Talk:Space Mirror Memorial

Untitled
I have 10 images of this mirror and memorial that I would gladly let somebody integrate into this article, or I could attempt to do so... sbuckley 13:22, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Page move
This first came to my attention when I noticed on the Recent changes page that User:66.109.95.6 was changing (correctly) "Astronaut Memorial Foundation" to "Astronauts Memorial Foundation". I first thought this page should be moved to Astronauts Memorial, but looking into it further, this site seems to indicate that the official name is the Space Mirror Memorial. There are many, many different minor variations that appear on various government and press sites, but this seems to be the "official" name. I suggest a page move to Space Mirror Memorial, with redirects from Astronauts Memorial, Astronaut Memorial, Astronauts' Memorial, and National Space Mirror Memorial.

I would be happy to do it myself, including the gruntwork of fixing 15 double re-directs, but I don't want to be bold if, after all that work, someone has a problem with the move and wants to revert. Any comments? Does anybody mind? Does anybody actually have this page on their watchlist? --barneca (talk) 19:18, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. The foundation that runs the memorial appears clearly be the "Astronauts Memorial Foundation" and they consistently refer to the memorial itself as the "Space Mirror Memorial" in their materials. One twist, according to the [Spring 2007 newsletter], it is the "National Space Mirror Memorial". Are there any other citations for that longer name? Rillian


 * Rats. Until you found that, everything else I'd seen from that group either used "Space Mirror Memorial" or "national Space Mirror Memorial", so I felt comfortable assuming the "national" was descriptive, rather than official.  Not quite sure what to do now; I've looked thru many NASA and other gov't sites, and there is absolutely no standard reference (some NASA sites just use Astronaut Memorial).  Due to redirects, it doesn't matter too much, but if I'm going to the trouble (not sure why, now that i think about it) I'd like to get it right the first time.  I'll poke around some more. --barneca (talk) 20:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * After further poking, I suggest sticking with Space Mirror Memorial, with lots of redirects. It seems obvious from the Foundation's site that some form of this is more appropriate than some form of Astronaut Memorial; the vast majority of times it is referred to, the "national" is either lowercase, or missing; it is never referred to as "Space Mirror National Memorial", which would make more sense if it truly was part of the name; and it's not listed either way, as far as I can tell, on the National Register of Historic Places, which in my mind would have been the tiebreaker.  I'm comfortable now interpreting all this to mean the official name is Space Mirror Memorial, which has been designated a National Memorial.  No rush, I'll see if anyone else shows up with an opinion. --barneca (talk) 20:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I think this is pretty definitive. A press release from the AMF about the Columbia ceremony that twice names it the "Space Mirror Memorial" without the "National". Rillian 21:43, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I am User:66.109.95.6 who started these recent edits, and that sounds good to me.  Incidentally, I saw the mirror in operation early on, and the sun tracking mechanism was really neat.  I was brokenhearted when they decided not to fix it -- it was a really neat feature...

Hi

They Should Say WHat F Stand For John F.

--66.131.190.6 (talk) 20:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Clifton's astronaut wings
I removed the unsourced statement about Clifton's astronaut wings being on the surface of the moon. Chaikin's book ("A man on the moon", Penguin, 1994), on page 263 says that Bean threw his own astronaut wings into the Surveyor crater during Apollo 12, and says nothing about Williams' wings. Mlm42 (talk) 20:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * From memory there's further sources available on the article to do with astronaut wings; I read it just the other day, ironic I stumbled across this. That said, there is no relevance of astronaut wings to this article which is about a space mirror white elephant memorial, so you did the right thing removing it. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 03:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Seems a bit NPOV; this thing is a white elephant from the sounds of it.
Just reading up on this ... artifact. It's a white elephant, straight up. The article reads really tilted towards defending it. It's a mirror, not even a very high quality construction, on a dodgy tracking system that doesn't work. The article says it cost six million dollars, this is incorrect. The project overall is claimed to have cost six million dollars, we don't know how much the memorial itself cost besides 'the owners of the memorial claim it cost six million dollars' per the citation and any other primary sources I can find.

Given the tracking system is the same as most medium sized commercial and government radioastronomy tracking stations use, and given that Google offers a slew of figures on repair work and full replacement of such systems, we can estimate that repair and replacement of the entire tracking system should not cost more than $38,000 or there abouts. I've found all of this with five minutes of Google-fu, surely someone who is more attached to this article can try and develop it a bit better? And hopefully stop sucking up to the creators of it? I have no real attachment to this article, and as I like to volunteer on the dispute resolution team I tend to avoid getting too involved in articles in general to remain as objective and neutral as possible. But seeing this made me mad. Wasting how much cash powering giant flood lights 24/7? Wrecking the world the astronauts longed to look down upon one kilowatt hour at a time with CO2 emissions? Really, NASA?

License plates, fund raisers, six million dollars and the odd near $400k constant claims makes it sound like this is a giant cover up for embezzlement for a really heavy cocaine addiction, not a legitimate memorial for fallen astronauts and cosmonauts. The bottom line is, it's a text book example of a public works project gone wrong and a white elephant, and it really ought to be noted as such. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 03:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Space Mirror Memorial. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20101124025510/http://www.floridatoday.com:80/article/20101121/NEWS01/11210334/Space-nonprofit-CEO-s-pay-unusually-high to http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20101121/NEWS01/11210334/Space-nonprofit-CEO-s-pay-unusually-high

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:57, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Space Mirror Memorial. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071015160431/http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2003-00078.html to http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2003-00078.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 06:49, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Position of names on the mirror?
Is it random or by altitude of death or something else? Seems relevant as random placement is unusual.

Development information
Found an article that talks bit about development. Article  Kees08  (Talk)   03:46, 9 March 2019 (UTC)