Portal talk:Spaceflight/Archive 1

Black background

• I realize space is mostly dark, and it looks great in space, but the black background doesn't look good and probably never will because the images and other elements aren't designed to go on a black background. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 17:20, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

• I agree, the link text is almost impossible to make out. --BazDM 15:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

• • Changed - Is the new version any better? --GW_Simulations 14:36, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the current layout / color scheme is still rather garish. The yellow is too bright.01:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Changed it again, without seeing a need for prior discussion. (Sorry!) The changes were minor: titlebars are now "darkest midnight blue" and borders are "deep space deep purple". Barely noticable to my eye, but then again age-related blindness may have already set in! Sdsds 02:10, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Purpose of Portal

Am wondering what the purpose of this Portal is. Is it for Spacecraft or Spaceflight? Spacecraft as a Portal should detail the actual crafts that have been constructed, Spaceflight should be more about the missions and the actions surrounding the actual flights of said spacecraft. Yet in the heading it describes this portal as being about the spacecraft. I am going to change the term to spaceflight and create a separate Portal for Spacecraft. --Exodio 20:26, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I propose to merge these two topics into "Space Exploration". Actually, I did not know this portal existed until I started Portal:Space Exploration (dang!). The motivation came from a Portal:Astronomy discussion about the delineation of those topics. Well, I now wonder what would be the right way to merge these portals. Awolf002 00:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Check out WikiProject Space for a listing of Portals and Wikiprojects related to space. You should pay attention to naming conventions - it should technically be Portal:Space exploration (no caps). Good format, would you consider doing it in black with the Portal:Space formatting that already exists? If so, I will help you convert it. I would like to try getting all space related portals with the same look and same formatting for ease of changing stuff up. I like your Portal, BTW --Exodio 00:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this portal has too much overlap with the Portal:Space exploration to be useful; it should focus more on the mechanics of spaceflight, and engineering behind it, launch vehicles, etc, but then a more appropraite name would be Portal:Spacecraft as suggested above. the name Spaceflight suggests too much to human activity of flying through space, which should really be until Portal:Space exploration. sorry for the rant, but those are my thoughts. Mlm42 11:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

or, better still, Portal:Space technology would be an all-encompassing title for what i believe this portal is after. then it is clear that the focus is on the technical aspects rather than the exploration of space. Mlm42 07:48, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The way I look about it, this portal is about up and coming spaceflights. Space technology is about how rockets and space stations and so forth are put together, and doesn't have any particular newsiness associated with it.WolfKeeper 16:16, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Space Exploration is about exploring other planets like Mars rovers and so forth. YMMV.WolfKeeper 16:16, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Right, okay; so would it be a reasonable plan to merge to rename the Portal:Space exploration to Portal:Space technology, and merge any Space exploration stuff into this portal, Spaceflight?

I don't think so. You'd be making a category mistake. Spaceflight can be a component of space exploration, but it's definitely not a kind of space exploration, so it's not really very appropriate to have them in the same article. I don't understand why you want to merge everything.WolfKeeper 18:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The reason that i want to merge things is because if you look at Portal:Space exploration and Portal:Spaceflight, they look almost the same. They are redundant.. that's why people merge things. and that's why something needs to be re-organized, and/or renamed. Mlm42 20:20, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The other way to remove redundancy is to... remove the redundancy. I think that stuff needs to be removed from the space exploration portal; for exmaple, the list of spaceflights is inappropriate, most of the flights are nothing whatsoever to do with exploration.WolfKeeper 22:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Then the technical aspect, of launching, propulsion, etc, would be under Space technology, and missions and things would be here at Spaceflight? of course there would still be overlap.. and we would need to define more clearly how it should be split. Mlm42 16:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with WolfKeeper. Exploration in NASA's view right now maybe be about the Moon and Mars, but I would suggest the New Horizons mission is about exploration just the same. Awolf002 17:17, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Nevertheless, space exploration suggests something specific and somewhat non-permanent. i mean, if spaceflights to the moon become commonplace, then you could hardly consider them Space exploration. The only alternatives that come to mind are Spaceflight, or perhaps Space travel. Mlm42 17:44, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

TV satellites are not exploration, but they are spaceflight.WolfKeeper 22:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Awolf002 that I don't think that New Horizons is exploration!WolfKeeper 18:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread your comment. It sounded to me like you were restricting "exploration" to exploring planets. Awolf002 00:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what definition of "exploration" you're using, but a mission labelled "New Horizons" suggests that there will be some kind of exploring going on..Mlm42 20:29, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Careful here, you misread me. In English a double negative is a positive (mostly).WolfKeeper 22:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

but it doesn't matter what technically counts as Spaceflight and as Space exploration, the point is that we want titles that will instantly make people think of what we want them to think. what will the word Spaceflight mean to most people? Mlm42 20:29, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Flying in space?WolfKeeper 22:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, are we in agreement that Space exploration is a subset of Spaceflight?

I don't think so any more than Hawaii holiday is a subset of 'flying'.WolfKeeper 19:03, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

If so, then perhaps we should rename the Space exploration portal to something like Space technology..

