Talk:European Space Agency

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the European Space Agency article.
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European Space Agency was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: July 21, 2006
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European Space Agency is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools, or is a candidate for inclusion in future versions. Please maintain high quality standards, and make an extra effort to include free images, because non-free images cannot be used on the CDs.

Contents

[edit] Rewrite Comparison with other space agencies' first para=

"In terms of absolute cash budget size, ESA has the second largest budget after NASA, with the Japanese JAXA having annual funds of €1.6 billion ($2.0 billion) at its disposal[20] taking the 4th place after France, the Russian Space Agency (RSA) which incurred a considerable boost in funding in 2006 with an annual federal budget of $1.3 billion (international astronautical federation) in 2007.[21] The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has $815 million official budget according to The total ISRO budget for the year announced by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram (space news 06 March 2006).and the Chinese $500 million official figures by Luo Ge, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration (Singapore-China Economic&Trade 2006-04-04). If not counted as part of Europe's total space budget (ex-Russian) together with ESA's €3 billion space budget (as outlined above) and other European space agencies, the French Space Agency would be in 3rd place with €1.7 billion ($2.2 billion).[attribution needed]"

Bolded the languagewise rather questionable parts. Jellotrees 17:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bdget comparisons with China and India corrected

The "along with NASA, ESA is in another league" because of it's budget size was grossly misrepresented, since it did not take the PPP (purchasing power parity) into account especially for India and China. I have inserted a note about that. With that correction, the largest budgets are as follows:

1. NASA: ~14 billion Euro

2. China: 9 to 11 billion with PPP of 4 to 5 (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4333158.stm)

3. India: 3 billion (with a PPP of 5.5 to 6)

4. Russia: 2.5 - 3 billion (again their PPP ratio is pretty big, plus they have lot of commercial revenue, giving them a budget bigger than ESA)

5. ESA :

6. Japan :

Note that the budgts of China, India and Russia are growing rapidly, so these numbers are going to be grossly off even in 2 years and need to be updated regularly. One of the shocking events that might happen soon - as early as 2013, is that China's space budget might become larger than NASA's budget in purchasing power parity, while still growing rapidly after that. Welcome to the Age of Young Giants (http://www.sandgun.com/pages/share/marssociety/newGiants.ppt).

  • I made some clarifications to the budget section. It is certainly true that PPP is a factor for a true comparison, however not all costs are labour costs and jobs in high-tech industry tend to have higher absolute salaries even in countries such as China, Russia and India. In addition salaries do not even reach 30% of the costs of space programs and raw materials, computers and other high tech materials cost the same regardless in which country you are. Still, a true comparison of space budgets would need to consider even more elements, but it certainly cannot be calculated as direct as you do it by just multiplying absolute numbers with PPP numbers. Themanwithoutapast 17:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


gunjankg

[edit] who wrote this???

eads here, eads there, DW....? who wrote this stuff? Germany is a zero contributor to the Aurora and Vega programmes (as well as the pan european Orfeo), and is almost the only vountry not to have visited ISS (besides Andorra and Monaco). France leads the pace in ESA and is hardly mentioned. Links to EADS all over the place, but none to Alcatel Space or Alenia Spazio?? Today (21 June) Alcatel Space delivered EGNOS to ESA while the Alenia Marsis instrument on Mars Express started operating. Phoenix??? you must be kidding... EADS everywhere because of the clear teutonic flavour of this article, but EADS is French-based in the end!!!!! Just look at the number of Frecnh vs German employees. Also Eurocopter HQ are in Marseille, Airbus and Astrium in Toulouse. Anything serious Astrium does (e.g. Eurostar family of spacecraft) is French. EADS biggest boo-boos however (see ESA enquiry inti Artemis launch failure) are German. Danke, herr komandant!

I wrote "this stuff", and no I am not a German. If you want to contribute something constructive to this article - please do so, but in a different style. As to your allegations concerning "German-EADS all over the place" - not sure what you mean, EADS is a multinational corporation (as you just mentioned yourself) and has a lot of projects going on with ESA, so what? And if you want to mention Alenia Spazio in the section on the ATV go ahead, the same goes for Alcatel Space. And by the way, we normally sign our comments here on the talk page - just use 4~ if you're already signed up (what actually only takes 1 minute). Themanwithoutapast 02:36, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)n in

So that when you look at the number of prime contracts of Astrium (you should really talk abouot EADS for launchers) and Alcatel/Alenia the latter has the lion´s share, yet was until recently not mentioned. That´s what. If this is supposed to be an encyclopedia then it is supposed to inform, and to lend itself to facts. Under Future Projects, the EADS Phoenix stands out like a sore thumb, since all the others have either been already approved or are very likely to be approved.

