Talk:Sundancer

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2015 launch date is not supported by the source given[edit]

The article currently states: "Bigelow Aerospace indicates that Sundancer may not be launched until 2015." and gives "ref name="space100120"" as a source. That source does not support the claim. In the relevant paragraph, the reference says

"Bigelow is now eying 2015 as the year when the larger human-rated habitats will be in Earth orbit, ready for boarding. All that is predicated, however, on launch availability — be it on an Atlas 5 or the yet-to-fly Falcon 9 rocket under development by private booster builder Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). It will take seven rocket flights, he said, to hurl the elements for the first Bigelow Aerospace complex into space." (emphasis added).

In my view, "larger-human habitats" could mean the entire complex, not merely Sundancer. And the last sentence seems to potentially support the point. If Bigelow means the whole kahuna of the complex, then the "first module" of Sundancer could, conceivably, be launched much earlier, and certainly 2014 or 2013 or even earlier. In any case, the cited reference does not support the 2015 launch date for Sundancer. N2e (talk) 02:11, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Zap, it's gone. That's something you can do. My read was of it saying larger human-rated habitats rather than the smaller non-human-rated Genesis modules. And in the future, please don't include commented-out wording when this talk page post works fine. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:17, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

External link[edit]

Might we also get a link to their website, external links section .... ? I'd put it in but I'm not allowed to ... :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.68.90 (talk) 19:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done, thanks for the suggestion! — Huntster (t @ c) 20:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:57, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sundancer → Bigelow Sundancer — Relisted. At this point it does not appear that this is the primary article. Articles already disambiguated do not mean that they should not be considered as the primary article. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC) this is not the only usage on Wikipedia, nor is it the dominant usage on Google [1], so a disambiguation page should be implemented 65.94.47.63 (talk) 08:06, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
  • Keep as-is. As far as I can tell, this is the only article actually titled "Sundancer" on Wikipedia, so on that alone, it must be kept where it is. Provide links to other instances of articles that might share this exact name, please. Also, while pointing at Google is a common metric here, it is totally irrelevant in a situation like this. We're only concerned with other articles that could share this exact title. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:44, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment we have two articles on Sundancers, the Verilite Sundancer and the cruise ship Sundancer. And this is the Bigelow Sundancer, since "Verilite" is a company name, and the product is "Sundancer". Both are sitting at different names since both were renamed, but they did have this name at some point in their existence. There's also two cars with that name, which we have articles for. Since we have other topics that can be referred to with this name, this topic must show primarity to sit at the current location. Without it, a disambiguation page should sit here. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 04:15, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, neither the Verilite nor the cruise ship articles are titled Sundancer, nor anything else. Redirects may exist, but that is irrelevant. Not to mention, the disambiguation page has been created, which solves this particular problem. — Huntster (t @ c) 08:43, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Any additional comments:

Is this actually known as the Bigelow Sundancer because if not I think something like Sundancer (prototype space habitat) is a better choice if this page is moved.--76.66.180.175 (talk) 22:19, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If it were moved, it would have to be at Sundancer (module), to conform with the other Bigelow articles. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:44, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's called "Bigelow Sundancer" in various places, like [2][3][4] . 65.94.47.63 (talk) 04:18, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
None of which are from the company itself, and are more to provide a title identifier. The craft is still primarily known as "Sundancer", not "Bigelow Sundancer". — Huntster (t @ c) 09:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Sundancer status[edit]

A recent change to the article text says that "the company announced in July 2011 that Sundancer had been removed from their station evolution path, and that the BA 330 would become the first production module."

From what I can find at the source cited in the article, this may be a bit of an interpretation on what has not been said, but could perhaps be inferred. The text I found at the citation says:

Bigelow Aerospace Expediting BA 330 Development

Due to customer demand and progress in commercial crew transportation, Bigelow Aerospace has moved directly to BA 330 development. As the name indicates, the BA 330 will provide roughly 330 cubic meters of usable volume and can support a crew of up to six. The BA 330 can function as an independent space station, or several BA 330s can be combined to support an even larger orbital complex. "It's extremely exciting to proceed with the actual construction of BA 330s," said Robert T. Bigelow, President and founder of Bigelow Aerospace, "This robust habitat will serve as the backbone for a new, dynamic era of commercial human spaceflight. The BA 330 will support a wide variety of utilization and exploration missions both in Low Earth Orbit and beyond."

The way I read that, Bigelow has publicly announced that it is expediting the BA330 development, which implies some things. But it says nothing about BA330 replacing the Sundancer, at least not in this source. From the text at the link, it could simply be that both Sundancer and BA330 are being developed simultaneously now, and that BA330 is now moved up some/several development milestones without waiting for Sundancer verification and validation of Sundancer modules, or something else entirely.