Technology is the knowledge of how to do something. Exploration isn't a technology; there's a big difference between an is-a relationship and a contains or uses relationship. Exploration uses space technology, but isn't a technology or set of technologies, and not all space technologies are to do with exploration. Space Exploration uses spaceflights, but not all spaceflights are to do with exploration. These are all different concepts. I think the one-article, one-concept idea is powerful, and the fundamental idea behind an encyclopedia. Who exactly is really getting confused by there being more than two portals?WolfKeeper 19:03, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

then that could be a sub-portal to Portal:Technology, and this would be a subportal of Portal:Transport, and both would be subportals of Portal:Space.. does that make sense? Mlm42 08:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I think, we are currently anywhere near to merging these portals, instead we are trying to clarify the scope of each of them. I was the culprit of starting Portal:Space exploration (as described above) without knowing about this portal. The aim was to have place to bring together the technological aspect of various topics related to Space, and it seems I chose the wrong name. Should we have a portal Portal:Space technology to address this? And possibly keep the other two and re-arrange their content? Does not sound too bad... Awolf002 22:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Right, so I think having a Space technology portal is a good idea, and a Spaceflight portal is good.. but what would be the purpose of a Space exploration portal then? I mean, i understand the concept of Space exploration differs from the other two, and i suppose one could argue that there are other ways to explore space than through Spaceflight.. but is it sufficiently different to warrant a separate portal? I mean, there's no Holiday portal, to use Wolfkeeper's analogy.. Mlm42 16:07, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

ISS peer review

A request has been made for International Space Station to be peer reviewed to receive a broader perspective on how it may be improved. Please make any edits you see fit to improve the quality of the article. // Duccio (write me) 22:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Merger?

I would be inclined to oppose a merger with Portal:Space Exploration for now. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 18:01, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I asked about the situation at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals, and both of the two responses seemed quite in favour of merging them together. They say "One really great portal with a lot of content is much better than three average (or in the case of Space, below average) portals."

They suggest making Portal:Space the destination of the merger, since it is sufficiently general, and would probably imply to most people something different from Astronomy.

Personally, I'd be quite happy if we could settle on Portal:Space and put all our efforts into that, rather than spreading effort and content across multiple portals. Mlm42 16:55, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's wait for some more feedback, we just got two voices in that discussion. Awolf002 22:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that the topics are spread out enough, so I am opposing the proposal. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 22:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

portal organization

I was thinking of improving the selected content boxes, so that they change on a weekly basis, and came up with a sketch of how to lay out the three Space-related portals.. i was thinking:

Portal:Spaceflight:

• Selected article (weekly)
• Selected spacecraft (weekly)
• Selected biography (weekly)
• Selected anniversaries (monthly)
• Upcoming launches (on-going)
• Current spaceflights (on-going)

Portal:Space:

• Selected article (weekly)
• Selected mission (weekly)
• Selected biography (weekly)
• Selected anniversaries (daily)
• Space News (on-going)
• Current spaceflights (on-going) [exact copy as other portal]

Portal:Space exploration:

• Selected article (weekly)
• Selected picture (weekly)
• Selected astronaut (weekly)
• Selected anniversaries (monthly)
• Space News (on-going) [exact copy]
• Current spaceflights (on-going) [exact copy]

How does that sound? thoughts? should the news sections be distinct? i.e. each updated independently, or all from the same source? Mlm42 11:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you have too many 'weekly' periods. If we want to select the best articles/biographies from mostly the 'featured' list, then we can only do this on a monthly basis. Secondly, daily anniversaries? I need to scan the general daily list, but this also sounds too ambitious! And, I still do not see the motivation of 'astronaut' biographies on Space exploration, it seem to fit better under Space flight. I'm still undecided on the Current space missions in anything but the Sapceflight portal or in more places... Awolf002 18:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I am working on making Selected anniversaries daily - a long process, it should be kept at monthly untill this is finished. I would also like to keep the Spaceflight news alive, but with distinct criteria for inclusion. Possibly "this month's launches" or similar. In addition, I think there should be a selected picture on each portal, but again, this should be within some form of predefined limits. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 21:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced about having a Selected picture in each portal; if we were to make "predefined limits", i would have guessed for Spaceflight the picture would be of, say, a spacecraft, which is why i thought Selected spacecraft would be appropriate.

And where are you working on making the Selected anniversaries daily, so that i can help out? Mlm42 07:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I've been doing it offline so as to keep all the files in one place and not to clutter up the portal. I'll upload a few as an example, probably tonight. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 09:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, If you meant which portal, this one. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 09:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that having weekly (or perhaps better monthly at this stage) biographies in the "Space exploration" portal, but I strongly object to having them be limited only to astronauts. It seems to me that the topic is broader than that, and there are plenty of interesting characters other than astronauts who have been involved in the space program. (I'm biased of course, since I've been writing about them, but still...) MLilburne 12:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Space

i'm experimenting with the idea of tabs at Portal:Space.. although some people are opposed to merging portals, my hope is that this portal will be able to merge Portal:Spaceflight, Portal:Space exploration, and Portal:Astronomy.. the reason for merging is that i believe there is a fairly high probability that a reader interested in one of those portals, will be interested in the other two. since there is a good amount of overlap of content as well, rather than dividing the portals up with a razor sharp knife, it seems more benificial to merge them. does anyone have comments or suggestions? Mlm42 16:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan to me. I was here as a Wikipedian for quite a while before I even discovered that the other portals existed, so anything that will make them easier to find from one another is a good idea in my book. Personally my top choice would be to merge Spaceflight and Space exploration, but I'm prepared to get behind any sort of reasonable compromise. MLilburne 17:10, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm still not sure if a merger is a good idea, and I would like to see a demonstration (in userspace) before I support any such proposal. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 13:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

well, i've been trying to put something together at Portal:Space; i don't see a need to use userspace first? Mlm42 15:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I thought you meant to integrate content from here first. Obviously I was wrong, so I am going to have to Oppose the proposal per my concerns in earlier discussions on this subject. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 19:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Updated /Intro

