Because we have no missions to observable places outside the solar system. So - indirectly - yes.

[...]

I'd like to make an appeal at this point. I've learned most of what I know about this subject from posts here in various short-lived discussion threads and as a result of following up on them. That's made a lot of difference to me over the last 3 years and it's something I couldn't put a price on. The quality of the contributions is extraordinarily high (except mine sometimes) and the main participants are not only knowledgable but sober and responsible stalwarts of the UMSF forum. Of course as always there may be 'noise' that is invisible to most of us.

I was assuming, in the part of my post that hasn't been repeatedly quoted, that if we carried on responsibly there would be no problem with occasional extrasolar excursions. I hope and pray that that assumption was valid. There are after all many other tolerated excursions from the strict forum remit which cause no harm and add breadth, humanity and wit to the experience we all have here and value so much.

I'd like to second that appeal, as long as we take it upon ourselves to carry on responsibly.

-Mike

I've never taken the name "Unmanned Spaceflight" in an absolute literal sense, and it surprises me to find the name being offered as the basis for a criterion for topicality. I've been around long enough to remember when this board was not called "Unmanned Spaceflight", and when its focus was the two MERs. Then Cassini was added, and other missions. My memory is fuzzy as to when the name "Unmanned Spaceflight" was born, but it was not suggested at the time as far as I recall that the name change meant a radical change in the scope of the forum.

After all, if we are to lean on an excessively literal interpretation of the phrase, then MERs and Phoenix would have to be ruled out ever since they landed on Mars. They do a lot of interesting and important things there -- but flying through space isn't one of them. As for the "manning", well, there's an awful lot of people involved in controlling the vehicles and collecting the data!

As far as the topics which one might expect to find in a discussion that was actually about unmanned spaceflight -- say, the physics of orbital transfer, or rocket engineering -- there's not a lot to be found here, and there's no specific forum for discussing them. Which makes me surmise that the forum isn't really about unmanned spaceflight at all.

What it's mostly about, as far as I can see, is the discussion and manipulation of accessible science data -- particularly image data -- from devices which either are flying through space, or which once were flying through space, or which do their flying through space by sitting on the ground on a planet. In which case the primary difference between Keck and Cassini is in the quality of the images. To which it seems to be added that the data must contain information about natural objects within the bounds of the solar system (however far they extend).

I've got no problem with this being a planetary science data discussion forum, or even a solar-system-only planetary science data discussion forum. I'm perfectly comfortable with that. But I just don't see how it's true that those limitations follow from, or are even related to, the notion of "unmanned spaceflight". And if it is, in fact, a solar-system planetary science discussion forum, then trying to shoehorn discussion into an "unmanned spaceflight" shoe could have unwelcome consequences.

For instance: Uranus has not been a target of unmanned spaceflight since Voyager II. There are no current plans to send a probe to Uranus; from what I hear, it's unlikely that there will be such a probe this century. (A fact which wounds me deeply. ) According to the way policy is apparently being presented here, if Hubble or any other telescope happens to discover something interesting about Uranus -- moons, rings, weather patterns -- it won't be topical because Uranus is not a plausible target for unmanned spaceflight. On aesthetic and practical grounds alike, that seems to be an unfortunate conclusion to come to -- especially if the primary basis is to maintain consistency with a name. (It would also be surprising, given that the forum contains a section specifically devoted to Uranus and Neptune -- but then sections have been ruled 'marginal', or even shut down, before now.)

On the other hand, if solar system science is more generally topical here, then a case can certainly be made for discussing data from other planetary systems at least insofar as it sheds light on the origins, construction, or composition of our solar system.

Some people, PERHAPS, are, MAYBE over analyzing the minute details of forum name lexicon.

We all know what UMSF is for. What it's not for is general astronomical discussion. There are far FAR better places for that out there.

Doug

Why, Douglas! You have managed to gather here the most impressive collection of intelligent, well-spoken, wildly romantic scientific rationalists I believe I have ever, in my entire life, seen park their brains on one metaphorical bench!

How can you be surprised that we would over-analyze just about anything???



-the other Doug

Just where are their brains located!?
Click to view attachment
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/12/p...rases_your.html

[...]

Sure is fun to be alive during a time when the blinders are literally falling off in an important branch of science, isn't it?

