Talk:Orbiting Solar Observatory

Some history
I believe the wheel/sail bearing was the critical technological feature that got BBRC the contract for the first seven spacecraft. Ball lost the contract for I & J; I believe to Hughes, if I recall. But OSO J never flew. I was personally involved with OSO 7 from 1969-1976, as it carried my thesis instrument, the UCSD Cosmic Hard X-ray Telescope. The flight spare for OSO H was later taken over by the US Air Force, modified and launched in 1979, and became famous as P78-1, also known as (Solwind), the satellite which was shot down by the USAF in a successful anti-satellite missile test in 1985. Wwheaton (talk) 01:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

History of OSO-B
When OSO-b was being assembled the bird was covered by a dust shroud in the assembly building resulting in the third stage igniting in the building and the death of several people. OSO-B1 was damaged and the decision was made to prep the test backup OSO-B2 for flight. In a very tight window several of the experiments could not get recertified in time resulting in fewer flying. My father James Stoddart was on the team working under Ed Nye's Zodiacal light package. I remember going in on Saturdays and days off school to help Dad  in the Lab drill and wire circuit boards getting ready for NASA inspections. 75.34.185.52 (talk) 23:29, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
I am proposing that the Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory article be merged into this article. The AOSO was cancelled, and the one paragraph of information on the project (which can be found [at NASA's website]) can easily be tacked on to the end of this one. The AOSO article would then be left as a redirect.Primefac (talk) 18:48, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Seems completely reasonable to merge, since it never really got off the ground (sorry for the terrible pun). — Huntster (t @ c) 03:16, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Eddy Merckx's record bike of 1972
Tha track racing bike of the Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx, with which he reached the 1-hour-world-record in 1972 is said to use cranks and chainwheel from Campagnolo made of a special (aluminium?) alloy, developed for OSO-6. (And hubs and pedals made of beryllium – certainly an aluminium alloy with beryllium – from the Soviet Union.)

Source: Description of: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EddyMerckxHourRecordBike2.jpg

Showing the bike as exhibit in the metro station Edddy Merckx in Brussels.

--Helium4 (talk) 07:40, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

OSO Launch table
I want to revise this table to include some of the sorting features seen on other wikipedia lists frequently, wherein you can sort by date or by series. If there is no opposition to this I iwll go about doing so. Jyggalypuff (talk) 15:17, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Not really sure how well that would work - they launched in numerical order, so the only "sorting" that would really do anything would be the re-entry dates. Primefac (talk) 15:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)