[edit] Expansion and restructuring

Made same larger expansions- especially budget and history. Some pics here should be checked for copyright vios. Themanwithoutapast 15:51, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arianespace - ESA

Is ESA responsible for the Ariane 5 program, or is it Arianespace? I have to admit I'm not too sure of the real relationship between ESA and Arianespace; perhaps someone who does understand could clarify -- AdamW

Looks like an employer-contractor relationship to me [1] --Ed Poor
Ah. Looking through the history, it seems this has already been dealt with - ESA develops the things, Arianespace gets them into orbit. --AdamW

[edit] ESA-Astronauts

Why no mention of ESA astronauts? I don't understand the difference between ESA and national programs well enough to add much myself. Rmhermen 16:49, Oct 16, 2003 (UTC)

Good idea. As far as I know, the European astronauts are indeed organized in the ESA Corps of Astronauts, with no European country having its own corps --UsagiYojimbo
Regarding the list, some of them are now retired (Guidoni, Perrin, etc). Should the list be a list of all ESA astronauts of all time or only the active ones ?Hektor 10:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
When I rewrote the article some time ago I did not make any changes to the ESA astronauts section, I guess the more astronauts (retired or not) we include the better. Themanwithoutapast 23:04, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I think the active ones should be flagged one way or another. The number of actual active European astronauts is an interesting piece of information.Hektor 23:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EADS Phoenix

I was just wondering, shouldn't the new EADS Phoenix shuttle be included in this page? Although made by a private company, it certainly seems te be meant for ESA usage.. (or I misunderstood this whole Phoenix thing, please feel free to prove me wrong ;p ) I'd add it myself if I wasn't somewhat insecure of my Wikipedia editing skills (lack of experience, I don't want to mess up the whole page by accident).. -- Kraftwerk

Don't be too afraid of accidently messing-up. There is history and everything can be reverted. Also there is a preview ot view the changes before implementig them. Also there is a separate sandbox to experiment with

[edit] Accuracy

"ESA consists of fifteen member states — that is, it is the product of a merger of (or comprises of) national space organisations from these countries"

Not sure this is correct - I don't think here in Ireland we have a "national space organisation". Our contributions, are, I believe, directly through our Universities and some generic (not space) national bodies (Enterprise Ireland, the economic development agency, may be involved). Zoney 23:36, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree, for some countries there are "National space organization", for other - there are not such. I will try to correct this, but check it afterwards...

[edit] too much France is leading

Italy also makes many contributions (to the ISS for example) - like France is making to the Ariane... I think that maybe "French leading role" ("France is the main contributor" sentence at the end of the membership list) is just an assumption by the writer and not based on hard facts?

I've added a section with budget numbers and contributions by Italy, Germany and France. Themanwithoutapast 01:30, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Luxembourg, Greece - admission date

I changed the date of Luxembourg and Greece from 2005 to 2004, becouse of the information on the page that I also linked there. It states "Greece and Luxembourg are expected to become members of ESA in 2004", but the former wording of the page here was "G and L to became FULL MEMBERS in DECEMBER 2005" - so maybe in 2004 they will become NOT FULL members and a year later - FULL members?

Seems that the map (without Greece) is not up to date...

Following its ratification of the ESA Convention, Luxembourg has become ESA's 17th Member State with effect from 30 June 2005. - internal ESA memo! sofar 09:26:14, 2005-08-05 (UTC)

[edit] Financing the organization

I was surprised to read that almost half of ESA funding is from France. Is there any truth in that? If so, i am proposing that we mentionit somewhere in ESA article. I think its worthy it. Here is the source. [2]

