Talk:Vega program

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[edit] Origin of name

"the craft was designated Vega, a contraction of Venera and Gallei (from Halley, as the Russian language does not have the letter "H")"

The Russian language does not have the letter "H"?!? It certaily does have the letter (and the sound) "H", and it's written as "X", in the Russian alphabet. OK, maybe the name "Halley" is "Gallei" in Russian, but not because of the lack of the letter "H".

Any Russian speakers can clear this up, please? :)

It's not quite the same H sound. In any case, Russian commonly changes H's in foreign words to G's: Hitler → "Gitler", etc. Perhaps we could just say Gallei is Russian for Halley and leave it at that. -- Curps 15:06, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
English "H" sound doesn't exist in Russian. The "X" Cyrillic letter is commonly transliterated back as "kh". It's a much more closed sound, pronounced further towards your mouth, as opposed to the English "h". See also Kha for further info in more correct phonetic terms. BACbKA 20:28, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

It seems more likely that the name Vega was in fact chosen to commemorate the Vega Expedition of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. -- Petri Krohn 21:04, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] the vega stamps

I remember the colorful Soviet stamps commemorating the Vega mission --- does any collector have them around for a scan? BACbKA 20:28, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] CNES role

Wasn't the French space agency involved one way or another in this mission ? Provider of the balloons ? 137.82.201.190 17:18, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Vega 1 and Vega 2 into this page?

This is one of three pages that are for the most part redundant, the others being Vega 1 and Vega 2. The three pages should be merged into one page; I'm guessing the resulting single page would be about half the size of the three current pages. --Dan Griscom (talk) 03:33, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose - it is common practice to have seperate articles for individual missions, I can't see much of a reason to change this now. --GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 21:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

That something is "common practice" does not mean that there are no circumstances that justify other approaches; nor does using another approach in a special circumstance force "common practice" to change. The two Vega space missions were unusually similar, in construction, mission and results. If you look at the two individual Vega pages you'll see that they consist of mostly identical information (excepting for various dates, times, distances, etc.). The Vega program page repeats much of the information a third time. My main objection is that this is extremely unwieldy; any information bought to Wikipedia about the spacecraft has to be added to three separate pages, which are slowly drifting apart in content and construction. Merging them would reduce the effort needed to improve the information, as well as improve the clarity for readers. --Dan Griscom (talk) 02:26, 5 February 2008 (UTC)