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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. Recommend nominating the articles separately instead. Mailer Diablo 03:16, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Colonization of Mercury

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This article is speculative, unsourced and unencyclopaedic in my opinion. If colonization of Mercury should ever occur we would want an article on it, but I don't think we need one right now. We do not try to predict the future. I am also listing the related articles Colonization of Venus, Colonization of the Moon, Colonization of Mars, Colonization of the asteroids, Colonization of the outer solar system and Colonization of Titan - they all discuss future 'events' which probably will never happen. Worldtraveller 00:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete all except Colonization of the Moon and Colonization of Mars, which are common sci-fi themes. TheProject 00:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - WP is NOT a crystal ball - any non-crystal-ball content can be merged with Mercury BigDT 01:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Article is sourced, and encyclopedic. siafu 01:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The second might be arguable, but the first is definitely not true - the only citations are for physical facts about Mercury, the rest is unsourced. Worldtraveller 01:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Apparently, this AfD is for five very different articles. Are you applying the same to all of them? siafu 03:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Some are completely unreferenced, others have references, like this one, that do not back up the substance of the article. I can't see any from peer-reviewed journals for example. All are highly speculative and unencyclopaedic. Worldtraveller 11:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for this one. The others should be debated separately with their own AfD's, but I foreshadow that I'd be saying strong keep for some of them. Of course there are no colonies on Mercury for us to write about, but the article makes no such claim. Colonisation of Mercury is a theme in science fiction and a topic for speculation among space enthusiasts, and that is what an article with this heading should be focused on. The article could easily discuss all that, and I'm reasonably confident that sources could be found. Admittedly, the current article suffers the problem that it is mainly original research about the practicalities, but that is a reason for bold editing or some other action, not for deletion of the article. Metamagician3000 01:13, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete all except the Mars and Moon ones per TheProject. --TorriTorri 01:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and cleanup per Metamagician3000. Most of the content is facts with fairly minor OR, much of which could be sourced and kept. Needs some discussion and sources on NASA blue-sky projects, and some discussion and references on notable science fiction in this area. Barno 01:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - but someone clean it up please. - Richardcavell 01:47, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep and clean this up too please Yuckfoo 02:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete speculation . doesn't meet standards. ---|Newyorktimescrossword 02:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)|[reply]
  • Keep Moon and Mars, delete the others. There are presently scheduled trips to both these planets. Also, it's patently silly to start by saying, "We should not try to predict" and then saying, "the events predicted will probably not happen." Greyscale 03:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Good point! What I mean is that events that are very likely to happen, like an upcoming election or something like that, can sensibly have articles, but ones like this which may or may not happen should not. I was trying to emphasise that these are not events that are going to happen in the near future. Worldtraveller 11:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • We can keep speculation as long as it is clear that we are merely reporting the speculations. Michaelbusch 02:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Where else but Wikipedia will I be able to find a concise summation of proposed ideas fo r the colonization of Venus? Believe it or not, I was looking for just such a thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.49.246.89 (talk • contribs)
  • Comment. These articles were all created to reduce the burgeoning size of the parent article, space colonization. An extensive source list still exists on that article, and most of the sources that are listed for each apply to all. The fact that they are not all individually sourced is a matter to be corrected by a helpful editor, not criterion for deletion. siafu 03:21, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this is fair. There was one proposal that seems to be largely opposed, so now we have to go back and add our comments to six different articles?--agr 12:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll second this. The core arguments being discussed on this page are not based on Mercury, but broadbased and could be applied to all. Why not delete Space Colonization entirely if we're going to follow the logic being applied by those who want to delete. After all, it's speculative and talking about possible future events. I think this discussion page should be used for all of these articles. We will spread our wings and fly. And we have to foster dreams to keep that a potential. The alternative is unthinkable. Chadlupkes 13:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. colonization of space is a valid, legitimate WP article and scientific concept and this is not at issue here. The issue is the clutter effect of creating a lot of tiny splinters. As I said in my note for Titan below, I think we should try to fit all ideas in either colonization of space or the outer solar system and only split off once they get too big. Crum375 15:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If the articles are already split off, and have a solid navigation system to enable people to move among them, why do the work to combine them now and then have to reverse that work when people start paying attention to them? With the navigation, I think they're fine broken apart like they are. Chadlupkes 17:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so what's the timeline we will accept? We will eventually have people on the Moon and Mars. That's probably within the next 20-40 years. Maybe Mercury will have to wait a few hundred years, but I personally doubt it, at least not if we can actually get something moving. The future is a long time. Will we prevent discussion on extra-solar colonies using the same logic? What about permanent science stations on the floor of the Oceans? We can't limit ourselves to 5-10 years on Wikipedia, not if we want to give our readers & editors the idea that what they write and work on will be read by people beyond that timeframe. We will eventually reach Mercury. It's a matter of time and will. And we have plenty of both. Chadlupkes 17:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not paper. If and when those things happen, and if Wikipedia still exists at that point (which is highly unlikely), then the articles can be created. We don't need to make articles for every possible future event just in case it eventually happens. An article takes two minutes to create; there's no need to get a jump on things decades or centuries in advance. And, yes, I would advocate deleting any of the other examples you've given. Man hasn't even set foot on the moon in three decades; there's no reason to think we're about to start growing alfalfa there or something. Kafziel 17:44, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The 25th International Space Development Conference was this last weekend. I think Wikipedia or some evolution of it will exist quite far in the future. At least I hope so. Chadlupkes 18:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly my point. 25 conferences and how many planets/moons/asteroids have they colonized? Not a one. No reason to think anything will be different by conference #50 or 100. I'd like to think Wikipedia will be around in the future, but there's really no basis for that. There's no reason to even assume that the Internet itself will be around at that point. The colonization of the outer planets is at least a paradigm shift or two away. Kafziel 18:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
However, if you ask anyone in the NewSpace community, they will tell you that with sufficent capital investment they could do all of these things immediately. The Space Elevator being developed by Liftport has an estimated development cost of $10 Billion. That's accessible from any number of governments, corporations and even individuals or coalitions. How many conferences occured among ship captains in the 1300's talking about the potential for an ocean route to the West Indies? We'll never know. 33 years ago, we were on the moon. We will go back, unless naysayers continue to prevent it. Yes, we have a lot of work to do here, but the only thing preventing us from looking up is the people who keep saying "it won't happen". And this is quickly devolving into a debate on the subject, not these specific articles. It looks like there is more support for keeping than deleting. Can we resolve the vote and move forward? Chadlupkes 18:33, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Followup comment: These are not exclusively about speculative future events. They are about the strictly factual past and present of a wide body of research and commentary. The arguments for deletion keep repeating the idea that these are only about speculative future events needing entries to act as crystal balls, which simply isn't true. As I said above, we need to add new sources and new sourced information in the articles to contribute to their coverage of past and present research and commentary, which includes a lot of sophisticated and fascinating research by many of the best known and loved scientist of the past fifty years. I started that with the Colonization of Mercury yesterday with just sources I happened to have within arm's reach of my computer; there is a great deal of well-sourced existing research yet to be added, including many papers in the most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals, which many of us will be adding in the future as time allows. And that includes far more material than needed to justify each of the individual entries listed. To get started on coordinating such activities, I've opened a Wikipedia:WikiProject Space Colonization. Since the arguments for deletion have ignored the fundamental factual history these articles are intended to cover, those arguments can be dismissed as specious. - Reaverdrop 18:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So because I disagree with you, my argument is specious? Don't be ridiculous. I didn't ignore your arguments; I disagree with your entire premise that there is a "wide body" of work dealing with the colonization of Mercury. There's not even a wide body of work detailing plans to get there, much less to colonize it. A book and a couple of websites does not a viable theory make, and therefore I think it should be deleted. Personal attacks like that aren't going to make me change my mind and they aren't going to fool the bureaucrat who will make the final tally. Kafziel 18:14, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is, in fact, a wide body of research (serious, peer reviewed, engineering sand pace science) on how to get to the various planets, and why you would want (or not want) to go to specific ones. These articles don't generally go into huge depth in those sources, but they are definitely out there. The tradeoffs of trajectories, propulsion types and mission designs, landing site analysis, resource analysis, human factors of various missions, etc. The Moon and Mars are the best studied, followed by the Asteroid belt, but people have researched every possible place to go in the solar system (and outside it, for that matter) as an engineering problem for colonization.