I updated the /Intro component of the portal, using material from the current version of the Spaceflight article's lead. This is my first edit of a portal. Is there some proper procedure I should have followed? Sdsds 21:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new selected article

I propose to change the "Selected article" from Apollo 11 to Orion (spacecraft). Any objections? Sdsds 01:27, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Please don't!. The system is automatic. If you look at Portal:Spaceflight/Selected article, you will see that there is a cue of articles. Instead, please can you create an article about Orion Here, and it will appear as the selected article next week. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 11:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Slick! I started late and flailed a bit, but it seems like I've managed something functional (and even used that cool template). Thanks for your help! Sdsds 16:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

And looking ahead, it seems next week might be the 5-year anniversary of, The Slowest and Fastest Train in the Universe. That would be counting its birth as the delivery of the Mobile Transporter by STS-110. Can I nominate something related to that for Week 14? Or am I getting greedy? Sdsds 18:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Portals are fun

I just want to share with y'all how much fun I've been having over the past weeks hacking away at various components of Portal:Spaceflight. It has been a great place for me to learn a bit about how portals work, and what it takes to maintain one. So: thanks for bearing with my attempts here as I've slowly climbed the portal learning curve! What amazes me most is that there aren't lots of other people who want to have this kind of fun. Where are all the budding young rocketry students who could by vying for a chance to control what goes into the portal? (That question is only semi-rhetorical. ;-) I guess there's still a lot to learn about how to promote a community of portal users and contributors. Any suggestions on how to go about that? Sdsds 03:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Assistance with Portal Spaceflight biographies

I'm requesting at Portal talk:Biography assistance with the Portal:Spaceflight biography section, and directing comments about that request here. (Sdsds - Talk) 01:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The only featured articles that really fit into this category are Chris Kraft, Glynn Lunney and Joseph Francis Shea, all written almost entirely by yours truly. The articles on Wernher von Braun and Neil Armstrong are good, but not FA quality. Everything else is really B-class or below. You can take a look at Space exploration articles by quality to get at least a sense of what's out there. We need to do better, I think. MLilburne 16:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion about this portal

This portal is being discussed in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/Reorganisation#Portal:Spaceflight. Input from people who participate in this portal is welcome. — Pious7 19:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

NASA flight controller biographies

I recently added Don Puddy to WP as a mere stub and a humble one at that. Just wondering if there is interest in creating something more for WP in terms of biographies on flight controllers at NASA? —Gaff ^ταλκ 06:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I've certainly focused on flight controllers in my time at Wikipedia. What kind of "something more" were you thinking? MLilburne 07:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Key topics box

I added a "Key topics" box right near the top of the portal page, because Wikipedia:Portal/Guidelines says linking to important topics is required for a portal. Although the Intro box (above key topics) links to some important spaceflight topics, it can't link to them all! (sdsds - talk) 04:53, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Changes

Several things. Firstly, I've added a status indicator, which displays alerts when there is content missing from the portal. Critical is displayed when content is actually missing (eg. there is no selected article for the current week). Warning is displayed when the queue for content is nearly empty. In the case of something which is updated monthly, this means there is no content for the next month. In the case of something which is updated more frequently, this means there is no content for the next week. Nominal means that it does not really need attention. The template is also designd so that anybody involved in maintaining the portal can place a copy on their userpage, should they wish. It might also be a good idea to ask a few of the related wikiprojects to take a copy. The code to add it is {{Portal:Spaceflight/Status|align=|colour=|colourname=|width=}}. All parameters are optional. The "align" parameter can be set to "left", "right", or "center", "colour" is a hexadecimal RGB value for the background colour, "colourname" is the name of the desired background colour (eg. Red). Seeing as both "colour" and "colourname" do the same thing, only one should be set (if any). Width is the width of the box in pixels (there is no need to add "px" to the end). Note that the biography section is currently displaying "critical", not because there is a problem, but simply because the section has yet to be reconfigured for automatic rotation.
Secondly, seeing as it was so rarely updated, I've automated the selected picture system, in the hope that it will at least provide some variety in what is displayed. I intend to do the same with the selected biography section soon. I have also switched the selected article system from standard years to ISO years, which will prevent the problem seen over the last few days of 2007, where the portal attempted to call Week 1's article (which didn't exist). Finally, I have restarted the "on this day" project, which was proposed, started and died in late 2006. This is intended as a daily system to replace the current "selected anniversaries". See Portal:Spaceflight/On This Day and Portal:Spaceflight/On This Day/Index. I would appriciate some feedback on this before it gets much further, as I don't want to complete it and then find out that it is not wanted. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 22:18, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I have now converted the selected biography to rotate as well. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 10:26, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed we've had the same did you know... section for three days short of two years. I have set it to rotate as well, and am about to add it to the status indicator. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 11:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

