Talk:Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Article Severely Edited

The plot synopsis on Have Space Suit—Will Travel was both incomplete and inaccurate, using incorrect names for characters, not naming several characters, and not giving a complete summary of the books' events. I did my best to summarize the book properly as this is one of my favorite Heinlein novels.

--Parcequilfaut 20:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad you did, too many of Heinlein's novel summaries are like stubs. I have made a few minor changes.--Wehwalt 20:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I was doing it blind from memory, I just moved and my copy was in a box. I'll take a look at the others since right now I have nothin' but free time :) --Parcequilfaut 21:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Things like plot summaries and synopses are rather childish and quite likely violations of copyrights. What the Wikipedia needs is a genuine book review article, or nothing at all.74.249.79.103 (talk) 05:40, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Scuba and all that

I have twice eliminated what I think is original research relating to alleged technical errors by Heinlein. This is original research on the editor's part. And even so, it may be wrong, as, for example, the editor talks about what is "usual for a spacesuit". Maybe it is usual for today's spacesuits, but how is it usual for the spacesuit in the story? And how is this anything other than OR?

And the trivia must either be incorporated or eliminated.--Wehwalt 22:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I restored the trivia section: many pages have trivia sections.

OK OK OK, I agree about the errors section: is this short summary OK? As regards "original research", (as with patent law) surely some exception can be made in cases of "obviousness"?

Anthony Appleyard 07:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

What I did was integrate one of the items you left into the plot summary. Maybe you could have a comment, with respect to the other errors you previously cited like "Oscar, unlike present-day space suits, presumably does not . . . " at some appropriate point in the summary. As for the trivia, we are trying to get rid of those sections, but it looked like good and useful content, so I just integrated it into the article! Did a little editing too, hope you don't mind.--Wehwalt 19:05, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

A comparison to "all real spacesuits" as an 'error', or a lapse on the part of the Author in a book published 2 years prior to any manned spaceflight, is not a valid criticism of the work. It's akin to claiming that Mark Twain made an error when he estimated how long it would take Huck Finn to travel down the Mississippi river, since he 'apparently had no knowledge of gasoline motors', decades before they were in common use or available to the public. Kpulliam (talk) 03:46, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Themes

While I'm not sure I'd call this a theme, I've read that "Have Spacesuit..." in the beginning is an explicit manual on how to get a pre-college education that will get you into Caltech or MIT (which it is indeed, at least from memory when I last read it). I'm pretty sure there's something citable out there about this, and it would profitably improve the last paragraph of this section. Hga 03:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:57, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

tribute to Isaac Asimov's biochemistry text

Asimov was third author of a biochemistry text. On the first page of chapter 2 of Have Spacesuit-Will Travel, Mr. Charton loans the hero, Kip, Walker, Boyd and Asimov. This should be taken as praise for Asimov since the story is set in the future from 1958, indicating the textbook was still in use. It would be good to mention that either in Asimov's bio or in this article.--Rich Peterson 99.128.61.101 (talk) 22:05, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Original research--(also see above for similar discussion in 2007)

I'm collecting scattered remarks from edit descriptions, a note on a user talk page, and a user noticeboard so that we can discuss this in one place:

• From article history:

19 April 2010 Sbharris "Practive is to leave "OR" looking stuff in non-BLP articles, so long as it doesn't look obviously wrong. If may be OR or not. Eventually, cites are found. Most of WP is uncited. Patience." 19 April 2010 Richard L. Peterson "rm possibly valuable and/but far from obvious information--original research.also rm OR tag"

• From sbharris talk page:

"Have Spacesuit, Will Travel; errors section;original research It's been a couple years already, how much faster do you think patience will work in the future? It seems likely to me that if citations are eventually found, it will because a fire was lit under the original researcher by deleting her or his contribution. But in fact, I'm dubious that any nonprimary sources can be found that point out the stated errors in Heinlein's book, whether or not they are errors. Best wishes, Rich" 20 April 2010

• On OR noticeboard:

"What should be done? Thanks" [Rich] 5 May 2010

Apparently it's been done. It looks good; that was one of my favourite books when I was a kid, and it holds up for adults looking for an entertaining quick read. The material in question added nothing substantial to the article, IMO. I catch little errors all the time in fiction and movies, and it's really beside the point. Shakespeare made some whoppers and somehow his work is still considered good enough. Tom Reedy 6 May 2010

