Philae has landed

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30026398

by talltofu • 12 years ago

1165 296 12 years ago

Live coverage here http://news.yahoo.com/video/abc-news-plus-special-report-220000361.html

Thanks @brianpgordon - Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination: https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif

Live twitter feed of ESA https://twitter.com/esaoperations

It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding

neiled• 12 years ago

Seeing their faces on the live feed when it landed was amazing. It must be so exciting.

GotAnyMegadeth• 12 years ago

It is so exciting, even from watching the live stream!

talltofu2• 12 years ago

Live streaming of the event here http://news.yahoo.com/video/abc-news-plus-special-report-220...

Thanks @brianpgordon - Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination: https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif

Live twitter feed of ESA https://twitter.com/esaoperations

It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding

harywilke2• 12 years ago

or straight from the ESA http://rosetta.esa.int/?landing

ffk2• 12 years ago

The NASA TV iPad app works too.

sp3322• 12 years ago

Or the xkcd version https://xkcd.com/1446/ (see older frames at http://xkcd1446.org/, the first few are blank so start around #16)

JonnieCache• 12 years ago

The official one was struggling hard when I tried. The BBC is putting out the same stream, with english translations when appropriate: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-29985988

stinos• 12 years ago

any link to footage of the actual landing?

talltofu2• 12 years ago

Not yet

Gravityloss• 12 years ago

"where were you when Philae landed?"

ommunist6• 12 years ago

Actually watching the live Rosetta event from Darmstadt. And I am about to drink for the success of this mission right now. Still can't believe it happened. SO much work, 10 years of work. This is how international large scale co-operation should be.

jedp2• 12 years ago

Or even, Where were you 40 minutes before we heard that Philae had landed?

Sven7• 12 years ago

Big congrats to all involved! What an achievement!

anExcitedBeast• 12 years ago

Science is amazing. I'm glad to be living in a period where I get to be around for stuff like this.

k-mcgrady6• 12 years ago

Amazing job! This might be a silly question but are their any ideas as to the actual real world benefits we could see from this? The director-general of the ESA said "This is a big step for human civilisation" so I presume there is some idea of what they expect to gain from this mission?

Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.

the_rosentotter2• 12 years ago

Probably 'just' the achievement of catching a speeding comet and landing on it. The comet itself doesn't seem all that interesting.

flexie• 12 years ago

Comets are thought to be remains of the frozen cloud of gas/dust that our solar system was created from. So the hope is we can learn about the creation of our solar system.

On top of that it's the biggest acchievement of the European Space Agency.

And landing on a 4 km small rock 500,000,000 km from Earth after 12 years of travelling is in itself remarkable.

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

Ice from Jupiter-class comet supposed to be what seeded Earth with water billions of years ago. Want to see what chemicals are there etc.

k-mcgrady6• 12 years ago

I get that part but what tangible benefits will I/humanity see from it? Or is it more of a case of gaining more knowledge about how the Universe works in the hope that that knowledge combined with other knowledge may lead to something eventually?

avz2• 12 years ago

Improved understanding of our solar system, its history and our place in the universe is a real benefit that soon will be available for anyone. Comets are generally very old, so can enable us to learn a lot about solar system's history.

Achieving engineering capabilities required to land on comets is a step forward for human civilization.

I consider the above to be actual real world benefits. If they are not, I'm not sure where the boundary of the real world is and where the imaginary world begins.

k-mcgrady6• 12 years ago

Thanks. I would definitely consider the second point a real world benefit but if we are going to spend over $1bn to learn about the solar system's history I take it we are hoping to discover something that actually has benefits to humanity (e.g. when the money could have had more immediate impacts treating disease or helping the poor etc.). Don't get me wrong I'm all for these kinds of missions I just thought that to get that kind of funding the scientists would have had to put forward a list of possible things they might learn which could benefit humanity in the short term to help justify the cost. I'm basically looking for the idiots list of why we should spend so much money on this.

Edit: Several downvotes even though I tried to make it clear I'm FOR this kind of spending. My problem is basically how do you explain to someone on the street why spending $1bn on a mission to a comet is worth it when we don't know what benefits it will bring.

NickPollard• 12 years ago

It's mostly about understanding our solar system and how it formed - comets supposedly contain a lot of early material and could be key to understanding the formation of various parts of the system.

