Let's get critical: Oct 2014 Site Self-Evaluation

Question

We all love Space Exploration Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.

The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.

Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Answer 1

Final Results

• Needed height from the release of a space elevator to get a stable elliptical orbit?

Net Score: 14 (Excellent: 14, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• What conventional reference frame is used for interplanetary telemetry and navigation?

Net Score: 13 (Excellent: 13, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Were decommissioned Cold War missiles repurposed for peaceful spaceflight?

Net Score: 12 (Excellent: 13, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• Can a launch-provider determine from the flight-profile whether the payload will be in the wrong orbit?

Net Score: 11 (Excellent: 11, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Why the non-symmetric design of rocket nozzles?

Net Score: 9 (Excellent: 9, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Why doesn't ISS pass over the polar regions?

Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 11, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 3)

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• Why do Estes model rockets recommend a smaller engine (B class) for first launches, but support bigger engines later?

Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• Will kicked-up "dust" be a problem for Rosetta and lander Philae?

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 12, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• Stability of Lissajous orbits around Sun-Venus L1

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 3)

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• Has anyone had sex in space?

Net Score: -8 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 8)

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Answer 2

It strikes me as unnecessarily difficult to figure out how to format equations to display properly. Given the frequency of inclusion of mathematical statements on the site, can a page be set up specifically for that? Or a section in the help tools menu bar?

Answer 3

Regarding the question Can a launch-provider determine from the flight-profile whether the payload will be in the wrong orbit?, my answer has two issues:

• It's not quite up to date.
• It has links to arianespace.com that are as of now broken. In fact, arianespace.com appears to be quite dead. Or maybe hacked. At the moment of posting this answer, when I google search Arianespace, I get a link to https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/190597?p=ws_hacked&rd=1.

The second issue is problematic. I could change the links to wayback machine links, but what if the internet archive is hacked?

The first issue? I should update my answer to point the blame at frozen hydrazine fuel lines.

Update: Done. I updated the answer without pointing too much blame at Russia. Just the facts, Ma'am. Somehow the schematics were reinterpreted to mean that the very best thing to do was to route a very low temperature helium line right next to a hydrazine line. Makes sense!

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Regarding the one question that everyone rated extremely low, Houston, we have a problem at this site. That question is the tip of the iceberg with regard to questions of extremely low quality.