Give the length of time the material had been in the article unsourced, I think it was reasonable to remove it as OR. Jayjg 7 May 2010

Thanks, both of you.Rich 12 May 2010

• From edit history again:

  22 May 2010 [by Rich, not logged in] "changed tag to unsourced section"

  22 May 2010 [by Rich]"unsourced section"

  22 May 2010 [by Rich] "rm "error"-16yr old boy who had not worked in tech industry might not choose current preferred word cannibalize over vandalize--let's let heinlein write his own book please"

  20 May 2010 Beyond My Ken "Undid revision 362743338 by Varlaam"

  18 May 2010 Anthony Appleyard "→Technical errors: punc"

  18 May 2010 Anthony Appleyard "Restore deletion. For this matter,, the reference is the book that this article is about. Or discuss."

  18 May 2010 Varlaam "italic title"

  4 May 2010 Orangemike "→Technical errors: removed original research which had gone unsourced for about three years now"

  4 May 2010 Orangemike "→Editions: removed one peacock term and one pejorative"

  24.7.28.186 (talk) 22:25, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

• It seems possible that the knowledge about spacesuits and rebreathers was proprietory information at the time Heinlein wrote the book. But even if it wasn't proprietory, I say the errors must be referenced as having been pointed out as erroneous in a reliable third party source that discusses the book Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, if the errors section is to be retained. At the very least, the information should verified and cited from third party sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.28.186 (talk) 22:36, 24 May 2010 (UTC) Rich (talk) 22:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
• The "criticisms" removed were unsourced, and akin to criticizing Heinlein's version of Venus based on what we now know about Venus. Unless you can find some reliable sources in contemporary works (fanzines or whatever), criticizing the book based on state-of-the-art knowledge of its era, I feel this stuff had no place there. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:18, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
• I think you're right.Rich (talk) 20:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
• The material is quite obvious unsourced original research, and has been unsourced for 3 years. It contravenes policy and doesn't belong in the article. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:31, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
• *COMMENT: Well, neither does most of the material in Wikipedia. But I wish the both of you jealous editors had taken your zeal for well-sourced facts, out on a WP article like (say) fisting (where the references seem to be self-made hand photos and material from www.fistingacademy.com). Rather than attacking the harmless lack of citations for rather simple and obvious science errors made in a juvenile SF book from the 1950's. Don't ya'll have something better to do with your time?

  Jimbo Wales' (uncited, unsourced, and personally researched) assertion that any obviously-true fact should be easy to find a printed stated source for, is actually wrong. Moreover, if you actually rigourously applied that criterion to all of WP, there wouldn't be but a small fraction of it left. Even most of it what LOOKS cited, actually is not (if you take a close look at the citation, and you also discard the web-only cites). And some of the rest actually requires the reader to think and independently know something, which is technically illegal. But you go ahead and play your games. You win this one. Gosh, you noticed an article on an old favorite book of mine. What a shame. SBHarris 02:30, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