[edit] Date for operational CEV

Bricktop, the article you mention does not give a new date for the CEV to carry out its first operational (manned) flight. As far as I know (and the last press statements: [3] says nothing different either) are they still sticking to their original launch dates of their spiral development plan - for the moment. What they have done is to move the selection date from 2008 to 2006 and to eliminate the parallel design phase of a CEV by both teams - Boeing and Lockhead. In fact phase 1 (now ending 2006) has been reduced to solely an "advertising compaign" between the two competing companies (and their partners). When they decide to go for one of the proposals in 2006 it will take AT LEAST 4 years (minimum) to launch an actual built spaceship into orbit (remember no work (except the proposal) has been done until now). They need a minimum of 2 unmanned flights for testing - this brings us to a manned launch date to 2012 as the absolute earliest date possible. However, as long as they do not announce a new date I think we should stick to the still official dates (+ I added a comment on the new development). Themanwithoutapast 20:59, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ok, the new version is fine with me. Although there are no official new launch dates, Griffin stated repeatedly he wants CEV to fly in 2010 or little after that to minimize the gap between Space Shuttle retirement and CEV introduction. But I also not except first manned CEV flight occur before 2011-2012 – with a development time of 3-4 years (for Lockheed with their CRV and OSP experience) and two unmanned launches. --Bricktop 21:17, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] This article is too long

I think this article is too long and should be split in an umbrella article and various topical article: Human spaceflight at ESA, Earth observation at ESA, Space exploration at ESA, etc.194.183.196.141 4 July 2005 15:29 (UTC)

  • Don't think so, see peer review (was critized as too short) Themanwithoutapast 4 July 2005 17:06 (UTC)

[edit] Removed template cleanup

As there were no specific reasons given on adding the cleanup-warning, I removed it. Please state specific reasons, otherwise it is impossible to improve the article in the requested direction. Themanwithoutapast 00:41, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] First European in Space

I find this quote very strange "It is therefore not surprising that the first European in space was not an ESA astronaut on a European space craft: It was Czechoslovakian Vladimir Remek who in 1978 became the first European in space - on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, followed by the East German Sigmund Jähn in the same year." As far as i know Soviet Union was european and Yuri Gagarin as well. So, it would be the first European not from the Soviet Union, not the first european.

fixed it - next time if you find something unclear or wrong, be bold and just edit it. Themanwithoutapast 02:46, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Energia

The Manned section references the Energia being the only rocket to launch Kliper. This is problematic, as there have been no Energia launchers built since 1989, and there is no capacity in place to build any today. A thought, perhaps we should delete a lot of this speculation and just redirect to the Kliper page. Mentioning it here first before I wholesale slash & burn. - CHAIRBOY 20:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

No; it references the Energia being the only rocket capable of a direct launch to the Moon, Mars or similar. Ariane 5 and the forthcoming Angara could both be used for launches to low (or in the case of Ariane 5 ECB, if it even enters service, not-so-low) Earth orbit. There, Kliper could be used in Shuttle-like roles, or an engine could be assembled (as in one of the Soviet moon-shot plans) in space and used for interplanetary travel. 134.226.1.136 16:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The latest change from "billion" to "thousand million"

I am aware that there are different interpretations of billion, but writing "thousand million" instead seems very un-scientific. Is there an agreed use of billion in the Wikipedia? --UsagiYojimbo 13:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

thousand million is the same as a billion. i suggest sticking to use of billion. if there are different interpretations of the value why not write it out in full or with scientific notation. --Lti 12:57, 23 February 2006 (GMT+12:00)

NO, thousand millions IS NOT as billion... Look at Short Scale and Long Scale here on Wikipedia. I propose the International Standard (K€, M€, G€) 151.21.165.66 (talk) 21:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ESA Image use?

Can anyone clarify the use of ESA images in Wikipedia? The ESA web site [4] says (emphasis mine):

The contents of the ESA Web Portal are intended for the personal and non-commercial use of its users. ESA grants permission to users to visit the site, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the website for users' personal non-commercial use. ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its website or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Use of material on the website is subject to the terms and conditions outlined below.
All material published on the ESA Web Portal is protected by copyright and owned or controlled by ESA or the party credited as the provider of the content, software or other material.
Users may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display or in any way exploit any of the content, software, material or services, in whole or in part, without obtaining prior written authorisation. In order to obtain authorisation to display or use any content of the ESA Web Portal, please make a request for authorization by clicking on 'Contact us'.

So does this preclude use of ESA images in Wikipedia? Pretty much all of the above rights would have to be granted if the image license was to be compatible with the GFDL. Any information? Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 17:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, I found {{noncommercial-ESA}}, which pretty much explains it. Looks like the images can't be used. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 17:36, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
See also: {{ESA-multimedia}} and meta:ESA images --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Asking for clarification at Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#ESA images. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 18:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kliper and 2006-2011 budget

The ESA meeting in december 2005 acknowlegded a new budget for the agency, this should be mentioned in the budget section. Rokosmos will hold a closed meeting on the third of february to hand out contracts to companys bidding in on the construction of Kliper, EU countries are also urged to participate in the event.