That is done. It updates fortnightly, status warning one month in advance. I've also replaced the "things you can do" section with a direct transclusion of the to do list. It looks exactly the same, but is much more accessible. In addition, I have vectorised the logo image, which improves quality when viewed at resolution other than default, and loading time. The filename for the vectorised logo is Image:RocketSunIcon.svg (on Commons). Finally, I would like to raise a couple of issues. The left column is too long, and the right one is too short. We need to either move content from left to right, or add something new to the right column. Any ideas? Finally, I think the WikiProjects box looks ugly, and needs to be changed. How about a simple list of projects, without the purple box? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 20:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

About "on this day". It's empty starting tomorrow. I really like the idea and I think we should continue it. What sort of technique did you use to gather jan. 1 trough 12 ? I might be able to tackle a couple of days. Contribute a bit :D --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I've writing brief entries for all orbital launches, and other significant events. I would appriciate it if tomorrow's section is left empty for now, as it is the only item which is not currently being displayed, so I am using it to test the status indicator. As for sources, http://www.astronautix.com/thisday/index.htm contains a lot of information. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 20:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, the test was successful, so addition of content can resume. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 12:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The status indicator doesn't seem to like leap years. It is currently giving a warning for OTD, but OTD is fine. I cannot find the cause of the bug, but I suspect it is leap-year related, and if this is the case, it will only happen for one week every four years, so there isn't much point wasting time with debugging it. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 13:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

It's worse than I thought. This is not leap year related, and it's going to happen every two or three months. I'm working on it. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 14:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Duplicate variable name in the code used to calculate days remaining in the month. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 14:08, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Revisiting merger proposals

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Result of the proposal was to merge - GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 00:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay. A while ago it was proposed that this portal be merged into Portal:Space exploration. I opposed this proposal because at the time it seemed that the two portals were too spread out in scope. At the time, however, Portal:Space Exploration was quite new, and I didn't know exactly what they were planning to do with it. Now that Portal:Space Exploration has grown, I can see that there is far more overlap than I first anticipated. Therefore, I would like to reopen discussion of a merger, however my proposal is, that since Space exploration is a subsection of spaceflight, and not the other way around, Portal:Space exploration would be merged into Portal:Spaceflight, with preservation of all content from both portals. This proposal would result in one portal which is more managable, and with greater numbers of people to maintain and use it. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 00:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I support it. I have always thought that it is better to have one more general but well managed portal than 2 portals that operate at less than half speed (in the case of this one even less than quarter speed :D ) --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Support - As stated in the previous discussion, I think we really should merge Portal:Space Exploration and Portal:Spaceflight. Whether the end product is called Spaceflight or not, I do not care much. What I would ask though, is that non-manned space ventures, for example just simple GPS satellite do stay in scope of the new portal. The technology of space was the main object of the work on Portal:Space Exploration and I would hate to loose that after all the work. Awolf002 (talk) 02:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

That is exactly why I think it would be better to use spaceflight rather than space exploration, as spaceflight is the more general term, encompassing the entire area of the use of space as well as its exploration, as opposed to space exploration, which implies only the exploitative aspects thereof. In short, this portal currently gives unmanned spaceflight more coverage than space exploration does, and this would be carried forward to the combined portal. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 02:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment - Of course there are many definitions of terms like "spaceflight" and "space exploration." As I see it, things and people are sent into space for three primary reasons: for the (scientific) exploration of space, for the (financial-gain oriented) commercializaion of space, and for the (strategic power-motivated) militarization of space. All three of these can involve both missions with crews and missions that are purely robotic. I do see "spaceflight" as being primarily about the process of sending people and things into space, and not (so much) about the motivations for sending them. As regards combining efforts on these two portals ... I have no strong opinions either way. (sdsds - talk) 07:37, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

• I will conduct the merger tomorrow if no objections have been noted. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 16:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Reject The two portals border each other, but seem to have zero overlap both in terms of content and in terms of context. One is about flight, the other is about scientific discovery. They are *not* the same, any more than air flight and antarctic exporation are the same thing.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 17:05, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I am more than slightly confused by your analogy, not to mention your argument. Let's look at it carefully. Half the content on SE has nothing to do with exploration: "Thuraya 3 on Zenit 3SL rocket." - that's a comsat. What has that got to do with exploration? Satellite Instructional Television Experiment is listed in "Did You Know?" - what has that got to do with exploration? What has Doppler spectroscopy got to do with exploration? The selected article here is reguarly exploration-related. What do Satellites have to do with exploration? Last month, SE's selected article was Energia. That is SF's current SA. Quite apart from the fact that a rocket is, itself, not involved in conducting the "exploration", this points to an overlap. Less than half the SAs listed are relevant to SE. Several have been duplicated by both portals. The space exploration portal has no idea what space exploration is. It is trying to do everything this portal does, and I can see no logical argument against merging it into this one. One well maintained portal is much better than two poorly maintained ones which thanks to a poor definition of "space exploration" overlap in their entirity, as we have here. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 19:32, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment: I stopped updating Portal:Space exploration in order to not get in the way of the merger. If the merger is on hold, I will go in and fix a few things. Anybody? Awolf002 (talk) 22:04, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that GW_Simulations figured that a reasonable large time to discuss this might be prudent, probably taking in mind the rather large discussions that followed the WikiProject Space mergers last year. If you want to update a few things, you are more than welcome I think. Shall we set a targetdate to do the merger ? I propose 18 january (which would be exactly 2 weeks after the initial proposal. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good proposal. Let's set that date and see if we have consensus, then. Awolf002 (talk) 01:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Question: I am curious, what would the lead section of the combined portal say? (sdsds - talk) 02:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I was just holding back a few days because we don't have a 100% consensus. The date I set was only for if the proposal was unopposed. I'll just give it a few days to see if anyone else votes, but as things stand, we are still go to merge the portals at some time in the next week or so. I have drafted a new lead section:

