Talk:Space Shuttle Endeavour/Archive 1

Citation
The sentence "The Space Shuttle wasn't designed to retrieve the satellite, however, which created many repair challenges." is a direct quote from http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/shuttleoperations/orbiters/endeavour-info.html. It should either be reworded, removed, or cited properly so as not to be plagiarism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Astrotsarina (talk • contribs) 06:44, 29 December 2005


 * Not applicable, NASA content is not covered by copyright. -- GW_SimulationsUser Page 19:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

In the interest of clarity, I have to voice disagreement with the previous comment. Plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different things. It's still plagiarism if someone else wrote it and it was copied here verbatim without quotation and citation. That's why re-wording it was the right thing to do and why this is often called for here. User:BiOFH --Biofh 02:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Reword, or better yet, just plain cite it. SchuminWeb (Talk) 03:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

NASA
Why are NASA so cheap? Why can't they repair the protective tiles?! If they don't, surely there is an increased danger of it disintegrating in a style similar to Columbia? It's dangerous! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)
 * They can repair the tiles. There are three repair methods which they could have used. However, analysis and testing showed that it is unlikely that the shuttle will incur any damage by not doing the repair. They decided that doing the repair is more dangerous than not doing the repair, since the EVA required would be somewhat risky. It would require two astronauts to go beneath the shuttle, where it would take longer than usual to return to the airlock in case of emergency, or where they could accidentally bang into the tiles, causing even more damage in the process. Finally, they could botch the repair and end up causing more damage than they fixed. With these reasons in mind, the Mission Management Team decided against repairs. anonymous6494 18:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Fifth or Sixth
"Endeavour was the fifth and final NASA space shuttle to be built." Shouldn't it be the sixth shuttle built? (74.169.88.223 (talk) 13:21, 11 March 2008 (UTC))
 * Well, depends on what the meaning of "is" is... Seriously, though, it depends on what you're trying to say.  Endeavour was #6 if you count non-spaceworthy Enterprise, #5 if you don't.  SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Has landed
Can someone update the page to reflect the Space Shuttle Endeavor has successfully landed safe and sound. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.40.138.138 (talk) 00:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Infobox image
I've changed the image to be more inline with the other shuttle articles, Space Shuttle Discovery, Space Shuttle Atlantis, etc. The image was taken at night and showed very little detail of the orbiter, and was poor quality. I found a much better image that although taken in early morning, shows far more detail of the orbiter to illustrate the subject of the article. I have also removed basically identical images, one showing Endeavour on the pad, and another atop the SCA. Two identical images are not necessary to illustrate the subject. Instead, I added an image of the shuttle doing the RPM. I also moved the table of flights down to the end of the article, so it was not interfering with the article prose. Ariel ♥  Gold  07:21, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Small changes
Made a few small changes:

Summary: Added a tiny bit of background info.

Upgrades and Features: Changed "the other two orbiters" to "the other three" -- Columbia was still around and did receive these modifications.

Planned decommissioning: Updated and clarified the bit about which Orbiter is scheduled to have the final flight.

Jesternaut (talk) 04:50, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Distance travelled

 * Space Shuttle Endeavour has flown 19 flights, spent 206.60 days in space, completed 3,259 orbits, and flown 85,072,077 miles (136,910,237 km) in total, as of February 2003.

What does this mean? How is this distance calculated, given that at some point the vehicle leaves Earth's atmosphere and enters orbit, involving a change of context - technically, it was already travelling at 900 miles per hour (0.4 km/s)while on the ground, but at some point we consider it to be "travelling". When does this change take place?

For example, if I am on the ground, I am stationary. If I hover 10m above the ground, then I am still stationary. If I hover a mile above the ground, most people would say that I am still stationary. If, however, I hover 35,786 km above the ground, then I am travelling at 3 km/s in geostationary orbit. When does this change take place? How far up do you have to be to be considered moving as against stationary?

For a spacecraft like the shuttle, you could just measure the distance travelled since take-off, and count the motion gained from the Earth's rotation as a bonus. However, the Earth is travelling around the sun at 30 km/s. A craft that leaves Earth orbit and goes around the sun independently is then considered to be going considerably faster than it was when it was in orbit, even if its movement.

I think the question of "how far has a spacecraft travelled" is about as meaningless as "how long is the coastline of mainland Britain". It all depends how you measure it, there is no "correct" answer.

— PhilHibbs | talk 10:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Given the ambiguity of this statement, I think it needs to be framed in a statement such as "NASA has calculated the following approximate flight statistics: ", and it needs a reference as well. — PhilHibbs | talk 09:36, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If they have accelerometer data from the spacecraft then velocity and distance could be just one or two integrations away ;) --129.137.246.59 (talk) 22:16, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Last flight
I've read in several location that the last shuttle flight will be in October, so there's no way Endeavour will have a flight in November. Someone who has more precise information should probably update that. Tad Lincoln (talk) 06:09, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I have updated the "Planned Decomissioning" information as of July 12, 2010. Someone can remove the question of "factual accuracy" now! Thank-you! ~ Sharon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.164.140.64 (talk) 22:51, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Picture
Could we have a smaller version of this picture? It quite dwarfs the article. :) -- April


 * I couldn't find a better source for that same photo (cropping the nose off didn't strike me as photogenic!), so I replaced it with what I think is a prettier one. Note that there are gazillions of NASA-related photos at http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/ . --Brion

I noticed at the Houston Space Center a few months ago that several mission badges had Endeavour spelt Endeavor (for several missions in the 1990s). Anyone know the reasoning for this? You can confirm this by searching the term Endeavor on NASA sites. Simon


