Welcome to my world.

I was spawned in the Delaware River Valley: my father hailed from Clementon, New Jersey on the south, and my mother from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on the north. They met and married when Dad attended Lehigh University. Dad split the difference and got his first job at Gulf Oil in Philadelphia, so I was born there. But that only lasted two years, and I was reared in Lebanon, Pennsylvania which I consider home. I've only been back there once since 1966. Nowadays the closest I get is eating a Lebanon bologna sandwich, sauerkraut, or scrapple.

I was schooled in the Syracuse, New York region until 1976.

Choice references edit

Origins of the 1958 US lunar program (Pioneer): sources found (but not used) in Ranger program

  • Hall, R. Cargill (1977). Lunar Imact: A History of Projct Ranger SP-4210. Washington DC.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Use this for: Space Race; Pioneer program; Exploration of the Moon; possibly Luna programme


  • The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project[2] -- Kennedy-Khrushchev letters of Feb-Mar 1962 !!! Looks like Space Race may have to be corrected!
  • Apollo By the Numbers: A Statistical Reference:[3]]
  • Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft:[4]
  • Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations:[5]
  • Before This Decade is Out: Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program. SP-4223. NASA:[6]
    • Chapter 5 George E. Mueller:[7]

Articles I have created: edit

Spaceflight edit

  • Phillips Report
  • Did you ever wonder what those scimitar antennas on the Apollo spacecraft were (and why they were called that)?
  • Space tug
  • Vostok 3 and 4 -- Merged the two articles; it was inherently a dual mission; Vostok 4 wasn't independently notable by itself, and the article reflected that by being very short and undeveloped relative to Vostok 3.

Politics edit

  • Joseph Gargan -- Kennedy cousin of Teddy, Bobby, and President Jack; Teddy's stooge and fall-guy @ Chappaquiddick. If the non-relative Paul Markham rated his own article, certainly Gargan did.

Arts/Entertainment edit

Firesign Theatre edit

* Counts as a creation of new content, even though the page previously existed.

Hints edit

Reusable short footnotes in Harvard format:

<ref name="name">citation text</ref> <ref name="name" />

{{sfnp | last name(s) of author(s) | year | p=page number or pp=page range or loc=other location }}
Warning: do not nest the sfn or sfnp templates inside <ref>--this is done automatically and will blank the citation and cause an error message to be produced.

Another shortcut (most easily done when there is only one author's name):

<ref>[[#Last|Last]] (date), p.xxx</ref>

This works because the biblio refererence automatically generates an anchor named #Last; the pipe conceals this and makes the name "Last" print as expected. The citation appears as a wikilink which will take the reader to the biblio reference.

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
* {{citation | title = Smith's paper | ref = harv }} This is not necessary for {{citation}}, but is normally necessary for the others.

Plot summaries edit

Title case capitalization edit

The definitive rules for WP style are found in MOS:TITLECAPS:

Always capitalized: When using title case, the following words should be capitalized:

Not capitalized: For title case, the words that are not capitalized on Wikipedia (unless they are the first or last word of a title) are:

Other styles exist with regard to prepositions, including three- or even two-letter rules in news and entertainment journalism, and capitalization of no prepositions at all at many academic publishers. These styles are not used on Wikipedia, including for titles of pop-culture or academic works.

Notes edit

  1. ^ The term "phrasal verb" has conflicting meanings. According to English Grammar Today (Carter, McCarthy, Mark, and O'Keefee, 2016, as quoted by Cambridge Dictionary[1]): "Multi-word verbs are verbs which consist of a verb and one or two particles or prepositions (e.g. up, over, in, down). There are three types of multi-word verbs: phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs and phrasal-prepositional verbs. Sometimes, the name 'phrasal verb' is used to refer to all three types." For capitalizing in titles, "phrasal verb" is meant in the narrow sense (of verb + particle) only.
  2. ^ Consensus discussions have sometimes concluded in favor of an exception to the five-letter preposition rule, for cases that present unique facts. See, for example, multiple discussions in the archives of Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness, in which it was determined that the title is a play on words, with "Into" serving simultaneously as the start of a subtitle and as a mid-title preposition, and found capitalized in almost all independent sources. An outlying case like this is not dispositive of how Wikipedia normally treats "into" in mid-title.

To-do list edit

To-do list

Comedy vs. Humor edit

comedy: 1. classical sense; 2. dramatic sense; 3. a ludicrous or farcical event or series of events (a comedy of errors); 4. a. the comic element (·the comedy of many life situations); b. humorous entertainment (nightclub comedy)

comedian: 2. a comical individual; specifically : a professional entertainer who uses any of various physical or verbal means to be amusing

humor: 3. a. that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous : a funny or amusing quality; b. the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous : the ability to be funny or to be amused by things that are funny; c. something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing

humorist: 2. a person specializing in or noted for humor

Sandbox edit




This should probably be a template:

Barnstars edit

  The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Thanks for all your edits to space articles including writing content, proofreading, and fact checking, especially on space exploration related articles on Wikipedia. For explorers, astronomers, and readers everywhere, thanks. Fotaun (talk) 13:49, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


  The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
Awarded for your excellent and ongoing editing to spaceflight and space history articles such as the Apollo missions. On behalf of space readers, thank you. Fotaun (talk) 23:15, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

In memoriam edit

In memoriam
Turn me on, dead man
Sorry you felt you had to leave the party early.
  • Don Imus December 27, 2019
  • We'll miss you, you old bastard. Who in hell gave you permission to leave?
Turn me on, dead girl