[edit] AREV

According to this article [5] AREV still exists, and is - in contrast to other test projects - fully funded. Themanwithoutapast 00:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

That's incorrect. You are mixing AREV, an ESA study, with USV-Prora, an Italian national endeavour from CIRA. AREV was not a project, it was an ESA study, of 12 months duration. It was successfully carried out by Alenia and the final presentation was performed some time in late 2005. But there was no follow-on for a further study. You can look for it in the papers of the Ministerial Conference of last year without finding any trace. The only demonstrator under way right now in Europe are Pre-X [6] supported by CNES and DLR and currently in Phase B and the USV-Prora [7] which is an Italian national project. ESA proposes to merge all that (AREV heritage, Pre-X and so on) in the IXV [8] under leadership by NGL Prime SpA.
    • Oh I forgot there is also Expert [9]
Ok, thanks for clearing that up and providing the links. Themanwithoutapast 00:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] laughable budget comparisons

What an interesting budget comparison somebody has tried to write up between ESA and NASA. Comparing the 13billion euro NASA budget to the 3billion euro ESA budget and attempting to scramble the numbers to make them equate is ridiculous. I point specifically to instances where NASA's space shuttle is used in the budget paragraph to demonstrate some sort of efficiency in ESA that NASA lacks or that the development costs of future manned vehicles by NASA is taxing their research budget. Well no kidding, developing and maintaining manned missions is significantly more expensive and risky than purely unmanned work, but how does that make ESA somehow on par with NASA in this area. It is the very fact that NASA supports ISS/Shuttle/Future manned flight that they require such massive expenditures that ESA can avoid. It sounds like a POV pusher is trying to somehow compensate for ESA's lack of manned work by needlesly demonizing NASA. This so called comparison fails to mention the 3 great space based observatories (Hubble/Spitzer/Chandra) or to look at massive GPS/NRO/NAVY related expenditures that the US puts billions of additional dollars into outside of NASA. These comparable expenditures are factored into the European side (Galileo GPS) but not the US. Anyway, why not just say that ESA is what it is (efficient, smaller). Why attempt to equate to the much larger NASA system as if it were on par? J Shultz 03:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Fully agree. Except that not all parts of ESA are equally efficient. ESA Science for instance is efficient. ESA Human spaceflight (what's left of it) is very unefficient.Hektor 08:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I also think it's a ridiculous comparison. Besides the fact that it totally one-sided, I don't even see the need for it. So the question is who is going to rewrite it? I'd do it, but I don't think I'm enough of an expert on the subject of the two organization's respective budgets to do so. All I could do is erase most of it. --BarqSimpson
  • I rewrote the section, not sure if that is ok now. Themanwithoutapast 17:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ESA flags

European Space Agency is a multinational organisation and a string of flags is used by them.
Yesterday I added that string of flags, which are a part of ESA as Ariane, Giotto and Huygens. A user:Shimgray apparantly saw the history section and said: 'Oh my god!', all those huge flags, lets delete them, it's not a Flag Article!
If user:Shimgray had been looking at the recent article instead, he would have noticed that it was a string of small flag. If there is a technical problem with homebuild browsers etc, then let me know!
--Necessary Evil 14:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA nomination

This nomination is on hold for 7 days for these reasons: the history needs to be prose, not links, and the refs need to be in cite standard format. Rlevse 23:58, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

  • 'the history needs to be prose' - not sure what you mean, the history section IS in prose. If you are referring to the list of projects, all of them have rather extensive separate articles, no chance to incorporate them all into the article + 'the refs need to be in cite standard format' - I don't think so, wikipedia does not mandate any standard form for footnotes and this articles has actually correctly formated footnotes Themanwithoutapast 06:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
    • remedied your history section point (the external link to the pdfs is now at the end of the history section) and converted the few external links that were not 'standard' cites into such Themanwithoutapast 06:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
you list of items in notes section shows up as gibberish, you still have external jumps, the footnotes like number 6 don't follow any standard wiki footnoting scheme, and footnotes go at the end of a sentence, not in the middle.Rlevse 10:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
please direct me to an article on wikipedia's 'standard wiki footnoting scheme' - I can't find it. Thanks. Themanwithoutapast 18:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
'gibberish' - there was a '/' missing in one of the 'ref'. Fixed that. Themanwithoutapast 18:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
'footnotes go at the end of a sentence': 'Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania[6] signed the five-year Plan for European Cooperating State (PECS), that is aimed at preparing the states for full membership.'... please explain how it would make sense to give a cite at the end of this sentence, if the citation only relates to Romania. Themanwithoutapast 18:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Failed due to non compliance. Rlevse 23:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to prnounce "ESA"?