edit   

The Spaceflight Portal

Spaceflight is the movement of spacecraft into and through outer space, primarily using rocket technology for propulsion. Spaceflight is used in space exploration, the endeavour to reach, explore, and exploit the space outside the Earth's atmosphere, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. It is generally based on the use of rockets to transport machines, animals, and humans to, and subsequently through, space. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other earth observation satellites. Objects launched into space may follow a Sub-orbital trajectory and return to Earth immediately, stay in orbit around Earth, travel in the space between the planets, or aim to leave the space dominated by the Sun completely. (more...)

I hope this is useful, any suggestions for improvement? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 02:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I've started work on a draft of what the combined portal would look like. See User:GW_Simulations/SpaceflightPortal. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 20:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Further discussion

Closed, consensus is to merge. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 00:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Completed. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 01:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Rotation intervals

Copied from my talk page:

Hi! I would suggest to adjust the schedules of the "selected" items, after I gained some experience running the Portal:Space exploration by myself for "forever": Images are much easier to come by than articles! Cycle the "selected image" once per week, and cycle articles/bios once a month. Also, I experimented with the "random" feature on the portal, and this may be something useful for the merged portal, as well.

-- Comment left by Awolf002

My reply, copied from User talk:Awolf002

I think the exact rotation spans would be best discussed at Portal talk:Spaceflight, but in my opinion, it would be best to have both the selected article and picture rotating weekly, and the biographies monthly. I agree with your comment about pictures being easier to rotate, and so I think that it would be a good idea to rotate these on a weekly basis, however I think that there should be no problem with keeping the article rotation weekly as well. In my experience at Portal:Spaceflight, there's been no problem in keeping the page up-to-date, and we've only missed one week since around this time last year. With the status indicator which I have developed, it should be easy to prevent this happening again. Assuming the merger goes ahead, which seems very likely, we will presumably have a few more people working on the portal, making it easier to maintain. Randomisation may be something to look at for the "did you know..." section.

I am copying this here as I feel this is the best place to discuss it. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 19:45, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the status indicator helps a lot! Let's try for awhile to see if we can keep up the pace! (sdsds - talk) 06:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Selected quote

How about adding a "selected quote" to the portal? I think there's enough material to change it weekly or fortnightly. Any comments? --GW… 00:17, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Grammar

Kudos to everybody who has done so much good work on the spaceflight-related articles, but there's some shocking grammar in some of them. Given that this is a subject of interest to so many people, might I suggest an effort to fix things a bit - if everybody just spent a few minutes fixing one of the articles about the Apollo program it would be a start. I plan to do my bit.... Regards Davidelit (talk) 17:39, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Also there's a fair bit of overlinking. Whay on earth (or off it...) would there be a link to "curved groove" in the Apollo 15, Return to Earth article, for example? Davidelit (talk) 17:43, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• What has this got to do with the portal? I think you've posted on the wrong page. Try WT:SPACEFLIGHT. --GW… 18:39, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Static content for featured sections when dynamic content is not provided

I suggest updating the portal page so that when featured material has not been provided through the content rotation mechanism a plea is inserted using the #ifexist mechanism and content from a static sub-page is appended as well. Then whenever anyone gets motivated they can over-ride the static sub-page by providing material through the current content rotation mechanism. (sdsds - talk) 15:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Interesting idea; it's not immediately clear to me how easy that would be to implement. I assume you mean that if there is a static subpage, say for November 2010, then that subpage would appear on the portal for all of November. One of the advantages of having the random portal component is that every time you reload the page there is something new. I think this probably exposes readers to more content (which is the main purpose of portals anyway), and I think this is why so many portals use random portal components, not just because it's less work. Mlm42 (talk) 19:53, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Upon rereading your suggestion, maybe I have misinterpreted it.. Mlm42 (talk) 19:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I gather this template may be of use, according to Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates: {{Random portal component with nominate}} Colds7ream (talk) 19:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Sdsds' proposal would be very easy to implement. I would be inclined to say that while in the short term random components would be helpful for providing a greater variety of content, in the long term they would probably result in less exposure since there would be a finite number of articles in rotation, and it is unlikely that these would be frequently changed. My suggestion would be to have a selected article for each month, and use random content if an article is not provided. This should be fairly simple to implement, and omissions could intentionally be made in the monthly rotation in order to showcase the random content once or twice a year. --GW… 22:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan - would anyone know the correct way to code that? As an aside, can we move the components already in place on the HSF portal over directly? I also suggest we rewrite the blurbs so they all meet the Featured Portal Criteria, just for forward planning purposes. :-) Colds7ream (talk) 17:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I could code that. --GW… 17:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Excellent! :-D Colds7ream (talk) 17:48, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, oops, I didn't read this until just now; I just started setting up the random portal components, but I'll stop, because I'm not exactly clear what GW has in mind in terms of coding this. Mlm42 (talk) 01:32, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I'd prefer random components all the time anyway; If {{75 Numbered subpages}} were used and filled in, then we could have 75 rotating subpages.. I see this as preferable to a monthly article that doesn't change. What is the motivation behind having a static Selected Article? Mlm42 (talk) 01:39, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Appropriate ones can be chosen depending on whether they're related to the date, have recently been improved, and so on. Also keeps more people active in maintaining the portal, as if it simply runs on automatic people needn't do anything to it. Makes it stale. Colds7ream (talk) 16:00, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I see; and maybe what sdsds was suggesting is a static page, but with a "show new selections" option, which would then show random content. Yes, that's a great idea, if it could be implemented. Mlm42 (talk) 17:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I've set up selected article, picture, biography and did you know, as random portal components, with all the content copied from either the archives or the HSF portal. I didn't code the optional static content, but it shouldn't be too hard to add. Mlm42 (talk) 21:35, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Portal merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was to merge the portals. -- Colds7ream (talk) 14:13, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