You may not see that research if you don't hang out in those communities, but there are hundreds or low thousands of technical papers (peer reviewed, etc) published and probably ten conferences a year on the serious technical engineering and scientific issues associated with space development and colonization, looking across the world. It is a very serious deep technical field. Georgewilliamherbert 04:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't make any personal attack, I made a frank and informed evaluation of the argument. As I said, the references I was able to put into the Colonization of Mercury entry last night, which draw from popular and peer-reviewed literature by expert scientists, was the result of ten minutes of pulling out books I could reach without getting up from my computer. It's the very beginning. You have also shifted your argument now from denying the existence of a factual subject to denying that enough sources exist to support the entries. A very large body of work on these subjects does exist; discoveries of the breadth of this literature have astonished me more than once. Your lack of knowledge of these references does not render them non-existent. - Reaverdrop 18:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't shifted my argument. At no point in my original statement did I say that random speculation on the subject does not exist. I know it does. I said that the topic fails to meet the crystal ball criterion that it should be a near certainty. I stand by that. If you want to discuss the speculations presented about the possibility of colonization, then this should be moved to "Theories of interplanetary colonization" or some such thing. It has nothing to do with the references; I don't care if you have 100 of them. The actual colonization of Mercury has not happened (and, I'd say, will never happen) and therefore this is in the wrong place. Don't worry about it - there are enough supporters here to keep the article from being deleted without you trying to have my opinion disregarded. Kafziel 18:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's a big difference between mere random speculation, and decades worth of rigorous scientific and engineering studies on a speculative subject. - Reaverdrop 18:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And you call yourself a skeptic. Kafziel 18:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See Karl Popper and Carl Sagan. Science needs two engines, skepticism and wonder. Without the wonder to ask daring questions and investigate the least unlikely answers, one is reduced to a navel-gazing philosopher. - Reaverdrop 18:54, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So, we've got Sagan, a science fiction writer, and Popper, who basically said that everything is valid until you can prove otherwise. My vote remains "delete", and it won't mean much in the final tally anyway. Let's just leave it at that. Kafziel 19:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For your future reference, Sagan's single effort at science fiction weighed against his lengthy career as the chairman of the Cornell astronomy department and one of the most widely cited authorities in the scientific literature on planetary science hardly justifies labeling him a mere science fiction writer rather than a top scientist. - Reaverdrop 19:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My word choice was poor. My (rare) attempt at brevity won out over clarity. The mention of science fiction was only meant to illustrate the speculative nature of his overall philosophy. Two enemies (and victims) of skepticism are hardly the ones who should be allowed to redefine the term. Kafziel 19:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You've replaced one astounding characterization with another; most people would have named Sagan as a champion of skepticism. - Reaverdrop 20:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, sure, he could be skeptical when he wanted to be. Anyone can do that. People who believe in the Rapture can pull off that very same feat when it comes to evolution, but I don't think I would consider them champions of skepticism. ;) Kafziel 20:20, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Rapture has not happened, and will likely never happen, and yet wikipedia justifiably has an article on the subject. These articles do not describe an event past, present, or future, but rather a possible program of action, and current programs of science and exploratory engineering. There exist hundreds of sources because these are ideas in serious consideration and investigation. siafu 18:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If someone wrote an article speculating about the time when the Rapture would occur, that would be a crystal ball and a good candidate for deletion. But that's not what this article is about - it is about a doctrine taught in mainline Christian churches and believed by most conservative Protestants. Any good content from this article should be merged into the Mercury article itself. BigDT 18:47, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any timelines in the article, just information about the potential advantages and disadvantages to the concept. Chadlupkes 18:51, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nowhere in this article, or in the others, is there a prediction speculating about when colonization might occur. But, you're also absolutely right that this is not the Rapture (as mentioned in your edit summary), as we actually have some reason to suggest that this (i.e., colonization) might actually happen someday. siafu 18:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not lower ourselves to make comparisons with religious articles. The rapture (which, as a matter of fact, some believe has already happened) is a notable topic inasmuch as the Easter Bunny is a notable topic, whereas the colonization of Mercury is not. The speculation about colonizing other planets is, and I did suggest moving this to some more appropriate title.
Religious theories never rise above speculation; that's what makes them religious theories. If they came true, they'd be science. On the other hand, "speculative science" is a nice way of saying "science fiction". We should be holding our science articles to a higher standard than that. Kafziel 18:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that the fact that this has not happened, and may never happen is irrelevant; whether you consider a valid analogy to a religious topic "lowering ourselves" is up to you. The article is not about making predictions; it's more comparable, for example, to an article about a proposed bridge that was planned, engineered, discussed, and possibly even partially financed, but never built. Such would be an equally encyclopedic topic, and similarly not making crystal ball predictions. siafu 19:31, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think a more appropriate analogy would be the idea for a bridge that was discussed among a few architects and filed away for being completely impractical, without ever having professional plans drawn up or receiving any significant financing. A real-world analogy might be the myriad plans for developing a memorial for the World Trade Center. The hundreds of absurd ideas that didn't get past the discussion phase do not have their own articles here. They were impractical, they were not acted upon, so they would only be notable as part of a larger subject, or with a qualified title. Kafziel 19:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly Keep All - and improve according to Wikipedia standards I agree that there is a need for these articles. If they must be spun off from another article then that is not in itself an argument that they should not exist - that is just a question of organisation. Planets and the moon and Titan are factual matters. Space exploration is factual. Space exploration of the solar system inevitably raises issues of the habitability of the solar system. These issues exist as a function of the relationship of human biology and terrestial life, generally, to hostile but reachable environments. These issues are real, not fictional. If the subject is denied then it is censorship of information necessary to the ongoing human exploration and settlement of new environments that took us out of the Rift Valley of Africa many hundreds of thousands of years ago to the point where we are now on the verge of colonising neighbouring worlds. Anyone who suggests that this is "speculation about the future" should not bother to post on the internet, since they are speculating that someone will read what they have posted. Some assumptions about the future are well founded and reasonable while others are not. Science assumes that what holds true today will hold true tomorrow. It is speculation about the future, not scientifically verifiable, since we cannot time-travel into the future to verify our assumptions, but scientists do it all the time. In this case we are using facts about planetary objects, physics, biology etc., and the speculation is that human nature, curiosity and necessity will urge us as a species to do what we have done in the past, that is, to explore and colonise our environment. All life does it - why should it be unreasonable speculation about the future to suggest that humans will continue to do so? Rather, to suggest that we might not is highly speculative and unsupported by any evidence that I am aware of! - Elizabeth Jane (registered with Wikipedia) 6:04 AM 9/05/2006 Adelaide (C.S.T.)

