Talk:Outline of space exploration

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THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER Space Shuttle Challenger (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation or OV-099) was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, after Columbia. Its maiden voyage was on April 4, 1983, and it made eight further round trips to low earth orbit before breaking up 73 seconds after the launch of its tenth mission, on January 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. This Space Craft would be replaced by the space shuttle Endeavour, launched six years after the disaster.

THE SPACE SHUTTLE CREW

THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER DISTASTER The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred in the United States, above the state of Florida, at 11:39 am on January 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its flight after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster failed. The seal failure caused a flame leak from the solid rocket booster, which impinged upon the adjacent external fuel tank. Within seconds, the flame caused structural failure of the external tank, and aerodynamic forces promptly broke up the orbiter. The shuttle was destroyed and all seven crew members were killed. The crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation. The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program and the formation of the Rogers Commission, a special commission appointed by United States President Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident. The Rogers Commission found that NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes had been a key contributing factor to the accident.

How much commentary?

I've been beefing up the text headings in some of the sections, but find myself wondering if this is really redundant in what is really mostly just a list of pointers to other articles. Any thoughts about the "right" balance here? Thanks for any thoughts y'all may have. Wwheaton (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

It also, if carried very far, starts to demand sources, etc -- which may be the reasonable place to draw the line. Wwheaton (talk) 15:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Your point about sources is a really good one! Wikipedia space exploration pages, including this one,, currently have a major problem in this regard. Namely, the claim in this article that "Space exploration is the physical exploration of outer space" is not supported by any cited reference. Quite the opposite, in fact! The only cited reference in the space exploration article includes earth-based (visual-only) astronomy as part of "space exploration". (sdsds - talk) 16:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed the uneven enforcement of the rule, for technical subjects generally I suspect, as opposed to literary or "humanistic" ones. I am afraid I have developed bad habits myself as a result of writing mainly on the technical side. On the other hand, there are times when it seems useful to put in uncontroversial facts that one is essentially certain are correct, and hope someone with more time can come along later and supply the right reference, as opposed to leaving out useful explanation altogether. Anyhow, I will strive to be less cavalier about the matter myself, and hope also that sharp-eyed critics will tag when documentation is needed, rather than just delete at once. Hope we can all work together to balance the need for information with the integrity of the project, as speedily as possible. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 21:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

As an exercise I tried to do a search for definitions, and of course it was not too easy. The first one I turned up with Google{"definition of space exploration"} (23,000 hists....) was the Wiki one given in this article, which probably just underlines the need for a better reference. Then there was one from the British National Space Center by Jeremy Curtis, coordinator of the 'Space Exploration Working Group' [sounds reputable], part of a presentation given 3 April 2007: "The systematic exploration by robotic and human means of Solar System destinations upon which in the foreseeable future humans will live and work." Not exactly awful, except it excludes everything outside the Solar System, so what is HST, which does both? What about Magellan, which explores the high-latitude parts of the heliosphere? What about Gallileo and Cassini, which significantly explore Jupiter and Saturn, on which no one expects to live and work in the forseeable future. Of course I could go on through the list, but picking one is not NPOV, and do we really want to go off into a discussion of all (if not actually thousands, then likely hundreds, apparently) the possible definitions? I suspect this may be a case where some studied ambiguity is OK, better not to fight this battle, but maybe just discuss various options here, pick one common-sense choice by consensus, and leave the debate on the talk page as a historical reference?

Beaten but unbowed, Bill Wwheaton (talk) 06:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

References

List of space exploration topcs ?

I just commented out a reference at the top of the article page to the above title, because no such article (same as this one, except "basic" omitted) seems to exist. If this is not an historical anachronism, someone may want to repair it, but I suspect it needed to go. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 21:56, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for this page and all the pages of the set this page belongs to

See the proposal at the Village pump

The Transhumanist 09:26, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines for outlines

Guidelines for the development of outlines are being drafted at Wikipedia:Outlines.

Your input and feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The "History of" section needs links!

Please add some relevant links to the history section.

Links can be found in the "History of" article for this subject, in the "History of" category for this subject, or in the corresponding navigation templates. Or you could search for topics on Google - most topics turn blue when added to Wikipedia as internal links.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Keys to the kingdom

I noticed that you are really into space exploration topics.

I'm currently coordinating the construction of Wikipedia's Outline of Knowledge. It's a tree structure depicting the accumulated knowledge of humankind. And because it's linked, it also doubles as a table of contents or site map to Wikipedia.

I was hoping you would take a look at the space exploration branch of the tree: Outline of space exploration.

Is it structured well?

What's missing?

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.

I look forward to your reply.

The Transhumanist 00:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi there, I've got to say the basic framework for this looks great, but I can't help but notice that the Soviet & Russian space prorammes seem to be somewhat neglected in the 'History of spaceflight' section, there seems to be little mention of space stations, and the 'leaders in spaceflight' section could benefit from some extra items from the List of spaceflight records. If you need some pointers, Portal:Human spaceflight has a list of every manned space programme, past and present, in the key topics section. I hope this is of some use! :-) Colds7ream (talk) 11:25, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Comparing the annual budget numbers

The numbers given are very difficult to compare without all the data being for a common year. And without source citations, there is no telling what number was added to the table for each country by various editors, likely looking at different years' annual agency budgets. I think we need to begin to source the claims with citations. But I'm very open to other approaches for improving the pedia? Anyone have a single source that provides comparative data for a certain year? N2e (talk) 20:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines

"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Wikipedia:Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

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