  • For example, that 1 + 1 = 2 is elementarily obvious, but where is a reference proving it? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:21, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
• I am genuinely sad if you have a low opinion of me! I did think most of the stuff in the section could be valuable, and I'm sorry that it won't be included. Maybe your point of view is correct, I'll think about it. But, 1)I did leave a note on your page about "lighting a fire" under the contributor to find sources, and when you made no reply I posted a note on the OR noticeboard.2)Regardless of the rules here, the actual facts in the deleted section might be wrong in the sense that even if rebreathers and other technical knowledge were as advanced in 1950s as claimed, it might have been knowledge proprietory to the manufacturers and not available to Heinlein, which I say should let him off. 3)The error about "vandalizing" vs "cannibalizing" seemed unreasonable, which gave me a bit of doubt about the other claimed errors.4)It's a great book, still a favorite of mine.Best wishes, 24.7.28.186 (talk) 10:29, 28 May 2010 (UTC)Rich (talk) 10:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
• The rebreather material of course was known, since rebreathers for scuba long PRE-date this book (they were used extensively in WW II) and thus the sort of open-circuit stuff that plagues Heinlein's spacesuit is not the old technology, but actually the newer one. No real-life self-contained spacesuit has ever been other than a rebreather. Okay, the argument is that Heinlein ignores CO2 scrubbing since he needs the gas for cooling anyway. The problem with THAT is twofold: in cooling Heinlein completely ignores radiative heat transfer, which was well-known in his time, and used in many engineering applications (though not the high altitude suits H. himself worked on, for obvious reasons). The upshot is that spacesuits are hard to heat in the shade and indeed sometimes hard to cool in sunlight, but the answer for the last is a water evap system (like sweating). You can run the calculations, but gas-cooling is horribly inefficient and simply wouldn't have worked for more than half an hour in full sunlight on the moon. Not only is most of what Kip thought he knew about spacesuits wrong, but most of what Heinlein thought he knew about spacesuits is ALSO wrong. (The helium-bends thing has also been pointed out). It's not fair to ding H. for not totally foreseeing all modern solutions, but it's more tempting since Kip (and by extension the author) is so smug about it. However, I only suggest a table of how H.s suit worked, and why, vs. how modern suits really work, and why. No actual critique of Heinlein as such is needed, but there needs to be something original in presenting information in this fashion, since nobody I know has ever done it. However, that's the nature of encyclopedias. Every long article on WP presents information in a novel fashion, very selectively. To do otherwise would be plagarism. So you see the problem. SBHarris 21:29, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
• It is inevitable that many things in SF do not turn out as the author writes. We do not have spaceships with binary switches and lights a la Starman Jones and log tables became obsolete with the calculator, there are no dragons on Venus, nor canals on Mars. Why is it necessary to list these mistakes, some of which were forseeable at the time, and some were not? I don't think it is very encyclopedic, especially when it is (as it is in my view) OR unless you have RS which explain why Heinlein's space suits are no good. Not to mention all the errors made with Pluto ...--Wehwalt (talk) 21:48, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
• We disagree. I think it's perfectly "fair" to point out where authors err using the knowledge available in their own time, for example when Jules Verne shoots his people out of a cannon without turning them into strawberry jam. Or course an author can't foresee what as yet unexplored planets will look like or even the future development of small computers. An author can use what's known in his time to figure out that no flashlight of any reasonable efficiency can produce enough photosynthetic oxygen to keep two teenagers alive (a calculation that H. bragged he'd actually done to his editor, for Red Planet). And an engineer, which Heinlein was, should have known about radiative heat transfer and the Stefan-Boltzmann law, which is very, very, very basic. Very. And the same goes for known physiology. It was well-known in 1959 that helium produced bends just about as badly as nitrogen. And (oh, yeah) humans can get a mildly sore throat from breathing zero-humidiy air, but only if they breathe it with their noses closed! Otherwise, humans are built better that. SBHarris 22:15, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
• I can't make myself care very much. Neither could Heinlein, apparently, as he never went back and corrected his errors. --Wehwalt (talk) 04:32, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
• I have restored the section Have Space Suit—Will Travel#Technical errors. The info in it about the effect of various gases and pressures, is well documented in the scuba diving pages. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
  • That table contains links to the relevant scuba diving pages. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:12, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
• Customary to document on the article page, not in some distant article.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
• This material adds nothing that an encyclopaedia reader would expect to find. Every book ever printed contains errors of fact and errors of language, but unless they interfere with the reading experience they are considered too trivial to point out. Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise contains many errors, including his use of homophones instead of the right word (Fitzgerald was a phonetic speller), yet for some reason every edition since 1920 has repeated them, nor are those errors pointed out in the Wikipedia article about the book.
• The big question here is whether this is original research. If there is a reliable source that points this out about this particular book, then it can stay if that is the editorial consensus. If there is no RS, then it needs to be deleted no matter how accurate it is. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• I agree with Tom, frankly. This can't be based on an editor's personal knowledge of SCUBA. Some RS has to connect the dots, assuming they are connectible.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:46, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• Surely the rule against WP:OR stops short of obviousness? This is not one "editor's personal knowledge of SCUBA", but general provable knowledge about scuba. It is quite obvious that the author knew bits about scuba diving and got it wrong. As one Wikipedia editor complained: "Do I need a reference to prove that the sky is blue?". Technical errors are a common major feature of science-fiction; we again seem to have matter which is "one man's cruft and another man's important relevant matter". (And it would be appreciated if this text was left standing, so discussers can see it, until this discussion has come to a verdict.) Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:42, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Part 2