How do I pronouce the acronym? Is it a single word, Esa, or do I pronouce the letters individually, E. S. A.? Should there be a pronounciation key at the start of the article? Spebudmak 23:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It is normally pronounced as a single word, similar to NASA. Memberstates have different languages so you will have people in different countries pronounce it differently some will pronounce the E like the English letter 'e', in many other countries the E will be more the 'e' in elephant. Don't think we need a pronounciation key as that would only apply to English-speakers and would not be universal. Themanwithoutapast 07:11, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info about the pronounciation. As for other languages, the English Wikipedia should indicate how to pronounce things in English. This is particularly appropriate in this case since the U.K. and Ireland are member states -- there must be some natural pronounciation in those countries. If native speakers of another language pronounce it differently, I think that should be on the corresponding article in that language. Thanks again. Spebudmak 18:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Update needed in "own manned launch vehicles" section?

In the last part of this section it says: "Jean-Jacques Dordain has hinted that a decision on ESA's involvement in the project could be made as soon as June, 2006" -- shouldn't this be updated to reflect whatever happened since June, 2006? Or if it should be understood that the next sentence reveals this, maybe it just need a rewrite. I didn't fully catch the meaning of that section anyway. --LasseFolkersen 15:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Be bold and edit wiki with information already on wiki. There is an article on the CSTS study and on Kliper that has most of the necessary information. Themanwithoutapast 22:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Budget figures for ESA and comparative space agencies

To the IP who has inserted and modified certain budgetary numbers, these numbers need to be backed up with an external source, it is not enough to just state that "according to Mr.X this is the budget" without providing a specific written source. Themanwithoutapast 20:27, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistent formatting of figures

Some of the budgets show the American dollar equivalent, some do not. Some don't even make it clear as to what currency is being state. I was thinking about going through and making that clear and showing currencies in Euros and USD values but I wasn't sure if there was a specific convention everyone would like to use so I didn't take over until I heard from everyone. I just think the way the currencies are compared throughout the article is very incosistent and was wondering how everyone thinks we should go about adding some consistency? VroomanGL 03:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

  • As far as I see it stating both the EUR and USD values is only appropriate when you compare two numbers, but your sources state USD for the one number and EUR for the other (such as in the budget comparison section). Because this article is on the European Space Agency and its budget is measured in EUR, to give a USD value in any other section would be unnessecary and given the ever changing conversion rate also a burden to keep up to date in the future. Themanwithoutapast 12:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I just looked over it and considered what you said and it made alot of sense when I thought of it that way. I am glad I didn't change anything without first getting some opinions. VroomanGL 07:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spacing Issues

I worked slightly with some spacing issues due to large pictures. I think it would be best to either use less pictures or make them smaller. I didn't want to make too many changes before seeing what other people thought about this. The pictures just seem to protrude into other sections of the articles and cause awkward spacing. VroomanGL 19:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Director General instead of Administrator?

At the top of the page Jean-Jacque Dordain is referred to as Administrator of ESA, eventhough the ESA-site calls him the Director General of ESA. Shouldn't this be edited?

[edit] Page protected

I have just protected The Wrong Version (TM) of this page, following an edit war. This is not a endorsement of the current version. Please seek consensus on the talk page over the inclusion of a flagicon (which is, FYI, a very lame thing to edit war over) and if you can't come to conclusion request dispute resolution. In addition, don't call each other names and be civil. --Haemo 04:04, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

The arguments of Necessary Evil have so far been (in essence):
  1. People might think it's an agency of the European Union.
  2. Most people believe that the European flag represents the EU only.
My (Ssolbergj) arguments:
  1. The flag was created by the Council of Europe 32 years before the EU adopted it in a non-legal way as a logo, not a legal flag. It was designed for Europe as a whole.[10]
  2. The image file is named Flag of Europe.svg, and before Flag of Europe.svg
  3. The flag is placed next to the word Europe (not European Union), a fact that in most editors' heads rules out the possibility of this organisation being an EU Agency.
  4. This is INSIDE the article that explains the status of the ESA; Wikipedia shouldn't be designed to 'shield' un-informed from true facts that might be confusing. Argument #3 clearifies everything anyway.
  5. The other users of the Space Agency template has the flag to the location in the infobox also. For example the NASA box says Flag of the United States United States. So its reasonalbe to use the European Flag to the word 'Europe' in this article.
  6. The most important thing (that Necessary Evil has ignored), is that the European flag is used next to the name of the continent of Europe all over Wikipedia. It's simply a common practice. Does he care why somebody made {{flag2|Europe}}?
S. Solberg J. 13:16, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

