Talk:Mars ascent vehicle

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Mars ascent vehicle

Mars descent vehicle

Seems to me pretty SOP; the def specifies a spacecraft but I'd say that it's really just because there's no other reasonable way to interpret a vehicle that is ascending or descending on Mars. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. There are also e.g. lunar ascent vehicles. Equinox ◑ 09:20, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

and 'Ascent-Descent Vehicles'. These do not seem to be true proper nouns, notwithstanding their appearance capitalized. Each author on the subject seems to capitalize his usage to make it clear that he is using the term in a more limited way in a single document or sequence of documents.

Delete these. Any similar entries similarly warrant RfDs. DCDuring TALK 16:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Delete. - -sche (discuss) 17:42, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

If it is SOP, then it means a vehicle that descends Mars, a vehicle that goes down Mars. If Mars is a mountain, that makes sense. If Mars refers to the planet, then it does not make any sense to me. One cannot descend the planet Mars. —Stephen ^(Talk) 21:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Why must it mean that? There's no reason it has to be parsed that way. (And yes, there are nearly always multiple parsings, but usually most of them can be trivially eliminated: remember our example of an entry not to keep, "brown leaf", could in theory refer to a browned old page of a book.) Equinox ◑ 21:13, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

If it is SOP, I should be able to deduce the meaning from the parts. Since I do not know the meaning and have not read the entry, all I am able to get from the term is "a vehicle that descends Mars", "a vehicle that goes down Mars." If there is another word that is needed to clarify the meaning, such as a preposition or adverb, I cannot guess it because I don’t know the meaning. I would have to read the entry before I would be able to understand the term. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:15, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

If you know what Mars is, you should know that you descend onto it. --WikiTiki89 22:44, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

@Stephen G. Brown: Most phrases have multiple possible constructions. The one chosen is based on the constituent terms and the context of use. It so happens that Mars mostly comes up in the context of trying to get there, including get onto its surface. To require a definition of a phrase (or clause) because a particular construction is more common than some other conceivable constructions is far beyond what we can achieve, far beyond what users should expect from a dictionary, and beyond what most users do expect from a dictionary. OTOH, I am perfectly willing to follow the lemmings on lunar module, which was virtually a proper noun and for which the meaning of the term module is and was highly ambiguous, except to NASA. DCDuring TALK 23:15, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I know what Mars is, but I do not get "descend onto" out of Mars descent vehicle. I don’t know what "descend onto Mars" even means. Is it a vehicle that descends from Earth to Mars (Earth is up and Mars is down)? I think that is the weirdest term and the oddest use of descend that I have ever encountered. In any case, I would never have figured out the meaning of Mars descent vehicle from its three words. What you guys are telling me makes it sound very much stranger. I’m on the verge of looking at the entry to find out what it really means. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:48, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• Keep, basically per Stephen. The terms are not very obvious, it seems to me. My first thought was that they referred to some sort of surface rover vehicle; my only doubt was why would there be two kinds, one for ascent and one for descent. We can serve readers better by including the terms; the currently entered definitions serve to clarify the meaning. As is usual in these RFD nominations, the terms are real and the definitions accurate; the only complaint is that someone considers the entries to be redundant. As for lunar: lunar ascent vehicle, Mars ascent vehicle, ascent vehicle at Google Ngram Viewer; google books:"lunar ascent vehicle". As an alternative to keeping, we might redirect this to ascent vehicle, a term that is often used in sentences alone without "Mars", as per Mars ascent vehicle, ascent vehicle at Google Ngram Viewer and google books:"ascent vehicle". --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:55, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
• I'm a bit bemused by some of the discussion above. Personally I do not see any difficulty in realising that "Mars descent vehicle" means a vehicle that descends onto the surface of Mars. For me it seems like a routinely constructed English phrase. I don't see anything unusual or idiomatic about it. 109.153.225.97 13:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

  If you listen to Stephen long enough, you would learn that that is because you are a native speaker, insensitive to the subtleties that are apparent only those who have cultivated a kind of willful ignorance of the context in which such terms are used. IMO, such terms are intelligible to English speakers who come across a term in a document or utterance for which they are in the intended audience. I think this is even true, for the most part, even for those who have achieved a fairly rudimentary understanding of English. In any event it takes only a modest amount of reading exposure to such multi-word expressions to get the hang of the constructions that are possible. DCDuring TALK 17:33, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

• Delete, but instead create ascent vehicle and descent vehicle. As Equinox noted, there are similar vehicles for the Moon; there's no need for a Mars-specific definition. Purplebackpack89 15:20, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Deleted. I have created ascent vehicle and descent vehicle. bd2412 T 14:34, 17 June 2015 (UTC)