Talk:Human spaceflight

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[edit] Discussion

Hopefully "human spaceflight" strikes a balance between being gender-neutral and still sounding elegant enough. Rlandmann 23:37, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

As an article name it is fine, but the bad thing is that it don't fit into a sentence, like e.g. Soyuz TM-2 was a humaned spaceflight, so it always needs a redirect. andy 08:31, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

To make it even more gender-aware, I'd like to see the "first human in space" supplemented with the first woman, and first black. We minimize the struggles they had to go through to get there if we do not mention them. I know we're being "PC" to call Yuri Gagarin the first "human" in space, but the bald fact is that he was a man and women couldn't go to space then, and we should unfortunately acknowledge that. I don't know the actual names and dates myself, or I'd've been bold. --zandperl 03:24, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

First Woman, Valentina Tereshkova (Vostok 5, june 16, 1963), the four others selected for the Female Cosmonaut Corps did not fly; the second one was also a USSR citizen, Svetlana Savitskaya (flew the Soyuz T-7 in 1982, was part of the crew of Salyut 7 in 1984, where she became the first woman in EVA)

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How about "inhabited spacecraft" for those that contain people, and "uninhabited spacecraft" for those that don't? This looks forward to the (distant?) future when today's puny space station might be replaced by sizable permanent residences in space.

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I changed the list of countries that has performed spacetravel to: soviet, usa, instead of usa, soviet, of the following reasons:

The order should be either historical or alphabetical - in both cases soviet comes before usa. The old ordering (usa, soviet, etc) is biased IMO.

sorry, but "human spaceflight" is an absolute nonsense term. The flight isn't human, the passengers are. The term is "manned spaceflight", and no, that's already gender-neutral, see mannaz. what's wrong with you people? go find some actual discrimination instead of butchering the English language. 213.3.64.145 18:39, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

If I may be equally rude for a moment, go find something productive to do rather than butchering the article on some anti-PC crusade. The English language is an living, evolving language. Deal with it. --Robert Merkel 00:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
The world used in aerospace industry is human spaceflight, so title of the article seems ok for me.Hektor 18:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moved discussion of the term

If you look up the article Human spaceflight, it seems likely that you are more interested in the concept of human spaceflight and its history than the term itself. I have thus moved the discussion of the term to the end of the article. Bergsten 14:45, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

The term "manned" does not denote gender. See wiktionary:manned and [1]. The term "human spaceflight" is OK, and is commonly used, as is "manned spaceflight". Made a few minor changes to clarify this. Joema 12:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] request for peer review

There is a request for a peer review at List of Space Exploration Milestones, 1957-1969. Bubba73 (talk), 00:49, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Confused Sentence.

  • "The only destination of human spaceflight missions beyond Earth orbit has been the Moon, which is itself in Earth orbit." It's the only place humans have gone outside our orbit but it's in our oribt. Yes that makes a ton of sense. Zazaban 23:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a good point, which the article wording now finesses. It isn't fully correct to say the spaceflights to the Moon went beyond Earth orbit, because the spacecraft hadn't left the Earth's Hill sphere. But the Moon missions did enter the Hill sphere of -- and take up orbit around -- the Moon. From an orbital mechanics perspecitve, the question of leaving Earth orbit is one of escape velocity. If you can work this into the Human spaceflight article, great! Sdsds 15:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion Suggestion: Irrelevancy

Many people believe the space program to be an irresponsible waste of money, seeing as how so much goes into it and nothing useful comes out of it. This should be reflected in a "controversy" section of the article. Also, the Soviet Union hasn't existed in 16 years.

Yes, the article would benefit from a discussion of relevancy and motivation. Why exactly do we have human spaceflight programs? Especially when robotic programs have had so much success doing research science? Questions of motivation for national programs verge upon politics, though, which is always a difficult area to cover with a WP:NPOV. Sdsds 03:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

``What is the value to the United States of being engaged in projects where we are doing the kinds of things that other nations want to do, and including them as partners? I would submit that the highest possible form of national security, well above having better guns and bombs than everyone else, well above “speaking softly and carrying a big stick” as President Roosevelt suggested, is the security which comes from being a nation which does the kinds of things that make other countries want to join with us to do them. If this is not “strategic”, then what is?`` -- Michael D. Griffin, Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 12 April 2007.