---

I'd like to suggest that the Human spaceflight portal be merged into the Spaceflight portal and the resultant portal operated by all five Spaceflight-related WikiProjects, instead of just one per portal. Given the state of both portals, with out-of-date news sections, several empty boxes and a non-maintained to-do list, I feel that merging the portals in this way would assist in finally achieving the critical mass of editors needed to properly maintain a spaceflight portal, and hopefully achieve a featured portal, which would be an excellent advertisement for all involved projects. I am hoping to get as many editors as possible involved with this, and look forward to reading everyone's feedback and suggestions. Thanks, Colds7ream (talk) 21:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: I like the idea. And as you said, it helps achieving the critical mass of editors needed to properly maintain a spaceflight portal. Rehman 08:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Nice idea. This would also keep the portal updated.Rishabh Tatiraju (talk) 10:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Would it be possible, or is it the plan, to keep all individual portals as sub-portals? Either way I agree that a merge is needed to keep it maintained.--NavyBlue84 10:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by sub-portal, exactly? Isn't this just a different, yet more specific portal, like the current situation: Portal:Human spaceflight is like a subportal of Portal:Spaceflight, which is a subportal of Portal:Space? I think the proposal is to remove Portal:Human spaceflight, and redirect it to Portal:Spaceflight. Mlm42 (talk) 19:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support I like the idea of rolling the projects together. While this doesn't work with all similar projects, these are similar enough that it should work. There sufficient overlap between Space and Human Spaceflight in particular. The Star and Astronomy portals have a lot of overlap and I never understood why the Mars and Solar System portals were separate While many editors focus on specific topics, the topics are interrelated enough that many editors contribute accross these many projects. Makes sense to bring them together. Of these, I could see maintaining human spaceflight as a sub portal but not the others. The resulting portal should be called "space".--RadioFan (talk) 12:25, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

There is already a Portal:Space, and I don't think that's part of Colds7ream's proposal; but it's not being maintained either.. I did a bunch of work on Portal:Space about 4 years ago, but haven't really done anything since. Maybe Space=Spaceflight + Astronomy, and the astronomy editors seems quite distinct from the spaceflight editors. Mlm42 (talk) 17:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

There's definitely a distinction between Astronomy and Spaceflight, in terms of the editors involved. Spaceflight tends to attract more engineering types, while astronomy tends to attract the physicists and other "pure science" types. Still, for a portal specifically, the one page might be enough. I know that's not exactly the proposal here and now, but condensing everything to one page might be worth considering.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Support. Unfortunately we have too many unmaintained spaces. In general I would like to see news sections removed as they seem to never be up-to-date on any project. Rmhermen (talk) 14:33, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Good plan. Canada Jack (talk) 15:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support. The distinction between human and robotic missions will slowly blur anyway, as robots become ever more important in human missions. Yakushima (talk) 15:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: I agree. There is currently a high degree of dispersion on documenting spaceflight efforts in wikipedia. Tom Paine (talk) 15:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: I agree with RadioFan. ke4roh (talk) 15:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: I support any plan that could create a more active editor base for the human spaceflight portal. aremisasling (talk) 15:40, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: There is considerable overlap between "spaceflight" and "human spaceflight". I'd also support the use of random portal components (as currently in Portal:Human spaceflight, and Portal:Space), as well as the use of the Wikinews bot to import some news headlines automatically (see Portal:Space/News/Current, for example). This would mean only a minimal amount of effort would be needed to maintain the portal anyway. Mlm42 (talk) 17:16, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: The above arguments seem convincing to me. I think robotic and human spaceflight are essential (and really inseparable) components of our expansion off the Earth, and the practical virtues of combining and focusing our limited editorial resources are compelling. Unnecessary fragmentation can make meaningless labor for us, and create confusion. Wwheaton (talk) 17:28, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment Well, it's nice to see some enthusiastic support for my proposal! Just a few comments I'd like to make - first, that I also support the use of random portal components (but with a manual override available, as suggested in the section above), second that I would resist any move to remove the news sections from these portals, and third that I feel personally that merging everything into Portal:Space would be inadvisable - maybe HSF-->Spaceflight, Mars-->Solar System and Star-->Astronomy to begin with? If this were done, I see little reason for there to be an overarching space portal at all, to be honest. Colds7ream (talk) 18:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