WARNING:
IT IS NOT MY PURPOSE TO CALL THE EUROPEAN UNION A NAZI ORGANISATION OR ACCUSING GERHARD SCHRÖDER OF BEING A NAZI. MY PURPOSE IS ONLY TO EXPOSE AN ABSURD LOGIC.

Gerhard Schröder Germany
Gerhard Schröder Germany

Look at the image of the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He was born in 1944 when the German national flag included a swastika - hence the flag with a Nazi symbol. Being naive as Ssolbergj one could say that it is in order here. But most people would look at the Nazi flag and think: "I knew he was a Nazi", even with the suffix "Germany"! According to Ssolbergj's logic this would not happen - only brain dead people will conclude things from a quick view at the top of an article. No, everybody will read every single word in the article.
I doubt it, people are casual readers and images catch the eye better than words.

My counter arguments to Ssolbergs above numerical arguments:

1) Consider this: "The swastika has been used by Buddhism, Ancient Greeks, Hinduism etc. thousands of years before the Nazi adopted it as a logo". The Nazis have used the swastika so often, that people automatically connect it with Hitler. For comparison; the European Union has used so often, that people automatically connects it with EU.
2) I’m not a lawyer, what’s your point; e.g. Flag of France vs. French flag?? Please elaborate.
3) Flags are very powerful symbols and most readers are casual. People are skimming pages and colours surrounded by boring text catch the eye. Psychologists have made tests where people remembered images better than words (They were shown pictures of cats, with the word "dog" attached). The advertising agencies know, that text-only advertisement are futile.
4) You can’t expect the readers to chew through the whole article before being enlightened with the truth.
5) NASA is an US-agency; therefore it's reasonable to use stars and stripes in the NASA article.

On the Saturn V moon rocket

On the Moon

On a spacesuit

On the Space Shuttle

On Mars


On ESA's website [11], on ESA's hardware and in ESA's publications there are strings of flags, not . See again [12], multiple flags, but not the European flag.

They use instead. It would have been easier to display one , so they know too that it will be misunderstood.

The space agencies must be proud to have their flags on their astronauts' shoulders:

The European flag; No

Russian flag; Yes

Japanese flag; Yes

Canadian flag; Yes

The European flag; No

US flag; Yes

The European flag; No (flags; yes)
Copyrighted image removed

Do you really think that ESA needs to ride on EU’s coattails?

6) I did an experiment with the EFTA articles. I inserted a minuscule in the beginning and after TWO hours the Swiss article was reverted;
“ yes it's in Europe, but the flag can be misleading here as it's also used for the EU. No need. ”
The Norway article was reverted after 33 hours, but the Norwegians also got two native wikis to edit;
“ The EU flag should not be used to denote Europe. ”
The Iceland article hasn't been reverted yet, but what; there are only 310.000 Icelanders – to few to patrol the Wikipedia for EU-flags regularly.
UPDATE: After almost four days the Flag of Europe was removed from Iceland;
“ GO To Hell ”


BTW, I don’t know why User:Ssolbergj is so eager to place the European flag in the beginning, he didn’t placed a French flag at France or a Flag of French Guyana at Kourou. Necessary Evil 14:05, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Evidence

This discussion makes little sense given the evidence provided by ESA ilustrations. Each member state should have its flag listed. Look at this ESA Hermes picture. Lot's of flags. COPYRIGHTED IMAGE REMOVED Put them into the article and lets get over this. Ricnun 15:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Third party comment