Some believe that water or other materials from comets were fundamental in the origination of life here on Earth.

It also gives us more understanding on the material composition of the rest of space - which might be of more practical use once we start mining space, for example.

hobofan• 12 years ago

I am sure that companies like Planetary Recources (and anyone who wants to make refueling in space possible) will greatly benefit from the discoveries made during this mission.

fit2rule3• 12 years ago

Real world benefit? In 20 years, we move the production capacity of China to space, and everyone, anywhere on the Earth, has the ability to order a product, remotely assembled on our comet moon, for direct delivery.

sigh A man can dream.

saraid2163• 12 years ago

It would honestly be faster to ship it overseas.

masklinn3• 12 years ago

The lander's mission is:

elemental, isotopic, molecular and mineralogical composition of the cometary material, the characterization of physical properties of the surface and subsurface material, the large-scale structure and the magnetic and plasma environment of the nucleus

Amongst other things, they'll be looking for complex organic molecules.

sktrdie4• 12 years ago

Apart from discovering the unknown and adding to the body of knowledge facts about an object that we currently know nothing about, "comets are thought to have delivered a vast quantity of water to Earth, and they may have also seeded Earth with organic molecules" [1] which means that they might hold important clues to how life started here on Earth. Realistically this could have potential future benefits to things we can't even phantom about today - perhaps such discoveries about the origins of life could lead to fundamental innovations in human health.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)#Search_for...

valarauca12• 12 years ago

The actual real world benefits of Space Flight are strange. For example the Apollo program didn't bring back DeathCrystals from the moon, that allowed us to crush the Soviets in a glorious patriot war (obviously sarcasm).

Instead it gave us seemly random things, that we were looking for, but are beneficial nonetheless and some which may not come out right away.

The Apollo Mission gave us

ASICs, Cordless Tools, CAT scan, Ear Thermometer, Smoke Detector, Shoe insoles, carbon based water filters, satellite television (boardcasted, not passive reflected), Scratch resistant lenses.

These things aren't why we went to the moon. Inventing them kinda just happened to see the program though. Space travel challenges the status quo of technology. Its really REALLY hard. So when ever we (humans) do it, we face new problems, and our solutions sometimes have effects for those on earth.

noir_lord• 12 years ago

Not to mention inspiring generations.

I wouldn't be a programmer with the space program, it inspired a life long love of science and technology.

tripzilch2• 12 years ago

For example the Apollo program didn't bring back DeathCrystals from the moon, that allowed us to crush the Soviets in a glorious patriot war (obviously sarcasm).

Sarcasm aside, this is more due to Geneva Conventions rather than actual lack of Death Crystals on the moon.

brianpgordon• 12 years ago

Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination:

https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif

This probably won't be very impressive in a few hundred years, but for now it's a remarkable engineering achievement.

Cthulhu_8• 12 years ago

Please don't use .gifs for videos, :(

ffk2• 12 years ago

There are several benefits gained, both scientifically and politically.

Scientific:

* Comets may show us early composition of our solar system since they change less than planets. This may help answer questions related to where water came or where DNA/RNA molecules came from.

* Lessons learned here will directly contribute to the success of future missions on both mars and the moon

* Solar cell technology was directly advanced, helping push forward solar energy

Political & Social:

* Brings governments closer together These types of missions require a great amount of cooperation and help stabilize and improve the international political landscape. Around 20 countries cooperated in this mission.

* Inspire more people to enter science, math and engineering

* Increase collaboration of universities and industry, helping close the gap between theoretical and applied science.

[edited to fix formatting]

sophacles• 12 years ago

One thing the other (very good) replies miss: Never underestimate the power of 'gee whiz' technology has on children. This is cool, exciting engineering. Even if the scientific results are "boring", that is to say we don't get any unexpected data, the act of pushing the boundaries of what humans have been able to do is inspirational. There are kids who will learn about this in school the next few days, and see it on the news, and hear grown ups talking about how neat it is, and decide "I want to be an engineer", or "I want to be a scientist". It doesn't take many of them making this decision to have a big, long term impact (which provides a great societal ROI on the mission).

harywilke2• 12 years ago

i watched a docu on the large hadron collider and the search for the higgs boson particle where they asked one of the scientists a similar question. what do you expect to gain monitarily from that xBillion dollars we just spent on this? his reply was 'i don't know'. he went on to give the example of how when radio waves were first discovered nobody called them 'radio waves' because no one had thought to use them in that way yet. I think a lot of exploritory science can be framed this way. we do it to get a better understanding of the world we live in.

corin_2• 12 years ago

Reminds me of a great conversation in The West Wing (one of the best written shows ever made, in my opinion).

