Proposed Space Exploration Workgroup

[Carl Jantzen]

As I (and at least one other person) have mentioned at the New Workgroup Request page (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:New_Workgroup_Requests), Citizendium could certainly use a Space Exploration Workgroup. It is clearly a distinct field from astronomy, which attempts to describe the natural objects populating the universe, whereas space exploration documents human efforts to actually visit the cosmos.

For example, a page about the Crab Nebula would fall under the Astronomy Workgroup, a page about the Hubble Space Telescope would belong to both Astronomy and Space Exploration, whereas the International Space Station article would only be in the Space Exploration Workgroup.

Some of the important articles that would be included in a Space Exploration Workgroup are:

Space Agencies

• NASA
• Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency
• European Space Agency
• Canadian Space Agency
• Roskosmos
• Chinese National Space Administration

Manned Spaceflight

• Mercury Program
• Project Gemini
• Apollo Program
• Space Transportation System
• Orion Program
• Vostok Program
• Soyuz Program
• Apollo-Soyuz
• Mir
• Skylab
• International Space Station

Unmanned Missions

• Sputnik
• Explorer Program
• Pioneer Program
• Mariner Program
• Voyager Program
• Pathfinder
• Mars Exploration Rovers

People

• Alan Shepard
• John Glenn
• Neil Armstrong
• Yuri Gagarin

Obviously this list is woefully incomplete, and probably somewhat America-centric, but if we get a real workgroup setup everyone will be able to contribute their own ideas to the list (and hopefully their own articles!).

[Greg Woodhouse]

As I (and at least one other person) have mentioned at the New Workgroup Request page (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:New_Workgroup_Requests), Citizendium could certainly use a Space Exploration Workgroup. It is clearly a distinct field from astronomy, which attempts to describe the natural objects populating the universe, whereas space exploration documents human efforts to actually visit the cosmos.

For example, a page about the Crab Nebula would fall under the Astronomy Workgroup, a page about the Hubble Space Telescope would belong to both Astronomy and Space Exploration, whereas the International Space Station article would only be in the Space Exploration Workgroup.

I support this proposal. It's an important topic, one that should be treated in tandem with Astronomy/Astrophysics, not as part of it, one that brings in a whole range of engineering and technology issues, but probably doesn't belong there, either. Other areas of focus are history, policy, and social issues. My interest is probably more on the astronomy side than the space exploration side, but in case anyone's keeping a tally, you can count me as one editor/author that would be interested participating.

[Joe Quick]

Interesting.  I expect that we will soon need to implement a whole range of interdisciplinary workgroups.  Area studies (Latin American Studies, African Studies, etc.) have already come up as important workgroups to get started but I think other interdisciplinary fields merit workgroups as well (e.g Space Exploration, Cognitive Studies, ...)