Talk:NASA/GA1

GA Reassessment

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GA Sweeps: On hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing Sweeps to determine if the article should remain a Good article. I believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a GA. However, in reviewing the article, I have found there are several issues that needs to be addressed.

Needs citations:

1. "On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard—one of the seven Project Mercury astronauts selected as pilot for this mission—became the first American in space when he piloted Freedom 7 on a 15-minute suborbital flight. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962 during the 5 and a quarter-hour flight of Friendship 7." Done.
2. "Nine other missions followed, showing that long-duration human space flight was possible, proving that rendezvous and docking with another vehicle in space was possible, and gathering medical data on the effects of weightlessness on human beings." Done.
3. "As with the manned program, the Soviets had the first successes, such as the first photographs of the lunar far side, but NASA's Mariner 2 was the first space probe to visit another planet, Venus, in 1962." Done.
4. The "Skylab", "Apollo-Soyuz", "Shuttle era", "Vision for space exploration", "Spaceflight missions", "Aircraft", and "Awards and decorations" sections are all unsourced.
5. "On the horizon of NASA's plans is the MAVEN spacecraft as part of the Mars Scout Program to study the atmosphere of Mars." Done.
6. "The result was that European and Japanese astronauts could not stay for longer missions. In 2006, the station was restored to a crew of three, and was increased to six in May 2009, during Expedition 20." Removed.

Other issues:

1. The lead needs to be expanded to better summarize the article. Try and touch on all of the different sections. See WP:LEAD for guidelines. Done.
2. There are a few single sentences throughout the article. To improve the flow of the article, either expand on them or incorporate them into another paragraph.
3. "...of 1-million-pound thrust designed with second and third stages." Make sure all measurements have conversions. Done.
4. "Representatives from the U.S. Army (M.L. Raines, LTC, USA), Navy (P.L. Havenstein, CDR, USN) and Air Force (K.G. Lindell, COL, USAF) were selected/requested to provide assistance to the NASA Space Task Group through coordination with the existing U.S. defense research and defense contracting infrastructure, and technical assistance resulting from experimental aircraft (and the associated military test pilot pool) development in the 1950s." This sentence would benefit from being split into two sentences. Copy edited.
5. The "Human exploration of Mars" section should be expanded or merged into another section.
6. "NASA's future plans for space exploration are with the Project Constellation." A brief mention of what Project Constellation is would be helpful here.
7. Is the nomination process up-to-date in the "Leadership" section? Done..
8. The introduction to the "Field installations" section needs to be sourced and combined into a single paragraph. Done. (I think that the section still needs work, but these specific items are fixed.)
9. An introduction is needed for the "Related legislation" section. Expand on what the legislation entails.
10. The first three subsections of the "NASA Science" section are very brief. Either consider expanding on these or merging them into a single section.
11. The see also section should be trimmed, as several of the topics are already mentioned in the article. Done.
12. There are a few dead links that need to be fixed. The Internet Archive can help. Done.
13. A few of the citations only have a title and access date. Include the author, publisher, date, etc. The citation templates at WP:CITET can help with formatting. Done.

I will leave the article on hold for seven days, but if progress is being made and an extension is needed, one may be given. If no progress is made, the article may be delisted, which can then later be renominated at WP:GAN. I'll contact all of the main contributors and related WikiProjects so the workload can be shared. Once the above issues are addressed, I'll help do a final copyedit of the article. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 22:08, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

A lot was accomplished this week, good work! I will leave the article on hold for another week for the remaining issues to be addressed. Although the below sections should be dealt with, be sure to complete the above issues so that I can pass the article. If you have any questions, let me know. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Aircraft

