Talk:STS-8

Cat
Can anyone explain the cat? Ravenmasterq 16:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to get some more information on it. At the time, it was just a crew photo that was of a much higher quality than the one previously on the page.  Cjosefy 17:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Still, there's got to be a reason why the cat is in the photo. Maybe it was part of the crew? :P --Kitch (Talk : Contrib) 02:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and that new caption doesn't help much at all...Ravenmasterq 20:32, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

African American
The article says this flight had the first African American in space. I'm assuming that no black person from any other country flew before him. Shouldn't it really say he was the first "black" person in space to stress that no European or Russian flight had had a black crew member before. Or maybe I assumed wrong and there was a black non-american in space before the guy in the article? I understand that there is a wish to avoid the word black to describe a race in some countries, but what do you call a person who isn't American but is black? A non-american african american? I can't think of a better decription than black, sorry. -OOPSIE- 06:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Even mentioning "African-American" in this article is overtly racist, divisive and soooo Frankfurt School politically correct. How about describing the rest of the crew as "Euro-American" to balance things out? Or, maybe we can give the Frankfurt School the kick in the arse that it so rightly deserves and remove gratuitous references to hyphenated-American and color of skin. &mdash;QuicksilverT @ 19:59, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

It is misleading, as Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez was the first black person in space, having flown on a 1980 Soviet mission. But since "African-American" limits itself to Americans, while misleading, it is accurate. Canada Jack (talk) 16:38, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Launch accident comment
An interesting detail - Shayler, p. 166, notes that "Interestingly enough, the Soviets had publicly criticised the near-fatal accident of STS-8 when its SRB almost burnt through just weeks before." when talking about the Soyuz T-10-1 abort. The Soyuz abort was on September 26, the day before the SRB burnthrough was discovered - I wonder how this worked out? Presumably they made the criticism before announcing their own problem, but I'd be intrigued to know the exact dates, and whether this was likely a way of deflecting attention... Shimgray | talk | 20:54, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Wake-up calls
I would like to remove the "wake-up calls" section from this article (and by extension every other, but baby steps...). I've tried this twice but been reverted because we need more discussion; the problem is, there doesn't seem to be any central discussion anywhere on these ;-)

To summarise my objections to the practice, generally speaking:


 * 1) The information is trivial. I can't see how it's particularly interesting or informative to a casual reader, which is borne out by most article-length histories choosing to to omit them.
 * 2) Covering it separately gives undue weight to the concept; they imply that what songs were played to the crew for five minutes each morning is as relevant as the scientific results of the mission.
 * 3) In any case where it's specifically relevant and interesting, we can mention it - appropriately - in the context of the event itself. ("Flight day seven began, appropriately, with...")

It's been suggested we should retain it because it's consistent, since many other NASA spaceflight articles have these templates. But consistency could just as easily be an argument for removing them all; we should never feel compelled to keep material just because someone added it, and I really don't see how having these sections improves our articles.

Does anyone have strong feelings either way? Comments appreciated, and apologies if I sound frustrated... Shimgray | talk | 09:57, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm uncomforatable with simply deleting the information out of hand. If you're up to working it into the other text, within the STS-8 section in this article, for example, I would be completely supportive of that. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 14:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that would be the ideal solution... except we run into undue-weight issues. This would work elegantly on a detailed article such as STS-128, where we have a solid paragraph or more per flight day. Here, we've a couple of scrappy lines - I had trouble finding even this much - and adding a bit about the songs each morning would make most of the section about that, which brings us back to one of the original problems. Shimgray | talk | 14:32, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It'll take some more digging for these older missions, but the sources are most definately out there to make all of the STS articles look like STS-128 (actually, they easily could and probably should be even longer, but I say that as something of a space flight fan). I've actually been meaning to take on expanding at least some of these Shuttle mission articles, I just keep putting it off is all. I think that the main point is not to get lost in the current state of the article. If we start deleting all the little details because they seem to overwhelm the article, then we'll never have a truly complete article. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 19:01, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This information is not trivial and we have a well maintained reliable source to reference it from (NASA archives). This isn't some random song playlist, the songs are very specific and chosen for their connections with the mission objectives or the individual astronauts.  This is referenced in the NASA archives for most of the songs.  This information is likely more interesting to the casual reader than the heavy technical details.--RadioFan (talk) 14:24, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It's sourced, yes. But I honestly don't understand - how on earth we can argue it's significant and non-trivial? This is material that even a comprehensive chapter-length article on the mission (Evans) reduces to a single passing comment (in a quote) on "a school song each morning", and most sources don't mention at all. If they're meaningful in the context of the individual astronauts, the appropriate place to discuss it would presumably be in that person's biography, in the section discussing that mission. Shimgray | talk | 14:32, 21 November 2009 (UTC)