Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight


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WikiProject Spaceflight
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Euclid italics discussion: Talk:Euclid (spacecraft)#Italicizing Euclid[edit]

Should Euclid (spacecraft), as a space telescope, not be italicized (per James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, etc.) and even the name changed to reflect its status as a space telescope. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discord Link Inactive[edit]

The discord link on the main page is either expired or disabled. Is the discord still active? CarterFendley (talk) 20:23, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PROD of VSS Imagine[edit]

Hi folks -- I just saved VSS Imagine from a PROD, but the article could certainly use a little love from anyone who can help out please? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:59, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Date format[edit]

The style guide states that "Since space is not within any Earth-bound time zone, and to avoid regional bias, the WP:WikiProject Spaceflight community has established a consensus (discussed here) to use UTC."

What it doesn't make explicitly clear, does that include using the DMY date format too?

It appears to me that most pages use the DMY date format, but the Apollo and SpaceX Starship pages appear to be notable exceptions. I attempted to change over the Starship pages, @Redacted II opposed to the changes (discussion here). RickyCourtney (talk) 19:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was hoping to get some clarity on the matter from those involved in the earlier discussions (@N2e @ChiZeroOne @Craigboy @Secretlondon).
Thanks! RickyCourtney (talk) 19:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For additional info, the changes were to the IFT-1, IFT-2, IFT-3, and IFT-4 articles.
All the articles listed above did have the "Use MDY" template, while most other spaceflight articles have the "Use DMY" template (including SpaceX Starship and SpaceX Starship Flight Tests).
(Additionally, the draft List of SpaceX Starship Launches uses DMY) Redacted II (talk) 19:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How articles were originally created matters. Whether some more recent editor might have changed the article template to the "Use MDY" template", the improtant question is whether there was a solid discussion & consensus for the change from DMY to MDY. So that would need to be looked at for some of the articles you mentioned.
But broadly, I think we are much better off if English Wikipedia spaceflight articles are in a more global standard of date and time formats, and not the US-centric narrow flavor. So, I'd be in favor of DMY data format and UTC times as the default starting point. For orbital launches, I believe we adopted the practice long ago to give times in UTC (with parenthetical local time, if relevant). N2e (talk) 03:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I too am in favour of DMY data format. This is implicitly endorsed by the project Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Style guide and the MOS (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers). The use of DMY dates used to be explicitly endorsed in the project style but we had problems with people changing the style of articles. The guidelines state that the date style of an article is that of the first non-stub version of an article. (MOS:DATERET) Where there is a {{use dmy dates}} or {{use mdy dates}} template, that will be honoured by the bots and templates, and should be honoured by editors too. While MOS:MILFORMAT trumps MOS:DATERET, my preference has always been to seek consensus. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can we add something back to the style guide to reflect this? I see there was something there until January 2022. I’d suggest:
It is preferred that dates be in a day-month-year format (7 July 1983), however Wikipedia’s guidelines on retaining established date formats (see WP:DATERET) should be respected.
-- RickyCourtney (talk) 06:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @BilCat and @Ergzay who were involved with that removal. RickyCourtney (talk) 06:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Strong national ties to a topic
Articles related to Apollo and Starship have a strong national tie to the US (both single-nation endeavors), so MOS:MILFORMAT supports MDY for both sets of articles Redacted II (talk) 12:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC) EDIT: misinterpreted definition of "strong national ties", so wouldn't apply to Starship. It would still apply to Apollo, though.Redacted II (talk) 13:14, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I agree that the Apollo pages should remain in MDY. I mentioned them here in an effort to have a more complete discussion. I do, however, continue to believe that the Starship IFT pages should use DMY format. RickyCourtney (talk) 16:14, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As you said, WP:DATERET is relevant. The IFT articles have evolved considerably using MDY, so policy suggests keeping MDY.
(Additionally, I believe that MDY should be endorsed over DMY) Redacted II (talk) 18:42, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Care to expand on why you believe that MDY should be endorsed over DMY? -- RickyCourtney (talk) 19:04, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Its (in my opinion) better, and a significant percentage of the worlds population uses it. Redacted II (talk) 19:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that WP:DATERET is important. WP:DATERET overrides wikiprojects. Wikiprojects are for setting rules that are left vague by the MOS. However see the new discussion I started below. Ergzay (talk) 20:27, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think that "strong national ties" does not apply to Starship? SpaceX has on a number of occasions invoked nationalistic sentiment when talking about its space launch ("returning space launch to America", employees cheering "USA USA USA", and the general sentiment of American fans of SpaceX). Ergzay (talk) 20:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most Americans do not care about SpaceX (which, as a fan of spaceflight, is very hard for me to understand).
But if you think it has strong national ties, then your probably correct.
EDIT: Ergzay, please use fewer messages. Several of your posts could have been merging into one post. Redacted II (talk) 21:27, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, it's a bad habit of mine as I write first and then develop additional thoughts and write those as well. Ergzay (talk) 21:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine (I have the same issue).
Just use the edit function to modify the original post. Redacted II (talk) 22:25, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a wider subject that is long overdue for being covered in WikiProject Spaceflight. That WikiProject Spaceflight is about things that happen in space (edit: beyond suborbital trajectories) or things launching into space into or beyond orbit. In that case it absolutely makes sense to use UTC and probably DMY. However for events that are happening on land at launch sites not directly related to launch activities, local time of day is absolutely relevant, as is local use of date formats. Where these must be mixed (for example launch prep or pre-launch operations) a judgement call needs to be made and policy should be left vague. Ergzay (talk) 20:32, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In cases where local time is used however, it should be mandatory to append the time zone or wording like "local time" or similar. Ergzay (talk) 20:43, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's good nuance. For launch and landing, it would be good to use the time zone code and the local time format in the infobox and include something more explanatory in the intro prose. An example of what that would look like here. -- RickyCourtney (talk) 20:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, I'm relatively in favor of unifying Starship related articles into MDY and local-time formats. Almost all starship activities thus far have been happening on the ground or in the airspace above the launch site. For example all of the IFT launches did not reach full orbit and so have no events that would be relevant for UTC/DMY usage. When we start getting orbital launches with Starship and payload deployments I think UTC/DMY usage should come into play. Ergzay (talk) 20:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your Boeing example is a good example of how orbital launch should be formatted, but we're not quite there yet with Starship. Ergzay (talk) 20:59, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be more clear I edited my earlier comment mentioning exactly what I mean that I think suborbital launches are not covered. Ergzay (talk) 21:02, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For example, I did a quick survey of a couple US-based sounding rocket pages picked at random and they either use military date formats or they use MDY formats. I didn't see any DMY formats or UTC. See Category:Sounding rockets of the United States. Ergzay (talk) 21:09, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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