As I recall there was some discussions regarding mergers on portals on the Astronomy side as well; but we'd have to bring it up there. I'm personally fine with merging portals as you suggest, but I don't think the Spaceflight wikiprojects should be able to decide what happens with the Astronomy portals! :) Mlm42 (talk) 18:39, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, quite obviously - that was just a suggestion. I'd want to stick just to dealing with the spaceflight portals myself. Colds7ream (talk) 18:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC

Good thinking, here.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Seems less confusing, and will add to the several projects out there.Abebenjoe (talk) 19:17, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment: There's great value in using portal "elements" in multiple portals. Note for example how the "next scheduled launch" element maintained for Portal:Spaceflight is transcluded into the Portal:Space "upcoming spaceflights" element. I certainly think it would be a great idea for Portal:Spaceflight to transclude some elements maintained by Portal:Human spaceflight. (sdsds - talk) 23:01, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Good idea to focus our efforts.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:56, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: I have found too much duplication under the current set-up. RadioBroadcast (talk) 03:19, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Fewer, higher quality portals = good.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 14:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Agree per the comments above. A single portal would be more maintainable. --Jatkins ^{(talk - contribs)} 21:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: I think portals should be split or re-joint depending on their size, and a non-used portal is not very useful.RubenGarciaHernandez (talk) 21:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Support, neither portal is well maintained, hopefully if resources are spread less thinly then the situation will improve for this one, which has the broader subject. --GW… 22:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment: Well, this continues to be a unanimously supported proposal - again, nice to see some enthusiasm! I suggest we run this proposal for a while longer before beginning implementation (which I suspect will take a while anyway), both to see if any dissenting views appear, and also to get a rough gauge of how many active editors we actually have between the projects. Colds7ream (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Implementation could easily be done within an hour of closure. --GW… 18:48, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

What, all the components and sufficient content to fill them? Colds7ream (talk) 19:02, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

In Portal:Spaceflight I just set up the Selected Article and Selected Picture with random portal components, as they are in Portal:Human spaceflight (with remaining content to be filled in). It's easy to now add more Article and Picture subpages, by copying from Portal:Human spaceflight (then almost nothing has to be changed), or from the archived ones at Portal:Spaceflight. I could do this for the "Selected biography" and "Did you know.." boxes as well, if that's what is desired. Mlm42 (talk) 01:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Support: Hopefully with more editors on one portal we'll be able to keep it up to date. --DizFreak ^{talk Contributions} 10:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, this has been running for a week, and we've got naught but supports for the idea, so I'm going to go ahead and close this discussion as a merge. I think its clear that there is a general agreement that merging various parts of the spaceflight projects is a good idea, and, given that of the 150 unique editors theoretically signed up to these projects only 20 responded, that we are vastly overestimating our editor base. I will be suggesting further merges in the not-too-distant future, I feel, and would like to try an experiment with regards to the editor lists - keep an eye on your talk pages, folks! With regards to this particular proposal, now its closed, we have to ensure we're all happy with what the resulting portal will be - please comment on the other discussions ongoing on this page regarding the way the new portal will be operated. Thanks, Colds7ream (talk) 14:13, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

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

ideas for portal improvement

While we're making big changes, maybe we should rethink which Portal boxes we use. I'd suggest some more specific ones to give the portal a more unique feel. For example: "Selected mission", "Selected spacecraft", and "Selected astronaut", could replace the generic "article", "picture", and "biography" components, respectively. The "Spaceflight news", "Next scheduled launch", and "On this day..", components all seem great. "Did you know.." could be made to produce random content, much like the Human spaceflight portal. It might be best to remove most other boxes, to clean things up.

Another idea could be to add a few tabs, including a tab that goes directly to Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight. I got this idea from the French wikipedia's Spaceflight portal; they have a tab which links to the WikiProject's talk page, and the title of the tab is: "Café des astronautes". After seeing that, I kinda wished we had an astronaut cafe.. anyway, those are just some ideas. Mlm42 (talk) 21:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

"Selected mission", "Selected spacecraft", and "Selected astronaut" would not work. Selected Article and Picture cover more than simply missions and spacecraft, for example rockets have been featured in them in the past. Equally, the biography isn't necessarily going to be an astronaut (or a cosmonaut for that matter), engineers and scientists should also be covered. When the merger occurs, it is important that the manned content does not overrun the unmanned content. Both should still be featured. --GW… 21:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, well, you're the boss I guess. Welcome back, by the way. Mlm42 (talk) 22:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Given that it looks like "merging" is mostly done we probably should move forward with improving the portal. For a start I wonder what is happening with Portal:Space because personally I think that layout is better than the current Spaceflight one, it also fits with the new Wikiproject's style, so perhaps we can commandeer it? ChiZeroOne (talk) 04:24, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

It'd be nice if we could have the same colour scheme across everything the project does! :-) In other news, we need to get updating the news & next launches sections. Colds7ream (talk) 13:56, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, maybe we should add another tab to the WP:Spaceflight header called "Portal". Mlm42 (talk) 18:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I've started to implement the changes and have a general clean-up but there's more to do. I have begun a Featured Content page in my userspace, User:ChiZeroOne/Portal:Spaceflight/Featured. As you can see it currently uses the Portal:Space layout and information but hopefully we can migrate over our own content.