So without another source, I think it is premature to declare Sundancer bypassed. And Wikipedia cannot be based on what may be implied. I think we need a more explicit source to support that assertion. Cheers. N2e (talk) 19:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me, but I see no other possible way to read that statement. To my eyes, "moved directly to BA 330 development" makes an implicit statement that Sundancer has been waylaid. I would prefer a better, non-first-party source, but I can't immediately find anything. Of course, I'll be keeping my eyes open and replace at the first opportunity. — Huntster (t @ c) 21:51, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, your take is certainly the way I'd like to take it, and the way I'm seeing it in various industry scuttlebutt, it's just that we really will need that second-party source, with more explicit support for the claim, to clean up the Wikipedia article long term. Maybe Aviation Week will cover it next week... Cheers. N2e (talk) 21:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Gods, I hope so. It just seems that it is hard to find news stories about BA in English media. If not AW, perhaps a foreign source will oblige us. — Huntster (t @ c) 07:34, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sundancer is cancelled[edit]

Here is the first, really explicit source I've seen that supports the BA cancellation of Sundancer. It is in the first two minutes of this interview, with Bigelow speaking personally in a Moon and Back video interview. Moonandback Interview With Robert Bigelow, part 2 – Space Stations And Transport, 29 November 2011, "Bigelow Aerospace’s Founder and CEO confirms the end of the Sundancer program, clarifies for MM his company’s relationship with Boeing, and talks about the Olympus module." Still need to get the relevant info and source into the article. N2e (talk) 06:30, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This separate entry on the Bigelow Sundancer should be deleted[edit]

In the main Bigelow Aerospace wikipedia entry and also BA330 entry it is unequivocally stated that Sundancer has been abandoned, cancelled. For that reason, pretty much the entire content of this article after the initial summary two or three sentences needs to go. For example, what sense does it make to quote 2005 speculation about what a stay in this (cancelled) module might cost when official prices for the module that is currently projected to be orbited are available?

I have not made this change because it would lead to only an article stub remaining. And my experience has been that the wikipedia anti-sabotage bot will reverse such a deletion no matter how carefully I have explained and sourced it in the comments. I may not login to wikipedia as an editor for weeks or months, but when I do I'll be faced with a demand to justify what I had done on some page other than the one where I ALREADY explained it, the talk page for the article. I am concerned that my editing access will be revoked for having had too many of these unanswered challenges, but I am not in a position to invest a lot of time in Wikipedia editing.

But really, this article need to be deleted and this is a good example of why I believe wikipedia should not allow separate articles that contain information on projects like this, works-in-progress that are in evolution/flux. In these cases, the main source is almost always the company carrying out the project (even if transmitted second-hand through articles by journalists), and so the information is likely to be unbalanced if not downright self-serving. For that reason, I would suggest that in these sorts of experimental and ongoing projects, no "main articles" be allowed on the project itself and instead the information be incorporated into the main article on the sponsoring company or institution. First, that placement implicitly recognizes that the info largely comes from the company and avoids the problem that arose in this case: when the company drops the project, some wikipedia entries offering information on the project get updated but others do not.

Because should the project be abandoned, what happened in this case is likely to happen again: the article on the company got updated, but not the one on the project itself.

Also, those sub-entries (part of the company entry relating to projects in development) should be REQUIRED to have a disclaimer that this is a project under development by this company and this information on [name of project] largely originates with the company and is what was available as of [date].

More broadly, I think it is a bad idea in general for Wikipedia to allow the same subjects to be covered in multiple entries. Thus, for example, the entry on the [imaginary] Latin American country of Parador might have a history section with a link to the main article "History of Parador." But then it has content both in the main country article and the specific history entry, and these don't necessarily coincide. (For example, the main article on Cuba says it was settled by numerous mesoamerican tribes, i.e., from what is now Mexico and Central America. However, experts say the two main groups -- Taíno and Caribs -- spoke languages that are part of the Arawak family from South America, and DNA testing indicates the indigenous people of the Caribbean came from the same stock as those who inhabited northern South America, not Mesoamerica, as is correctly explained in the more detailed article. AFAIK, there is no evidence that the more complex and structured mesoamerican civilizations had any significant impact on the pre-Columbian Caribbean.

I would suggest that this sort of content in a "main" article (country, company or whatever) simply be the first few sentences (the summary or introduction) of the more detailed article when a separate article exists. That text in the main article would be automatically incorporated from, and could only be edited in, the more detailed article, which is likely to be monitored by those with expertise in the field. Jgperez (talk) 07:16, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To be blunt, that's way too much text; please try to be more succinct next time. Certainly the article needs to be updated for tense and such, but by no means should it be deleted. It received plenty of coverage in reliable sources, and is notable in its own right. Just because something is cancelled does not mean that its notability vanishes. Plenty of NASA projects have been cancelled in their paper stage, but we still have articles on them. I'll do some fixing here when I have time. — Huntster (t @ c) 08:54, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

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