (generously) editor who wants to know the selenocentric orbital parameters of, say, Apollo 14, probably knows that they changed several times and can find better, more specific sources.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:26, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Flights to the ISS never launch to the ISS orbit directly. Most of the time you would not end up in the same place as the ISS, and if you do then it's too risky to approach it using a big and relatively imprecise upper stage rocket engine. The typical rocket launch goes to an orbit below and behind the ISS, from there you "catch up" and then raise your orbit at the right time. I don't know what exactly is plotted in the graph, but it's probably the initial orbit for the lower Soyuz mission and a later orbit for the missions that match the ISS height. --mfb (talk) 08:52, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I thought it would mean something like this ; except these are articles about the missions, so we might want orbital parameters of the mission itself ? And the mission is the ISS.
So I propose to remove orbital parameters of missions to MIR and to the ISS. It it an acceptable change ? It seems too big a decision for someone new here. --LazyAssed Contender (talk) 09:19, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just referencing the ISS would work I guess. The ISS orbit when docking would be an option, too. The initial orbit would be more interesting in the scope of the rocket launch, not the crewed mission. --mfb (talk) 15:19, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, a request for comment like this should never contain your own opinions on the subject. It's supposed to be exclusively a matter of calling other editors' attention to a discussion about deleting an article. That guideline is supposed to prevent people from recruiting others favor their own position.
Starting with List of Electron launches (Which I split away from Electron (rocket) pages) there seems to be increase in articles which split the list of launches from their respective launch vehicle pages. What should (or should there be) a criteria when a split becomes necessary?
When I split the List of Electron launches my intent in was because of Rocket Lab's claim that they will have frequent launches and that would cause the article to become too long. In hindsight this is probably WP:CRYSTAL.
Recently I noticed that there are similar pages or drafts being created:
The new pages do add new info in some cases (I like some of the new graphs in particular like "by orbit" - maybe other list of pages can add them too). But also some of the lists have the formatting changed from the original which I found confusing. I don't think infoboxes are needed as readers can go to the main page about the rocket to learn more about it. And the heading "About the <rocket name>" doesn't seem like an encyclopedic tone, but other then that the pages seem fine.
So, at what point should the list of launches be split out (or how many launches of a particular launch vehicle warrant a dedicated list of launches article)? What info should we have on those pages? OkayKenji(talk • contribs)02:36, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
2020 is missing most flights, 2021 is starting with the same problem. But do we need these templates? Where is the use case of "I'm looking at this satellite, I want to go to satellites that were launched the same calendar year"? If people think it's useful then the templates should probably be expanded to cover all launches. --mfb (talk) 09:54, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Requested move 11 March 2021
It has been proposed in this section that multiple pages be renamed and moved.
A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil.
– I thought I'd open the discussion here, as it'd attract as many opinions as possible compared to if I placed it on the talk page of any of these articles. Anyways, it just seemed weird to me that we have different naming schemes going for the Northrop Grumman Cygnus missions and the Orbital Sciences / Orbital ATK Cygnus missions. The article titles for the Northrop Grumman Cygnus missions have a good naming scheme in which the mission name – "NG-10", "NG-11", "NG-12", ect. – is prefixed by the name of the spacecraft class being flown – "Cygnus" – in order to disambiguate the name from being a seemingly random assortment of two letters and two numbers (WP:DAB). We would get the same idea if we applied the same naming scheme to the Orbital Sciences / Orbital ATK Cygnus missions; we really don't need to further disambiguate with "CRS" in order to communicate that these are Cygnus spaceflight missions instead of something else called "Orb" or "OA" (WP:PRECISION), in my opinion. — Molly Brown (talk) 13:51, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bop34: I feel that it would be a bandaid solution if the article titles themselves are not being changed to be more consistent with other articles on Cygnus missions and better comply with standards for precision and disambiguation in article titles. — Molly Brown (talk) 03:04, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Kommentar: Wow, what a mess. Before I oppose let me make a comment and have my mind changed. I think the CRS is important in the title. In the NASA Mission Overview files (see 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12) the official name of the first 9 CRS missions are Orbital ATK CRS-1 to Orbital ATK CRS-9. Then they switched to Northrop Grumman CRS-10 to Northrop Grumman CRS-17. CRS-X is the consistent naming scheme of all the Cygnus missions from 1 all the way through to 17. I do not find "Cygnus" in the mission title anywhere but here on Wikipedia. I would therefor propose title names of OA CRS-1 to OA CRS-9 and then NG CRS-10 to NG CRS-17. This makes a nice standard beside the SpaceX CRS-1 series of flight articles. JHelzer💬13:53, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Molly, for clarifying that. It didn't register for me until your reminder. I think we should also consider the titles of the upcoming Dream Chaser CRS missions. Will they be Dream Chaser-1 oder Sierra Nevada CRS-1? I still think that CRS in the title is important to tie all the Commercial Resupply Service missions together and make them instantly recognizable. JHelzer💬05:04, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@JHelzer: Ultimately, I want there to be consistency among the Cygnus mission names; the Dream Chaser, Dragon, and Dragon 2 mission names are a different ballpark with their own WP:COMMONNAME and WP:DAB needs. I ultimately see the "Orbital-x"/"Orb-x", "OA-x", and "NG-x" mission names to be the WP:COMMONNAMEs in the case of Cygnus; take for example, the OA-9E mission, which has been written as simply "OA-9E" by NASA, Orbital ATK, Space.com, SpaceNews, Spaceflight Now, NASA Spaceflight, and others. Using operator names instead to disambiguate them would also lead to very unusual names such as "Orbital Orb-3" or "Northrop Grumman NG-10". In my honest opinion, the spacecraft class name would be a more suitable disambiguator for consistency among Cygnus mission names, especially since the operator name changed three times. — Molly Brown (talk) 05:28, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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