Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight/draftbox

Launch site merger

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight

For quick collaboration I made draftbox. Any comments about the current spaceport merger? ~~Please comment in there.~~ --Usp (talk) 16:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please explain somewhere the advantages you see to merging these separate articles? The topics are reasonably distinct from one another. Is expansion of the material on each topic's article another possibility? (sdsds - talk) 17:26, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They say mostly same things in different words. I think one article which covers the basics of the topic (place where spacecrafts/rocket are launched, no matter what its called) is better than many overlappping articles. Is there any significant difference between spaceport and rocket launch site which the current articles lack to mention? --Usp (talk) 21:03, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well of course the biggest differences are that rocket launch sites don't necessarily launch payloads into space, and spaceports don't necessarily involve any rocketry. The examples are e.g. model rocket launch sites on the one hand, and on the other the spaceports where the first "stage" of flight is propelled by means of aircraft engines, such as those which will be used on the Scaled Composites WhiteKnightTwo aircraft. Do those distinctions seem sufficient? (sdsds - talk) 02:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware of those differences, nevertheless they are all part of the same activity, space activity. And at least I would like to read about them in one generic article, with proper distiction between the types of launch sites. What is needed is good generic name if launch site in not acceptable. --Usp (talk) 10:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You write above about a single "article which covers the basics of the topic." I think everyone sees the logic in that! For now, at least, the right name for that article is probably Spaceport. Perhaps by using the {{Main}} or {{See also}} templates you could expand the Spaceport article to include material on the other topics, using these templates to indicate where even more details might be available. Just because no editor has yet expanded those other articles doesn't mean a priori they should be merged, though! (sdsds - talk) 03:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Against original idea I end up to propose a new generic article Launch site or Space launch site. Any comments? --Usp (talk) 08:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't had a long history of involvement with these articles, but I've been doing some maintenance on List of Spaceports and I don't quite see the merits of maintaining separate lists of locations there as well as in Rocket launch site. I can understand why a rocket launch site (for low altitude launches) wouldn't be called a "spaceport", but it seems that almost without exception a "spaceport" would be a "rocket launch site". One exception would be aircraft-launched space vehicles, but is that enough to make maintaining the two separate lists worthwhile? I don't think so. I'd like to see one article that lists rocket launch sites/spaceports all together, categorised as necessary by the type of facility and type of launches that take place. 15:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.242.255 (talk)