• I would say it is far from obvious for 99 out of 100 readers and editors. The fact that you have to explain it means it isn't obvious. Again, speaking as a longtime editor here, this kinda thing really needs a third party to have commented on it. I am very sure your knowledge of SCUBA is correct, but it's OR. Would you like to request comment, or a third opinion? Or I can if you like. Not doubting your good faith for an instant, of course.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:45, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• OK, let's all vote then. I vote to remove it. It adds nothing to the article but an air of pedantic nit-pickery that is not customarily included in book articles. As I stated, every book ever written has these types of errors, and there's a good reason why they're not listed in encyclopaedia articles. Think of all the megabytes that would be wasted on the James Bond novels articles if such were the case. And yes, if you were authoring an article on the colour of the sky, you would need a WP:RS. That's not my personal predilection; that's one of the three main Wikipedia policies. Tom Reedy (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
• Wikipedia is not a democracy, but I would favor removal as well.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:54, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

It is not a democracy in the sense that no amount of editors can agree to violate Wikipedia policy, but voting is a useful tool to determine the overall support of a particular edit. The thought has crossed my mind that some of the participants might not be familiar with WP:OR, which states, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources."[1] This is the policy that this addition violates, and "is one of three core content policies, along with Neutral point of view and Verifiability, that jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles.[2] So really a vote is beside the point in this case.

Of course, if an acceptable WP:RS exists for the edit, then it may be included, but that is certainly not mandatory. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:32, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

• It is not much WP:OR to look at a properly-sourced scuba diving manual and apply it to any particular real or theoretical dive - including an oxygen rebreather "dive" at 200 millibars pressure, which is what a space-walk is. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 18:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you are WP:Not listening. Wikipedia policy disagrees with you. You are doing exactly what WP:OR says should not be done, and as such is a violation of fundamental policy. And the degree of violation is immaterial.

And please stop reformatting the discussion. It makes it difficult to determine who is posting and how long the posts are. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:55, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

So to summarise the discussion:

• This edit has been the object of contention since February 2007, more than three years.
• During that period of time, no reliable sources have been cited, despite being requested.
• As far as can be ascertained, there are no reliable sources to cite for its inclusion in the article, so the addition violates Wikipedia policy forbidding unsourced original research.
• The question was raised at the OR noticeboard, with the responding editors agreeing that it was OR.
• Consequently, the addition should be removed from the article.

Is that about it? Any other relevant comments? Tom Reedy (talk) 13:02, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, since no responses were posted after a day, I went ahead and restored the consensus (by default) version. Some information in the "Themes" section could use some refs also. I'd advise Anthony Appleyard to organise his material into an article and submit it to a science-fiction journal or an SF criticism Website such as The SF Site or the newsletter of the Heinlein Society. Its publication would render it as usable material, but I do think the presentation in the article was a bit too lengthy compared to the rest of the article. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:36, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

• • Okay, but I'm wondering if the "material" is even true in the sense that Heinlein could have reasonably known about the material, as I said above. Someone has mentioned that you can get it or some of it from any scuba manual. Even a scuba manual published in 1955?? Can someone find such a manual from 1955 that has it? And, even if it was in there, it doesn't seem to me Heinlein could have foreseen that scuba equipment would be helpful in the vacuum and bright sunlight of the Moon, since scuba divers are under pressure and are cooled by the water. It's recently been established that the material is not appropriate because we don't have reliable third party sources; and I am now going further and questioning the truth of the material.--Rich Peterson24.7.28.186 (talk) 04:56, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, I don't see how a water evaporation system would be in a SCUBA manual. Was the technology actually extant in the 1950s? Much more likely it was invented for either the moon suits or some earlier version used for spacewalks. If it did not exist when the book was written, there is really nothing to discuss--Wehwalt (talk) 13:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong--maybe Heinlein was required or decided to dumb down the information for national security reasons--to keep the soviet Union from knowing whether The U.S. had a clue about spacesuit design or even how various gases affected human beings. Heinlein was ppretty smart. It's hard for me to think he made an obvious error when he worked on pressure suits-so either the material wasn't obvious or it was obvious and he played dumb.Rich (talk) 11:06, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I doubt it ... I don't think he would have stood for that, given his comments about classifying stuff near the end of the book (the conversation involving the Secretary General). Additionally, I've never heard that national security intervened at SF mags' editors offices, and given the libertarian inclination of SF writers, I think we'd have heard of it. I feel confident that Heinlein, in his later years, an icon and fearing nothing, would have spilled all.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

