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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Spacecraft category.
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Spaceship/Spacecraft[]

There was an previous attempt at this before using some obscure naming suggestion, but upon some further investigating, see bottom of talk:starship, I think I found a plausable means of solving the controversy of describing and categorizing pre-warp, sub-warp, non-warp vessels as "starships", but creating a "spacecraft" category.

Here is my logic, put in modern day context, without really deviating from canon:

  • A starship is "a spacecraft designed for interstellar travel." In Trek, the most practical means of traversing interstellar distances is via a warp-driven vehicle. Whereas...
  • A spaceship /spacecraft /space shuttle is "a vehicle used for space travel"/"operate outside of earth's atmosphere"/"transport people and cargo between earth and space."

So with the term, and subsequent category suggestion, "spaceship", we have a vessel capable of space travel, just as a pre-warp, sub-warp, non-warp vessel is capable of, but there are no apparent limitations on distance it can travel in space, thus back to my original "starship"/warp-drive correlation.

If were were to establish Category:Spaceships, which comes across a little 1930s hokey, or Category:Spacecraft as the primary category, we therefore fulfill our obligation to both warp and non-warp driven vehicles, at which point Category:Starships, Category:Shuttles, and subsequent categories for other specific "craft" such as probes, satellites etc would be subcategorized into their more specific subcategories without deviating from obscure or convoluted category names. Did I miss anything? --Alan 00:35, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Support Category:Spacecraft : So we can correctly supercategorize probes and shuttles underneath, which some might not consider "ships" per se.--Tim Thomason 00:42, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Another valid point. --Alan
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