A senator (ENLOW) has put an anonymous hold on building a supercollider, the white house deputy communications director (SAM) wants to help his old professor (MILLGATE) get the budget approved for it, and this is near the end of the episode:

  ENLOW
  I'm a Democrat, Sam. How's a 20 billion dollar astronomy lecture gonna help
  the President get elected?
  
  SAM
  It won't. "We've discovered a seamless, intellectual framework for the
  universe" isn't a good 30-second spot.
  
  ENLOW
  If only we could only say what benefit this thing has, but no one's been 
  able to do that.
  
  MILLGATE
  That's because great achievement has no road map. The X-ray's pretty good. 
  So is penicillin. Neither were discovered with a practical objective in 
  mind. I mean, when the electron was discovered in 1897, it was useless. And 
  now, we have an entire world run by electronics. Haydn and Mozart never 
  studied the classics. They couldn't. They invented them.
  
  SAM
  Discovery.

  MILLGATE
  What?

  SAM
  That's the thing that you were... Discovery is what. That's what this is used 
  for. 
  It's for discovery.

(I tried to find a clip, because Sorkin's writing is even more beautiful when acted by Rob Lowe.. but can't on YouTube.)

ctdonath2• 12 years ago

"Strange how much human progress and achievement comes from contemplation of the irrelevant." - Scott Kim

john_b4• 12 years ago

To pick one example, before the landing it was discovered that the gas jets emitted by the comet interact with the solar wind to produce a unique signal: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/11/12/4126840.ht...

The detailed dynamics are yet to be determined, but since the comet has an orbit that takes it from as close to the sun as Earth and as far away as Jupiter, this signal should change as it travels. Or maybe it doesn't, and if so, that would be a mystery worth investigating. This is a completely unexpected discovery that enables us to study a comet's magnetic field, and how it interacts with the solar wind.

Here are some possible benefits just from this one discovery:

1) The instruments necessary to even detect this signal are very impressive by themselves, developing them has probably improved a number of instrumentation technologies on Earth already.

2) The lander's instruments cannot penetrate the surface very far. The fact that this comet even has a magnetic field (however weak) is interesting. It could mean that a significant portion of the comet's interior is composed of iron, nickel, cobalt, or rare earth metals, which would be useful knowledge for people like these: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/asteroid-mining-venture-backed-b...

3) If future missions to comets find a different type of signal, which in turn leads to a different type of internal composition, the differences in a comet's magnetic field could be used to infer the composition of its interior from a distance, without sending any probes to the surface at all.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

In addition to all the other responses, there's one benefit I haven't seen mentioned yet. In the event that a comet is discovered on a collision course with Earth (an extremely low probability event, but one with enormously bad consequences) then knowing more about the structure and composition of comets would be essential to deflecting it.

joeevans1000• 12 years ago

Survival of our species.

rabino• 12 years ago

we just landed a friggin' robot into a friggin' commet

mind blowing

tmmm2• 12 years ago

Not really we... Just very few people, most of us have no idea how they've done it.

ommunist6• 12 years ago

It really is mind blowing. The degree of intergovernmental co-operatoin is incredible. The lander electronics has Hungarian know how, brought there by Hungarian scientists. Radiation-protected processors are American. The whole thing is supervised by Germany together with France. Absolutely fantastic.

bsaul2• 12 years ago

Anyone knows where i could find some info about the software stack this kind of probes are being built with ? Languages, programming methods, patching methods,os, runtime, etc.

I'm really curious to know how different it is from the web or enterprise development worlds.

fit2rule3• 12 years ago

Start with vxWorks.