Is it just me, or does the Aircraft section, as a list, seem out of place? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to summarize what is there down to 3-4 of the more notabile examples, and move the bulk of the content to a List of NASA aircraft article (note that I'm not particularly attached to that name, as I just thought it up off the top of my head)?
— V = I * R (talk) 10:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I was actually wondering that as well. It seems to detract from the topic of the article, especially since it is a long list. It looks like it could be further developed in a separate list. If you move it, just leave a prose paragraph behind explaining the history of the aircraft and maybe why there were transitions to new technology. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 17:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The big question is going to be, which of the 3-4 would be "most notable"? You'll notice that I hadn't edited this page prior to this GAR. I'm not especially knowledgeable about NASA, although I'm certainly interested. I just feel that I'm capable of editing, and with a list of needs like this it seems to be an accessible task to acomplish. There's also no dearth of information available, which is certainly nice. Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts about this, feel free to pipe in here, I would certainly appreciate it. For that matter, if anyone has any thoughts about anything, speak now or forever hold your piece.
— V = I * R (talk) 22:18, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd say focus on what you think (or sources) are the most notable and go from there. The section can always be tailored later. You may want to leave a message on the article's or the WikiProjects' talk page (although this discussion here will be transcluded on the talk page, other editors may not be watching this review page and will miss out on the discussion). Keep up the good work on addressing the issues, there are only a few more remaining. I'll review all of your edits at the conclusion and then likely pass it afterwards if I don't notice anything else. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 22:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I ended up basically removing the whole section to the new page, and linking to it in the See also section. I may not leave it that way (and if anyone wants to re-add part of the old section, please feel free), but that seemed to be the best coursew to take at the moment.
— V = I * R (talk) 02:33, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Article as a whole - addressing Science at NASA

I liked the rewrite of the lede, which included more material about science (earth and space science), but I noticed in the history section of the article, there is barely any mention of any earth/space science missions. NASA has launched hundreds of science missions (including Hubble Space Telescope, Clementine (spacecraft), Mars Exploration Rover, COBE, Pioneer program, Voyager program, and many more), but they barely get mentioned in the history section. I think someone (it will be me if no one does in the next few weeks) needs to sprinkle those hilights into the history. Also, Aeronautics and Science comprise over $5 billion each year, somewhere between a third and a quarter of the NASA budget from its inception, so its certainly substantial.   Jonverve  ^{Talk  Contrib}  20:55, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

See the budget here.

Hi Jon, thank you for the comments, and I agree with you. This is the direction that I've been heading in myself for the past couple of days (I added most of what you're talking about in the Lead, and you'll notice that that there's a NASA Science title lower down on the page). I'm thinking that we need to restructure the text of the whole history section, to deemphasize the space program aspects of it somewhat and mix in everything else that NASA does.

I wanted to ask a general question. From looking over the budget and the NASA programs, overall, would it be fair to say that the three areas of NASA comprise Spaceflight, Science, and Aeronautics?
— V = I * R (talk) 22:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the comments about not enough attention being paid to the science missions. In particular the history section completely ignores unmanned missions. If all you read was this article you would come away with the impression that there were no unmanned planetary exploration missions in the 60s and 70s. The Mariner program and the Viking program are not mentioned at all in the text and the only mention of Pioner and Voyager programs is that a couple of the space craft left the solar system. I wouldn't expect the history of the unmanned missions to get the same kind of space as the history of manned exploration, but the article needs at least a brief discussion of them. You could add some text to the existing subsections of "history" to maintain the strictly chronological organization, but it would probably be better to add a separate sub section on unmanned planetary missions to the history section, since in many ways the unmanned missions were more closely connected to one another than they were to whatever manned missions were going on at the same time. Rusty Cashman (talk) 20:53, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we could break up the History section by decades, like the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's, instead of by human spaceflight missions? (i.e 1.4 Project Mercury, 1.5 Project Gemini, 1.6 Apollo program, 1.7 Skylab, 1.8 Apollo-Soyuz, 1.9 Shuttle era). Does that sound good? I know that could take a little bit of effort but I really think it could help the article tremendously. I want to get some feedback before I think about starting on it though.... I do like the additions of the 1.2 NACA, 1.3 NASA sections under history, those are great!   Jonverve  ^{Talk  Contrib}  04:34, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I started a sandbox edit here, this will allow us to tear apart and remake the history section without disrupting the main page. Have at it! User:Jonverve/Sandbox NASA   Jonverve  ^{Talk  Contrib}  01:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps: Kept

Good work addressing the issues. I went through and addressed the remaining issues, so please review my edits. The article will definitely need more expansion and additional sources before moving on to FAC. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good Article. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. It would be beneficial to update the access dates for the online sources. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 23:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)