This is the disputed text

==Technical errors==

• On page 27, Heinlein makes several errors about the effects of various breathing gases in a spacesuit, including listing some hazards caused by pressures experienced in scuba diving but not by spacemen:

... oxygen ... Mix an inert gas with it, because pure oxygen can cause a sore throat	This hazard does not happen at 200 millibars partial pressure, which is the typical oxygen pressure in a spacesuit
or make you drunk	This effect is actually caused at over 4 or 5 atmospheres depth pressure by nitrogen narcosis
or even cause terrible cramps.	This is oxygen toxicity and happens at over 1 atmosphere partial pressure of oxygen.
Use helium, which doesn't. ...	Helium causes bends, worse than nitrogen, but it does not cause narcosis.

Kip's statement "Don't use nitrogen (which you've breathed all your life) because it will bubble in your blood if pressure drops and cripple you with bends." is strictly true; if mixing gases other than oxygen are used, the spaceman will need gradual slow decompression when changing from air to the 200-250 millibars partial pressure of oxygen in the suit. However, as noted, this problem is not helped by use of helium over any other inert gas. Helium is in fact not used in modern spacesuits, as it would serve no purpose.

This work was written before manned space flight, though rebreathers had been in use a long time (for diving and in unbreathable atmospheres on land) when this book was written. Yet Heinlein disregards the importance of rebreathers in spacesuits and similar systems. The reason for having an "open circuit" in Heinlein's suit is that Heinlein recognizes the need to rid the suit of metabolic heat in some situations. Thus, in the book, most of the oxygen or heliox is used/wasted in cooling the suit, instead of using only enough of it for metabolic reasons. Using rebreather technology with a more efficient system for cooling (such as the water-evaporator system used in modern spacesuits exposed to full sunlight), is never considered by Heinlein.

Microwave horn

Regarding image caption.

Sbharris wrote in their edit summary: "Book refers specifically to a microwave horn antenna. The artist didn't draw one. Perhaps it's OR that artist drew an animal horn, but not OR that he didn't draw a microwave horn. Is it OR that he didn't draw a campaign hat or Easter bonnet".

I don't think it is a good idea to attract attention to SciFi blunders at the very top of the article. Moreover, I wrote in edit summary: "This is scifi, man; how do you tell the "real" fictional antenna?)" As we may know the meanings of the terms may change. Who knows, may be in the (fictional) future the term "microwave horn" will mean something else. Further, it is possible that the picture is not artist's impression of mw horn; may be the author told him to draw thusly. Still further, may be there is a "real" microwave horn in the back and not seen in the image. This way or other, the caption is an opinion about what they see in the image. Lothar Klaic (talk) 21:18, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I've taken it out, as it's a minor detail anyway. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

This whole article is composed of "minor details". Or didn't you notice.

Maybe so, but they don't get such a prominent place. I hadn't noticed before, but if you look at all of Heinlein's juvenile articles, every single infobox caption says the same thing: either "First edition cover" or "First edition cover of ...", nothing more. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:45, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

As for what things it "could be" there could be coonskin cap we don't see in the image, too. Yes, we have to assume Heinlein knew what microwave horns that squirt microwaves "like a gun" must look like, ala the laws of physics. But you never know-- Heinlein might not have. But then, why does THIS cover have a more physically correct microwave horn [3]. A smarter artist? And while we're being skeptical, who says that that is Kip Russell in the image, anyway? Do you see a nameplate? It could be one of the two human bad guys, and that's how he has the wrong antenna. Good thing we don't identify him. SBHarris 22:09, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Deus Ex Machina?