  • Hearts - "If the subject is denied then it is censorship of information necessary to the ongoing human exploration and settlement of new environments that took us out of the Rift Valley of Africa many hundreds of thousands of years ago to the point where we are now on the verge of colonising neighbouring worlds" - Awesomely put, Elizabeth Jane! - Reaverdrop 20:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Right. Because the scientists who design the spacecraft that will bring colonists to Titan are going to consult Wikipedia for the latest info on the subject, and reorganizing these Wikipedia articles would doom any hope of future space exploration. That's just melodrama for its own sake. Kafziel 20:47, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Now you're trashing Wikipedia? Wikipedia's the future, man. I think the Titan colonists will be referring to and continuing to update that very entry we are just starting. - Reaverdrop 00:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No-one's trashing Wikipedia - it's an encyclopaedia, not a space travel manual. Given that No solid plans or studies have been made regarding manned missions to Titan, I fail to see how we can have an article about it. Note that I didn't list Space Colonization for deletion, just the over-specific, necessarily speculative and unencyclopaedic planet articles. Worldtraveller 13:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't think Space Colonization is a candidate for deletion, then I think you may have misused the AfD process. It's not a mechanism for resolving disputes about whether articles should be split or merged. It's for removing content that has no place at all here. See Wikipedia:Deletion_policy. --agr 15:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's not true. The information here could be merged if desired, but this page should still be deleted. There's no need to turn it into a redirect, because there's no such thing as the colonization of Mercury, so nobody is going to search for it. Reaverdrop has decided to turn this into a soapbox (and nearly dragged me in, which is why I struck my comments below), but Worldtraveller's use of AfD is entirely appropriate. Kafziel 15:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please read the policy on deletion of redirects: Wikipedia:Redirect#When_should_we_delete_a_redirect.3F.--21:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Give me a few Billion in capital, and I'll put one out. Give anyone the capital necessary, and they'll find a way. Lacking that capital, it's not being looked at seriously by the government. That doesn't mean it won't happen. To follow the logic put forward by this deletion recommendation, anything like this would have to find a new home on the Net, and only come to Wikipedia when it has happened. How many people working on Wikipedia right now would move away because of this change of policy? Do we want them to leave? I don't. Chadlupkes 18:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I have to give you a rough estimate of how many would leave Wikipedia over this, I'd have to say... zero. But I could be a little off, so based on the comments here and the membership over at the Space Colonization project page, I'd be willing to go as high as two. Kafziel 19:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, come on. I'm not "trashing" Wikipedia. I'm being realistic. Where was Wikipedia when Man circumnavigated the globe? Where was it when Man explored Antarctica? Where was it when Man went into space? Somehow, we still got the information we needed. Apollo 7 wasn't designed with Mozilla and CorelDraw. Before the world wide web, I'm sure lots of people thought their bulletin boards were the wave of the future. Back when modems screeched and every board was run out of some guy's basement. Where are they now? Don't kid yourself about the importance of our project, because that's when you start to find yourself defending absurd claims like the above.
Have you seen her statement that a ride at the fair is "probably symbolic of the hermetic teaching, found in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, and also in the meaning of the phoenix of Celtic mythology"?[1] If she can force herself to be that melodramatic about a carnival ride, I suppose it's no wonder she can vomit up such glowing support for this. Kafziel 12:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You know what? Never mind. Kafziel 13:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep until something more creative than deleting or keeping is decided. I might suggest a merge to Mercury (planet) or to colonozation of space or some such. This is useful information and not really original research since it is reporting other proposals and a general debate.--Nick Y. 21:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, and as a deletionist I wasn't expecting to vote that way till I read the article in question. There is nothing wrong here. The Mercury article is verifiable, is not original research, has citations for many of its claims, and covers an interesting topic. I see no unwarranted speculation. If the other articles are not of a similar standard, then they should not be in a grouped AfD, so I will assume that they are all good enough to keep. — Haeleth Talk 21:51, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Motion to end debate - Not sure how this works, but I would like the vote to be tallied and a decision made. Let's move forward. Chadlupkes 18:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's not how the process works. --Calton | Talk 07:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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