On that point, really if we want to get the portal to featured status we probably need to be fairly strict in having mostly (if not only) Featured or Good Article content on the portal. ChiZeroOne (talk) 19:45, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

That's looking gorgeous! :-D Colds7ream (talk) 20:03, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it looks very nice. Regarding my suggestion to add a "portal" tab to the WikiProject header, I was thinking we could always use the WikiProject header on the portal itself. At the moment the transition from one header to another seems a little unnatural. I got the idea from the French Wikipedia, which uses a tab system to smoothly switch between Portal: and Wikipedia: namespaces (actually "Portail:" and "Project:" namespaces!). This seems like a good idea to strengthen the "bond" between portal and project.. but may be hard to implement well, I'm not sure. Mlm42 (talk) 01:25, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I noticed that they have effectively merged the project and portal on the French version but I'm not so so sure we should do that. The portals are supposed to be an access point for general Wikipedia readers to Spaceflight-related content. I'm not sure that the portal should effectively become part of behind-the-scenes editing, and may jeopardise attaining featured status. Also, as with the featured content page above I was intending for the portal to be extended over a number of pages itself which would make the WikiProject banner very messy. I tried to make the headers as close as possible, though I'm sure there's room for improvement. ChiZeroOne (talk) 02:08, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Portal merge progress?

So what's happening with the portal merge? What still need to be merged? Anything? Mlm42 (talk) 04:17, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Past a few pieces of random content that haven't been transferred over to Spaceflight I can't see much difference between the two now. ChiZeroOne (talk) 04:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh and on a related note I forgot to mention we have another portal well within Spaceflight's scope, Portal:European Space Agency. Don't know what we want to do with this? ChiZeroOne (talk) 07:19, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Aye - we just need to move over the last of the content from HSF and we can redirect it, as far as I'm aware. Colds7ream (talk) 13:55, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Have we got any further on this in the last year? The merger seems to be taking a while... --W. D. Graham _{(previously GW)} 22:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Human Health and Performance in Space

Somebody has created Portal:Human Health and Performance in Space. I've proposed merging it here, since we have enough difficulty keeping this one active I strongly doubt that another portal would remain active long. --W. D. Graham 23:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Folks in NASA's Human Research Program are intending to populate this portal with content. It has started with four risks of interest to human spaceflight and the plan is to expand to about 30. The content within the four risks is just a start. There is more to be added in each of the four. The hope is that NASA researchers, researcher in other space agencies, and terrestrial researchers will all be making contributions. So I propose we what a few months and then evaluate the merger again. CraigKundrot (talk) 21:51, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

We, project members of RaheQamar, a privately funded space education and research related project in Pakistan, would like to have mentors from this Spaceflight Portal for our own learning and improvement. Can some one please provide us further guidelines. I am pretty new on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mohdify (talk • contribs) 10:07, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

SpaceX Photos

Just a shout out: Spacex has created a flickr account fith some of their more recent photos released under CC-BY-NC 2.0 generic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacexphotos Tought maybe you want to look at them, see if you can't use some of them. --2A02:8108:1A80:16C:C9C9:59F2:C003:1419 (talk) 10:51, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Finally cracked the featured template code!

After months of boggling, I finally figured out how to add to the featured archive queue. I will now be editing the featured items. I've already added two pictures (The transit of the Moon over the Earth by DSCOVR, and the scale photo of Pluto and Charon from New Horizons), and I plan to add and edit biographies and articles. --Kitch ^{(Talk : Contrib)} 18:37, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

• EDIT: I have also added a biography for Chris Hadfield. --Kitch ^{(Talk : Contrib)} 18:46, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

• PROGRESS! We now have 14 featured pictures, 17 features articles, and 13 featured biographies.
  • I have added pictures for New Horizons, DSCOVR, Falcon 9 v1.1, and Sea Launch. I also replaced the Shenzhou 5 picture blurb, since that photo is now gone, with one for Voyager 2.
  • I have added featured articles for all the Commercial Resupply Services spacecraft, CST-100 Starliner (I'm debating adding a Dragon V2 blurb separate from the Dragon one for CRS), New Horizons, and SpaceX. I also updated the blurbs for the ISRO Orbital Vehicle and Proton, and added a photo for Salyut 6.
  • In addition to the Chris Hadfield biography, I added a new photo for Yuri Gagarin.

More planned this long weekend! --Kitch ^{(Talk : Contrib)} 12:04, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Notice from the Portals WikiProject

WikiProject Portals is back!

The project was rebooted and completely overhauled on April 17th, 2018. Its goals are to revitalize the entire portal system, make building and maintaining portals easier, support the ongoing improvement of portals and the editors dedicated to this, and design the portals of the future.

As of May 2nd, 2018, membership is at 60 editors, and growing. You are welcome to join us.

There are design initiatives for revitalizing the portals system as a whole, and for improving each component of portals. So far, 2 new dynamic components have been developed: Template:Transclude lead excerpt and Template:Transclude random excerpt.

Tools are provided for building and maintaining portals, including automated portals that update themselves in various ways.

And, if you are bored and would like something to occupy your mind, we have a wonderful task list.

From your friendly neighborhood Portals WikiProject. Hope to see you there. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   07:46, 2 May 2018 (UTC)