Okay, not strictly taking sides here but I want to make a number of points. SSJ is right when he says it does mean the whole of Europe, and its use by people as far out as the Georgian government and protesters in Belarus show that. However it is heavily connected to the EU yes. I do not believe though that a flag in the infobox would lead anyone to jump to the conclusion it is an EU agency. People do have brains. Second. As it stands for Europe, in theory it would be reasonable to use it. However I have not seen ESA using the EU flag, only their own. But its use in the infobox to show location is not showing it is being used as an ESA symbol, only a symbol of location - which is valid. Third, although ESA is not part of the EU, it is very close and getting closer - working on Galileo and the European Space Policy together. With the policy some movement has been made to bring ESA within the EU structures like WEU - however this has not happened yet. Final point: you are arguing over a small flag icon in the info box showing that it is in Europe, next to the word Europe. To both sides: this isn't a big deal, just location / just a small icon. A page was protected over this? I hope it isn't just this and there is something more but I hope one of you might take the first step to standing down. Not worth it. - J Logan t: 07:35, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The Georgian government and protesters in Belarus are using and they are not members of the EU. But to many people EU stands for Freedom and Prosperity, so their use of the flag might as well represent a longing for becoming an EU member.
ESA is co-operating with EU in the Galileo positioning system, but ESA is also working closely with USA and Russia. Incorporating the flag because ESA is working for EU must follow that the Russian and US flags should be present too. The has been embraced by the EU so much, that even its inventor the Council of Europe, is using another logo/flag.
It is striking that both Ssolbergj and J Logan are members of Wikipedia:WikiProject European Union with a lot of EU-stuff editing under their belts [13]. They are experts in the matter (I hope) and to them it is basic knowledge that ESA isn't an EU-agency.
Try for a moment to step back and disregard your huge EU knowledge and pretend to be in the shoes of the average reader. They are casual readers and if they see a flag used by EU, their subconsciousness will store "ESA is part of EU". Wikipedians have brains but they are also browsing the pages without reading every word. Often they want a fast answer like: "Is ESA an EU-agency? Well, here is the EU-flag so it must be right!" Necessary Evil 12:56, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I never stated it was an agency of the EU, nor do I see it as one. I am trying to give a view of both sides here and I am not supporting either. It is just in the location box yet I do recognise that it is seen as the EU flag. Even ESA says that - when the flew the flag in space [14]. I understand your point on people picking it up but it is right next to the word "Europe" which has a bigger effect than you might thing. I've just done some spot tests and it really does seem to work.
I also recognise that Canada is very close to ESA, which also adds to your argument. However you statement on ESA with EU/US/Russia. They are a tad diff. as Russia and ESA are not developing a joint policy, just a co-op. On the Georgia point - statements by that government indicate its use is because it is the flag for all Europe - not just because they want to be in the EU.
However I do I see that there isn't much of a point in including it, so it illustrates the word Europe? NE is right in it might mislead, and although I can make the point the affect is minimal, it isn't really worth it. - J Logan t: 16:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I wonder, since the word Europe is written in the location box, why is a flag necessary? And since ESA themselves regard it as the "European Union flag" as your link shows, why annoy them - especially when they faithfully paint seventeen national flags. Necessary Evil 17:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The point is that this is the LOCATION, and not about which symbols the organisation itself uses. It is a fact that ESA is locatet in Europe. Now "Europe" doesn't explain exactly where this organisation lies, but to stay similar to the NASA infobox and the other space agencies, I think to simply write Flag of Europe Europe (=the organisation is located in Europe) would be the best. ESA's relation to this flag is irrelevant. Your impression of the flag is wrong, and you have to realise that Wikipedia shouldn't care about the very first impression a random user might get after looking half a second on the infobox. (which in this case never would be "aha, it's an EU agency", due to the fact that the infobox says Flag of Europe Europe instead of Flag of Europe European Union) The flag has a wider use, and what's common practice in Wikipedia should apply in ESA's article also.
It's interesting that you have placed
This user is a member of the Wikipedians in Europe category
Wikipedians in Europe
on your userpage. - S. Solberg J. 20:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm from Denmark, Denmark is a member of the EU, so there is NO problem in flying the flag on my userpage, regardless of it is EU's flag or not. I don't dislike the flag - I'm not anti-EU, I know many Danes benefiting from it; my brother studied in Berlin, my mother has retired to Southern France, all that was almost impossible in the old days.
My involvement would be the same if some dude from Idaho kept placing details of the city Paris, Idaho in the French capitol Paris' article. It's okay to be proud of a flag, but since ESA isn't displaying it, why displaying it in the article.
Scattering EU-flags on the Wikipedia is not getting Norway closer to a membership (which they failed - twice) ;-) Necessary Evil 21:29, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I mentioned the template because you've refused to accept that the flag has any connection with Europe as a whole. If a wikipedian from Belarus chose to use the template, the flag would still be there. The fact that you wrote "since ESA isn't displaying it, why displaying it in the article" tells me that you haven't seen many articles on Wikipedia. The US flag is in the infobox of the Yahoo! article, despite the obvious lack of US flags in their design-profile. Must every Europe-level organisation or company be using the flag before we as editors on wikipedia can tell that the location (a pretty round term) is Europe, with the normal addition of the European flag?
I don't care whether you are eurosceptic or not, and I certainly don't care about your stance towards Norwegian membership. - S. Solberg J. 22:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I owe you an apology regarding my stupid 'Norwegian membership'-comment, you didn't deserve it. Well, as I've mentioned above, Belarusians don't mind getting rid of their dictator and join the EU. Yahoo is an USA corporation, so the Stars and Stripes is okay there. European companies are part of the private sector and are not in jeopardy of being confused as EU-agencies. Taxpayer funded organisations like ESA, CERN and ESO could easily be misinterpreted as EU-agencies. Necessary Evil 20:35, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Is what we gain from including the flag sufficient to overcome the (very real) potential confusion between Flag of Europe Europe and Flag of Europe European Union? It strikes me that that is the test that we should apply. The answer, to my mind, is "no" - largely because I don't think we gain anything at all. The flag is too strongly associated with the EU, and the word "Europe" in place of "European Union" is not enough to divorce it from that association (particularly since "Europe" is sometimes used to mean "European Union"). I see no compelling argument for its inclusion, so I don't think the flag should return.