I've been listening to the audiobook of this series, and for the life of me, I can't see a deus ex machina in there. The Mother Thing's affiliation is explicitly stated long before her people show up, and the Vegans don't directly interact with the wormfaces at all; having them show up in response to the beacon that was the purpose of Kit's going outside in the first place doesn't seem to fit the bill of deus ex machina to me, either.157.139.9.155 (talk) 15:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The Godlike cyborg "judge" of the interstellar tribunal which takes care of the wormfaces, give humanity the tools it needs to avoid nuclear war, restores Kip and Peewee to home, and generally dusts up and cleans up and even makes sure Kip has a scholarship (indirectly, since it gives him something valuable enough to trade for it) is the Deux Ex Machina. Compare with the "overgod" character Mr. Koshchei (nod to James Branch Cabell) at the end of Job: A Comedy of Justice. SBHarris 06:17, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting; I viewed the "judge" as more of an antagonist, given how much grief it gives Kip and Peewee (and how close it comes to killing off all of humanity). Fair enough, I suppose. 157.139.9.155 (talk) 21:13, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The near-danger is a ploy. The ancient Martian "god-ancestor" nearly kicks humanity off Mars in Red Planet (a similar wrap-up ending), but ends up not doing it. But this being and the Martians do take care of the badguys and fix the main dramatic tension that drives the rest of the book. Somewhat the same thing. Heinlein had more than one story where the primitives worship a "god" which actually has some godlike powers and is formidable when "awakened." It's rather the sort of "elder-god" mythos (The Sons of the Bird) that Heinlein inherits from Cabal and, of course, Lovecraft. Compare the wormfaces to the Migo in The Whisperer in Darkness. For that matter, compare the Venusian "primitive" culture (with a high tech background) in Between Planets vs. the Venusians in In the Walls of Eryx. SBHarris 21:26, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Plot Summary Too Long

Someone who knows the book better than me might read this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_write_a_plot_summary, and then shorten it. Otherwise, there is currently a lot of good info here.Tlqk56 (talk) 02:03, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not extraordinarily long (779 words), but I'll take a whack at it. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:24, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Today only! 10% off (700 681 words). Clarityfiend (talk) 03:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

removing the 'Themes' section - unsourced for 2 years now

This looks like nothing more than Original Research. Find sourced material for the themes of this novel, and cite it properly, please. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:46, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

the Legacy section

I've known about amateur satellites since 1971, and must have read the book before that, but I've never seen any indication that Project Oscar derives from the name of the spacesuit in the book. I've certainly read back issues of the ham magazines from the early days of amateur satellites, and did read the column that got the idea going. But no mention of Heinlein's book. The first amateur satellite went up in December of 1961, the book only came out in 1958, and it took some time for the project to build the satellite and then get launch space. I doubt there was enough time to influence the project, and since the book was a juvenile, I doubt it was on the reading list of a bunch of older hams who had the ability to arrange launch space.

That said, I don't remember reading anything about how the name was chosen.

Given that, it's an even bigger reach to mention the SuitSat. Mblack59 (talk) 05:29, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Astro Turf

In 2005 a book came out that discusses Have Space Suit—Will Travel. Unfortunately, most of it is on page 196, which is not visible in Preview Mode on Google Books, although some of it spills over onto page 197 here: Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science by M. G. Lord

From a review: "During the late 1960s, while M. G. Lord was becoming a teenager in Southern California and her mother was dying of cancer, Lord's father-an archetypal, remote, rocket engineer- disappeared into his work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, building the space probes of the Mariner Mars 69 mission." Zyxwv99 (talk) 21:07, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Real World Locations

The notion that the Wright Field and Centerville locations discussed in the novel are in Ohio is not original. This was being discussed among readers of Robert Heinlein when I worked at Wright Field over 30 years ago. The fit for Ohio was so close that I believe most people familiar with the area accepted that these locations were in Ohio the same way that folks accept that Paris is the capitol of France. So, I was somewhat surprised to see the suggestion of the Ohio connection to these locations challenged, I as believed this to be widely accepted. While it is accurate to say that Heinlein did not state in the novel that Wright Field and Centerville were in Ohio (although he does mention Akron), there is sufficent evidence to conclude that these were the most likely locations. BackAlleyBoy (talk) 22:36, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:41, 31 October 2017 (UTC)