Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2021 February 12

= February 12 =

Is there a difference in out-of-body experiences based on how they are induced?
I'm researching OBEs for my discovery class, though I can't find any info on the question in the article or anywhere else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Year0ld (talk • contribs) 16:47, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Try Inducing out-of-body experiences. Alansplodge (talk) 17:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Side-questions: what's a discovery class? School/college? What subject? I assume it's not related to the USS Discovery. --Bumptump (talk) 12:40, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * (From Year0ld) Hey, BumpTump, a discovery class is an extra class in which students who are excelling more than the average student attend. Its subjects depend on what the student chooses to research, at least in my class. Also, sorry if this doesn't look normal, I'm not good with the source editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Year0ld (talk • contribs) 16:10, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

What rocket did they use for STS-107?
Info box of STS-107 doesn't contain rocket name. If you see Apollo 11 info box it contains both rocket (near start mission details) and spacecraft details. Rizosome (talk) 17:59, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It says "Spacecraft Space Shuttle Columbia. "Rocket" doesn't apply well to the Space Shuttle so that field is not used. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:45, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

How they launch Space Shuttle without using rocket then? Rizosome (talk) 19:49, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Apollo 11 had a spacecraft on top of a rocket, so it makes sense to list them separately. The Space Shuttle had its reusable main engines on the crewed Space Shuttle orbiter, so the spacecraft is also a rocket (which launched along with an external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters). --Amble (talk) 19:54, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Read the article. It has two "small" solid rocket boosters and the orbiter (the "airplane" part) has rocket engines but isn't generally called a rocket. The large external tank is not a rocket but just stores fuel for the orbiter engines. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:57, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * , I'm a bit confused by your question (and the many questions you have been asking lately). You have literally asked how STS-107 flew without rockets. There's literally a picture of it flying with rockets in the article STS-107, so you know it did fly with rockets. Our articles on the space shuttle are quite detailed as to the components and how the entire thing worked. You've been asking a lot of these oddly basic questions that are well answered in our articles, and seemingly on random topics. Is there some project you are working on? I know it is good to assume good faith, but this is starting to get into the territory of me wondering if you are intentionally wasting people's time for some sort of personal entertainment. I've | reached out to you once before because your questions, at that time, seemed to focus on Raman spectroscopy, but you then didn't respond at all to being reached out to, and went in another random direction with your questions. What is it that you are doing or working on? If these questions are genuine, then some idea as to your project would help us answer your questions. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 22:02, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

It's not a project. I am curious how rockets work. Rizosome (talk) 23:11, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * At its most basic, they work by throwing stuff backwards in order to propel themselves forwards, in accordance with Newton's Third Law of Motion: everything else is just details of how they achieve that. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.125.74.203 (talk) 20:06, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. First off, you asked incredibly basic questions related to rocketry that our articles already answer. You should be at least trying to read those articles before asking here, but you literally asked how STS-107 flew without rockets when there are pictures of its launch with rockets on the article page that you had linked too. Second, your frequent questions have not been isolated to rocketry. | Bouncing glass vs rubber balls isn't a question about rocketry. | Neither is Hawking radiation. | Neither is bleeding when losing baby teeth. | Neither is the impact of patent law on science. | Neither is an equation being funny. Neither are previous questions about Nobel Prize rules, predictions of general relativity, the precession of Mercury, refracting vs reflecting telescopes, why CERN invented the world wide web, current progress on open physics questions, etc. That's just in the last month, and I got tired of linking to all of them, so I stopped. Before that, you had ones on catalysts increasing reaction rates, Raman spectroscopy, etc. You've been doing several of these per week, and you often don't even bother to respond as people answer your question. Your questions are almost all quite basic, to the point that even a glance over the articles in question would answer them. I'm asking you again, what are you doing here? You clearly aren't just "curious how rockets work." --OuroborosCobra (talk) 18:29, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

What is the difference between Space Shuttle and Space shuttle orbiter?
Wikipedia shows they are different, but I feel physically both are same. Rizosome (talk) 20:14, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The orbiter is the white part that looks like a plane; the other article is for the entire system. This is explained in the second paragraph of the lead in Space Shuttle, and also in the description portion further down: "At launch, it consisted of the orbiter, which contained the crew and payload, the external tank (ET), and the two solid rocket boosters (SRBs)." Matt Deres (talk) 21:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Honestly, our article name for "space shuttle" is a bit of a misnomer. It's using a colloquial name for what was formally called the "Space Transportation System," one of the components of which was the "space shuttle orbiter." The entire STS includes the orbiter, external fuel tank, and the solid rocket boosters, as Matt Deress said. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 21:57, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The Space Shuttle orbiter is so often just called the Space Shuttle that it must be its common name, and should maybe also be the primary topic for Space Shuttle. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:23, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree and understand why the article has that title, but I do find it unfortunate. There's not much to be done about it. It isn't as if I'm going to personally convince billions of people to call it the "space transportation system" and not the "space shuttle," and leave the shuttle part to the orbiter. It wouldn't shock me if, down the line, we run into similar common name issues with SLS vs Artemis vs Orion. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 22:30, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Why not "Space Shuttle system" and "Space Shuttle orbiter"? I would redirect "Space Shuttle" to the orbiter, but I'm not sure the common usage really makes the distinction. --Khajidha (talk) 14:06, 13 February 2021 (UTC)