 * Are you sure about this? Jenkins has a few pages of reproductions of the mission patches; the only one for Endeavour where the orbiter's named seems to be STS-49, and it's spelt "Endeavour" on there. Searching on nasa.gov throws up random pages - although quite a few of them - but most seem to be in the context of a misspelling rather than an intentional use of a variant name. (If you're not aware it's spelt "strangely", you'll write it the way you're used to - and even if you are it'll often slip through). I'd bet simply on error. Shimgray 17:08, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * In the Cafeteria they have mission plaques (sp?) for all the shuttle missions, and there is a period of several missions where the name is Endeavor. Is there a way to find pictures of the original mission badges?  I think NASA may have gone through many of their pages correcting text; I noticed a lot of pages had Endeavor in the title bar and Endeavour in the article.  I'm sure the wing has always had Endeavour on it.  I will remove the trivial fact, until I can come up with more evidence.  --Csnewton 02:29, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I do still think it's just a typo - a distressingly common one, mind you - rather than a variant name. NASA has press kits online somewhere, with mission patches, but these are all new - the pdfs note they were recreated in ~2001. However, there's also scans of the contemporary Media Resource Kits, one of which I have open in front of me right now, and the patch for STS-49 says "Endeavour"... It's quite possible that the plaques were made by someone who wasn't aware the name was spelt the "foreign" way, and they "corrected" it; I'll pass the query on, though, and see if I can find anything about it. Shimgray 17:22, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Related to the question of spelling (Endeavour vs. Endeavor), does anyone know why NASA would have chosen to spell the name of an American shuttle using British, rather than American, English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.96.2.93 (talk) 17:33, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


 * See paragraph 3 of the article: "The orbiter is named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship which took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery (1768–1771).[4] This is why the name is spelled in the British English manner, ..." / ninly ( talk ) 17:51, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Rename to Endeavor?
The word "endeavor" can also be spelled "endeavour," but the version with the 'u' is primarily European (like colour, honour, etc.). Seeing that NASA is of the U.S., it should have the primary North American spelling. This is of course all meaningless if this is the official spelling NASA used; it just needs to be noted, I guess. RikkPeace (talk) 06:20, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not "European", it's English as spoken in England. As for the space shuttle, it was named after the HMS Endeavour, so the US gov't kept the spelling. JonChapple Talk 13:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

On that note, the reference indicating that the Shuttle astronauts themselves spelled it wrong is kinda dead. At least for me, reference #6 goes to the internet wayback machine and it just keeps looping while it tries to load the page. Any other sources for that? 69.174.58.140 (talk) 16:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Plagiarism
Most of this article has just been lifted word for word from a NASA website ( Rockwell International proposal to build two shuttles for the price of one of the original shuttles) and needs to be changed to original content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.201.152.84 (talk) 23:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Infobox / number of missions
The infobox currently claims that Endeavour had 130 missions, but the Flights section describes only 25. I suspect that the second figure is the correct one. Isn't the 130 figure the one for all space shuttle flights except the Enterprise test flights? Bahnfrend (talk) 05:49, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Decommissioning "Paragraph"
Good Lord, this is about as tough to read as anything I've read in a long time. Break this up into paragraphs. Correct the many errors in spelling and word choice. Singular-plural disagreements. One sentence contains many of these errors by itself:

I will TRY to offer corrections to the following poorly-written sentence: "The job market and economy was meagerly stimulated by all the police, extra security, southern California Edison utilities crew working, street vendors, selling hot dogs, people selling photos and Tee shirts of the Endeavor Space shuttle."

The job market and economy was meagerly stimulated by all the police, extra security, southern California Edison [Is "southern" part if the company name? if so, should be capitalized. If not, it is an unnecessary description and should be deleted]

utilities crew working [should be "utility crews"], street vendors, selling hot dogs [a. no comma after "street vendors", and b. did they only sell hot dogs? how about substituting "food and drinks", or "refreshments"? , people selling photos and Tee shirts of the Endeavor Space shuttle. [Were these also street vendors? If so, then just include this as, for example, "street vendors selling refreshments and souvenirs"]

Finally, if "meagerly" is the intended choice of term, is this sentence even worth including? This appears to be an opinion not supported by statistical evidence. If the economy was "stimulated", do you have numbers to indicate that, or were crews and vendors just moving to these locations from where they would normally be working anyway?

The only thing I can say about the following is "Huh?":

"Gas stations were blocked while fast food restaurants had more then normally consumers of mostly liquid consumables."

"the space shuttle was being moved by remote control by a platform underneath the space shuttle. this was a pause the space shuttle endeavor took along the twelve mile journey to is retirement home at the space and science museum on Vermont and exposition in Los Angeles California."

Beginning just last week we now capitalize the first word of a sentence, and include commas between the city and state.

These are only a few examples. I highly suggest submitting this to a proofreader for revision. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.13.151.77 (talk) 20:52, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

STS-N/A - Mission 26
I don't care how much the public is fond of the recent news splash of Endeavour's LA 'walk'.. It does not belong in the mission list and the mission patch does not belong in the same table as the others. Move the mission patch to the decommissioning section and remove the entry in the table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.176.60.119 (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Final resting place - fiction met fact
I don't know if this is worthy of inclusion in the article, but the shuttle Endeavour has reached a final resting place in the same city where it crashed in the movie "The Core", using a dry drainage canal as an emergency landing strip. GBC (talk) 03:17, 23 December 2012 (UTC)