Template talk:Infobox space station

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Spaceflight: Space stations Template‑class

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"Dates should be wikilinked"?[edit]

The doc for this template says:

launch: Date of initial station launch. Should be wikilinked.
reentry: Date of atmospheric reentry of the station. Should be wikilinked.

Why? This contradicts WP:DATELINK, which explicitly says: "Month-and-day articles ... and year articles ... should not be linked unless the linked date or year has a significant connection to the subject of the linking article, beyond that of the date itself, so that the linking enhances the reader's understanding of the subject." JustinTime55 (talk) 20:11, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Already fixed, it seems. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:36, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

May be time to generalize this template[edit]

In the "space station" infobox, there is not currently any field or parameter where one can specify the orbital type.

For the past 20 yrs, this apparently has never been thought to be needed, as there have been only a couple of space stations (MIR and ISS) and they all been only in circular orbit about the Earth.

Now, with Lunar Gateway advancing in the political space sphrere, and having funding to develop/build/test multiple mission parts, including precursor missions like CAPSTONE possibly later this year, it may be time to add a new param or two to the template.

I just ran into an example of this need. Tried to add to the Lunar Gateway article. No field really worked.

Ultimately, I left a bit of a hack by adding it as a subsequent bit of info to the 'inclination' parameter, like this:

| inclination             = Polar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO)

I think we could use an

'orbit_type' param,
(which would be circular for ISS and MIR; NRHO for Gateway)

and perhaps an

'orbit_focal_point' parameter. (which would be Earth for ISS and MIR; but would not be "Moon" for lunar gateway. Rather, that particular NRHO orbit would be focused on "Earth-Moon L₂" (as I understand it).

What are the thoughts of User:Chongkian, User:Huntster,User:JustinTime55, and User:ChiZeroOne ? Cheers. N2e (talk) 01:44, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]