On a separate point, could we edit the template to put, say, "primary spaceport" underneath the "headquarters"? I think most if not all of the articles regarding space agencies would benefit, and a Flag of French Guiana French Guiana or Flag of French Guiana French Guiana might be a useful addition for those of us not up on our small "European" towns. Pfainuk talk 22:56, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

As I've said before, the European flag is used next to "Europe" all over wikipedia. The relationship is fundamental and completely common. I have never ever seen the word Europe used to mean the EU in Wikipedia, and to consider such a loose thing from daily speech and tabloids would be against the encyclopedic style. Most people having the intelligence to use Wikipedia would understand that names are written properly in a lexicon. The gain would of course be fair consistency. - S. Solberg J. 23:12, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The word "Europe" is used frequently in infoboxes, all over the place, without a little flag next to it, including on the pages which Necessary Evil altered above. That isn't consistency. You don't appear to want to put a flag next to Kourou or Paris. That isn't consistent either. We consider this "loose thing from daily speech" to be encyclopaedic enough disambiguate to it at Europe (disambiguation). Here you're you're arguing it's unencycopaedic to not use something. In any case, the word "Europe" without the flag is fine - it doesn't say "EU". But the word "Europe" when coupled with that flag could easily imply the EU to someone not familiar enough with Wikipedia to know that we distinguish "Europe" and "European Union" templates. Pfainuk talk 10:03, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] String of flags


ESA is the joint agency of several entities that each has its own flag. Please, any administrator, implement the "string of flags" solution proposed above. Pattern it after the ISS article, which has had a (different) string of flags for ages without any controversy. (sdsds - talk) 08:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, since it is possible in the ISS article, it must be possible here too. I vote for sdsds's suggestion. Necessary Evil 18:47, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm happy with that. Pfainuk talk 18:53, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Location > Owner

I've changed location (which I implemented in the first place) to owner in the infobox. It's more concrete. Instead of writing just europe, I've added a complete list of countries. It has been successfully used in other articles, and I propose an admin should unfreeze this article. - S. Solberg J. 23:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

European Space Agency
Owner
17 European countries
Established 1974
Headquarters Paris, France
Primary spaceport Guiana Space Centre
Administrator Jean-Jacques Dordain
Budget €2.9 ($3.8) bn (2006)
Website www.esa.int
No objections (though the protection less than 5 hours to go before it expires of its own accord). FWIW I decided to be bold and implemented my suggestion above. Pfainuk talk 23:38, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] request

Reason I came here, when the protection is removed. Could someone remove the link to European (manned european mars mission) or change it to a diff page. European is a disam page now. Thanks. - J Logan t: 07:37, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] zoom

The article doesn't behave well when viewed at 150%-200% zoom levels with iceweasel :( Is this 'show' link really needed? Perhaps we could just statically list the countries without the expander link... NerdyNSK 20:37, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Member countries and strategic partners

Why is Bosnia-Herzegovina listed but isn't coloured in the map next to the list? --Taraborn 00:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)