To coin a term, our perceptions of (and expectations/assumptions concerning) sub-stellar astronomical objects orbiting stars (SSAOOSs?) has been until quite recently been limited to those of our own Solar System, which doubtless represent only a miniscule fraction of all the possible states of being for such things within the constraints of the laws of physics and chemistry.

Somewhere, Sir Arthur Eddington is laughing in delight...

All previous is true, but by definition they are unmanned spacecraft, aren't they? And they did fly though the space autonomously (I mean, we all are flying through the space right now, but not autonomously) and everything directly connected with their mission should be on-topic with no doubt. For me, there can't be any possible theoretical conflict between MER's and the term 'unmanned spaceflight'. The same applies for static landers, sample returns etc.



I think it is a plausible target - there was one mission to Uranus, there are mission proposals that can actually be done in the real world.

Stop reading minutia detail into every single word I've said, and without meaning to call offense - stop being so damn pedantic. Don't take offense when it happens - it's just judgement calls I make based on how I steer this place.

It's very very easy. If I think a thread is appropriate for UMSF and UMSF is the most appropriate place for that discussion to take place - it can stay. Otherwise it goes.

People who want to have a longer debate about it than that can find another forum to get pedantic in.

I really do not have time to hold all of your hands in this - and even if I did - I sure as hell don't want to. The scope of UMSF has grown beyond MER. And it's grown and grown and grown - and at some point, sorry, I'm just saying 'enough'. I'm not interested in administrating an astronomy forum - subjects like this are astronomy. It doesn't interest me. Not what I made UMSF for. Not what UMSF is ever going to be. If you guys want to discuss that sort of thing - then go to BAUT or somewhere else. The reason UMSF is how it is is because we exclude a lot of stuff. There is no reason why astronomical discussions should be here. There is no reason why they can not be somewhere else.

I think it's fair, though, for people to be surprised to learn that this thread could be off-topic in a sub-forum titled "Telescopic Observations." There really aren't many threads in this sub-forum, nor have they been particularly contentious (not that I can see, anyway). I haven't seen anything I'd call plain astronomy either; everything seems to involve either an actual space probe or a remote object that we wish we could send a probe to. Heck, someone even managed to make a crude temperature map of the surface of an exo-planet a while back -- and processing planetary images seems to me to be very close to the heart of UMSF.

The only problem *I* saw in this thread was that a few people made what I'll call "argumentative" posts trying to rekindle the "what is a planet" debate. But that can happen almost anywhere -- whenever anyone uses the "P-word." For my money, I'd be happy to see the moderators just delete posts like that, leaving a note that merely said "[Deleted - argumentative]"

Or maybe I've been watching too many US Courtroom dramas. :-) "Objection! Argumentative!" "Sustained. Strike that from the record."

--Greg :-)

Does that not invoke the entire known Universe?

There is a Forum dedicated to Extrasolar Planets here:
http://solar-flux.forumandco.com/index.htm

-Mike

I think of this all as "meta-discussion." This thread has gone meta. This post is meta. The discussion is about the discussion, and it's getting more fractal than linear. Metadiscussion destroys real discussion.

The catch-22 of metadiscussion is that the more meta a thread becomes, the more likely it is to be closed. And that ironically encourages people to throw in their two meta-cents ASAP.

Perhaps what the moderaters need is a "meta" button next to the delete button that appends each meta post to an infinitely long thread. This would allow people to feel that they've contributed their 2 cents, but we'd all soon realize that we just earned post #1452 on the meta thread, and that no one reads the meta thread. Altogether in one thread, it would be apparent that, long or short, a meta-post is easily lost in a never-ending discussion that no one cares to read except to find other meta-posts that they agree with. Make the font size extremely tiny for good measure.

I say this only because deleting meta-discussion perpetuates more meta-discussion. Locking threads that go meta just means that the meta crap pops up again in another thread. You've got to marginalize it if you want to minimize it. Throw it all in one unlocked thread that we can ignore. Throw complaints about it in the same thread.

And for god's sake throw this post in the meta thread, because by attempting to curtail the waste of space, I've created a waste of space.

Uh, maybe -- but it's such a cool universe!

--Greg

So if this thread is not in the appropriate section why don't we move it to Chit Chat?
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showforum=41

If threads like "Google Chrome Browser" find a home there, this image of a unconfirmed extrasolar planet should be able to find a home there as well.