Talk:STS-8/GA1

GA Review

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This article deserves GA status. It is well written, neutral, stable and well referenced with in-line citations, despite the uninteresting nature and history of the STS-8 mission. A number of minor problems had been fixed during the review, as documented below. Materialscientist (talk) 04:52, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Extended content

Overall impression is good. Comments

• Can we explain a bit the purpose of the Asahi Shinbun experiment?
• Naive minor question, is Challenger indeed "she" ?
• Terms to clarify

  "aft cargo bay"

  "small solid rocket upper stage"

  "manifest" (perhaps a note intended for non-specialists or non-native speakers)

Materialscientist (talk) 07:52, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that was a quick response! In order:

• I'll look into this - I'm honestly not quite clear. I think it was something to do with nucleation of ice particles, but I'll try to find a clear explanation.
• It's an open question. We use "she" fairly broadly for ships; I've always had a habit for using it for named spacecraft, because it seems right by analogy. That said, I'm happy to change it.
• Done.

Any other thoughts? Shimgray | talk | 14:41, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

• "After a successful insertion into a circular orbit at 160 nautical miles" why nautical miles? In any case, I guess km should be added. Materialscientist (talk) 08:17, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
• "The launch, in darkness, was the first American night launch since Apollo .." Just for personal curiosity, why this and Apollo articles stress American? Did Soviets fly at night? Vostok missions didn't, Salyut did, but I'm not sure which were manned. Materialscientist (talk) 08:17, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
• There is ample part on planning, which should be balanced by (a brief summary of) mission achievements and their impact. The analysis is so far focused on minor incidents and routine operation which sound almost like training (which off course it is, but). Granted, the INSAT part is explained, but doesn't seem enough. This is perhaps the major problem to be addressed. Materialscientist (talk) 09:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• 160nm because that's how the source gives it. I don't know why NASA like(d) using nm for orbital heights, but it seems to have been common practice - I assume it's an aviation thing? I'll add a conversion.
• I honestly don't know. Some Soyuz flights may well have been in darkness; Soyuz 1 in 1967 was apparently the first manned night launch, and Soyuz T-10 - the aborted launch in September 83 - was also night or at least twilight. The sources all either stress American or seem to be implicitly working within that context. I've not seen anyone refer to it as the first night launch anywhere. Best to be cautious here, I think.
• This is a bit of an annoyance - NASA didn't seem to publish a mission report, and this was one of the least "interesting" flights in that very little actually happened outside the plan. Most of the details I have are planning documents and press kits; there's very little that explicitly talks about this mission in the past tense, and what there is is quite limited. The experimentation was mostly dull routine stuff; the PFTA and TDRS had some impact, but mostly of the form of "yes, this works, we can go ahead". I should be able to scare up some more details, though - how do you think it would be best done, as a separate "Results" section, or merged into the orbital activities? Shimgray | talk | 14:30, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Up to you. I would scramble a separate section (a summary), but smooth flow of text is more important than traditions, i.e. if the text fits nicer into "orbital activities" then why not. Materialscientist (talk) 23:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I've been looking at the other Shuttle GAs (there's only two, which surprises me) - STS-74 and STS-125. Both have a pretty firm chronological layout, though admittedly there's a lot more material available for both to do it this way. I'll aim for this pattern, I think, but I'm afraid it might be a few more days until I can sort it all out. Sorry about the delay! Shimgray | talk | 09:56, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

...wow, that took a while. Sorry; it slipped my mind entirely. I've hacked together a section with comments on all the main projects (TRDS, PFTA and INSAT) and notes on a couple of others; the rest, there's a bit of a dearth of. The materials research work seems to have been used - it's cited in a few papers - but not really in a way I can easily mention; the rest is a blank. Shimgray | talk | 14:41, 22 August 2009 (UTC)