From http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/174145main_mg_space_symposium_20070412.pdf Sdsds 06:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a bulletin board for political discussions, not even those disguised as being articles "about the controversy".Ordinary Person 00:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mir

Resolved. Mir is now in the list. (sdsds - talk) 05:25, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

At present, the article includes the ISS in the list headed "Currently the following spacecraft and spaceports are used for human spaceflight", but does not include Mir in the list headed "Historically, the following spacecraft and spaceports have also been used for human spaceflight". If the ISS is a spacecraft used for human spaceflight, then surely Mir was. Ordinary Person 00:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Europe

Resolved. Concensus is no humans launched from Europe. (sdsds - talk) 05:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

First European who was launched in space was Yuri Gagarin, but he was launched from Asia. There was no person to be launched in space directly from Europe up to date as I know. Is it correct?--Dojarca 21:30, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you are right: California, Florida, and Kazakstan are the only places from which human spaceflights have launched. (sdsds - talk) 02:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
There is also a place in China, though also in Asia.--Dojarca 11:39, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Good point! From Jiuquan in China. But none from Europe. (sdsds - talk) 05:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Smith Dry Lake

The article seems to assert X-15 flights were launched from Smith Dry Lake. This is misleading -- the X-15 was released from the B-52 captive carry mother ship while they were over Smith Dry Lake; the X-15 wasn't launched from there. Presumably it (under the B-52's wing) launched from Edwards AFB. Does anyone have a source for that? (sdsds - talk) 02:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't readily see the location they were dropped at. But what do you for this case? "X-15 - Air launched over Smith Dry Lake or Edwards AFB". -Fnlayson 03:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
The X-15 flights all took off from Edwards. I've updated the article to reflect that, and added a citiation since the X-15 article doesn't include it. (sdsds - talk) 07:39, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Results of Soviet "loss" of space race

I've reverted an earlier edit that removed the {{fact}} tag from the sentence in the History section that asserts the Soviets ended their lunar efforts because they "lost" the space race. N.B. I believe this claim accurately described what happened and why (to the extent anyone can understand what a government does ;-), but it really needs to be supported by a citation. I think the best chance at that might be to find supporting material in Challenge To Apollo The Soviet Union and The Space Race, 1945-1974 by Siddiqi, which is available on-line (hurray!) at http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?Ntk=all&Ntx=mode%20matchall&Ntt=SP-2000-4408. (sdsds - talk) 05:16, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, here's a quote: "Glushko's first act as General Designer of NPO Energiya, signed on June 24, 1974, was to suspend all work on the N1-L3 program. The suspension of work on the N1 meant that all programs associated with its development were also terminated. These included the L3M advanced lunar landing missions." Siddiqi, p. 832. 1974. Yet they "lost the space race" in 1969. Editors who support the "lost space race" theory need to explain those 5 years in between, when the Soviets were still actively working on hardware for piloted lunar missions. (sdsds - talk) 08:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Soviets never publically expressed their intention to land on the Moon. They probably failed to lend there before Americans, but they explored it with robots. I belive they would not construct robots if all the efforts were sent to the human landing. And when Americans did so, Soviets switched to long-term space stations with an aim to make a voyage to Mars.--Dojarca 15:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Currently launching human spaceflights

I'm concerned about the phrasing in this revision, which says, "the Space Shuttle program and the Soyuz programme are currently launching human spaceflights". This could be easily misconstrued to mean "these two programmes have vehicles on the pad right now, ready to go" which isn't (at this moment) the case for either of them. The phrasing, "the Space Shuttle program and the Soyuz programme are both frequently launching human spaceflights" might be a bit more awkward, but it cannot be misconstrued to mean "the launches are happening right now". Is there some phrasing that gets the benefits of both? (sdsds - talk) 05:31, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

That bothered me too. What do you think about the new wording I've created? — Swpbtalk.edits 15:04, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
This current wording makes a lot of sense: "actively launching" is clearly the better way to phrase it. Thanks! (sdsds - talk) 15:43, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] National spacefaring attempts

I have deleted the whole "notes" section at the end of National spacefaring attempts. These contained claims about a an alleged Nazi Germany human spaceflight, which are unsupported. The citations all point to dubious web sources which I was not able to corroborate. The second paragraph on an intended Iraqi project was equally unsupported. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rschu (talk • contribs) 23:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)