_ak• 12 years ago

There is not much to find, but apparently, they do software updates over the "air": http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/03/28/software-upgrade-at-...

adamfeldman2• 12 years ago

Like other embedded systems, spacecraft computers use real-time operating systems (RTOS) and languages:

* The Rosetta probe ultimately runs SCL (Spacecraft Command Language) [1], a COTS spacecraft programming language developed for sale to the military [2]; SCL is based on the syntax of Ada 83, which has a long legacy in spaceflight and other real-time applications (e.g. Boeing 777) [3]. However, what are known as Flight Control Procedures (uploaded commands), are written using another language and transformed and compiled into SCL in a two-step process that involves XSLT [1]. On-board Control Procedures, which are procedures the probe decides on its own to run, and handle tasks such as receiving FCPs and sending back telemetry, are written in SCL [1].

* The Mars rover Curiosity is programmed in C and uses the VxWorks RTOS [4], which is very much like many commercial embedded systems. It has about 2.5 million lines of code, much of it autogenerated. Curiosity's predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, used the same software stack, as did their predecessor, Sojourner [8].

* The Voyager probe, which has now left the solar system and entered interstellar space, uses "...interrupt driven computer[s], similar to processors used in general purpose computers with a few special instructions for increased efficiency. The programming is a form of assembly language." [5]

* The Space Shuttle was programmed in a custom language called HAL/S (High-order Assembly Language/Shuttle) [6], as was the Jupiter probe Galileo [7]. The language is descended from PL/I and its compiler is written in a subset of PL/I called XPL.

[1] http://www.rheagroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SpaceOps...

[2] https://www.sra.com/scl/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)

[4] http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/159638

[5] http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL/S

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(spacecraft)

[8] http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/159687

bsaul2• 12 years ago

Very interesting. I didn't think C would be used that much (except for the core of the os of course). I somehow thought of either a specialized language with strong guarantees (such as ADA), or a high level language for IA-like feature.

Which makes me wonder, since this is HN after all, if Rust wouldn't be an ideal candidate for coding this kind of layer in the future. Maybe a compiler targeting VxWorks is in progress somewhere.. ? :))

kevinmchugh• 12 years ago

This article is a classic, coming up on 20 years old, specifically about how differently the shuttle software team was from the dotcoms. http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff

No idea how relevant it is today, or any differences between the shuttle team and whoever's building/built the software for this lander, but it's definitely worth a read.

kej• 12 years ago

There was a nice bit about the shuttle's computer systems in the Challenger appendix to Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, too. As I recall, it was the only part of the shuttle process that Feynman thought was engineered correctly.

notfunk2• 12 years ago

While I'm not sure what this exact probe is built upon, some popular choices for mission critical applications I've seen in the past are:

* VxWorks for real time operating system (proprietary)

* Ada/C++ for programming language.

noselasd• 12 years ago

Here's a handful of videos and presentations: http://flightsoftware.jhuapl.edu/files/_site/workshops/2013/

The last answer here has a lot of links for the Curiosity Rover: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-i...

sktrdie4• 12 years ago

Most likely they have headless web browsers running on both the main spacecraft (probably chromium) and the Philae lander. Web sockets enables the lander to communicate to the spacecraft which then sends its signals down to earth using regular HTTP (you don't want to keep an interstellar HTTP connection open). All of it is of course written in JavaScript, more specifically vanilla-JavaScript - which frankly I find weird given that I'd hope they would use a framework such as socket.io - bad engineering if you ask me. The lander obviously uses latest Node.js and npm to update some of its modules which are again sent across the wire using interstellar HTTP.

notfunk2• 12 years ago

This is the best thing I've read all day.

adamfeldman2• 12 years ago

You joke, but FTP has indeed actually been used to communicate between Earth and a probe. A team at NASA's JPL , led by Vinton Cerf, completed a study of what would be needed for an Interplanetary Internet [1]. There are already IETF RFCs for delay-tolerant networking [2], which include mechanisms for store-and-forward communications (e.g. each transceiver is a relay).

Science fiction has some great depictions of interstellar communications, such as my favorite by Vernor Vinge, the Hugo award-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. It is a most excellent space opera that prominently features an interstellar system like Usenet as part of the plot [3], as well as superhuman intelligence, physics, and all sorts of other wonderful bits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep

billybofh• 12 years ago

All this without docker? Their devops team is seriously behind the times...

squidcactus28• 12 years ago

I think there's probably some CFML involved too?

Turing_Machine• 12 years ago

Ron Garrett (formerly Erann Gat) has some background on how these decisions are made. It's not pretty.

http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

swah• 12 years ago

Also his "How I lost faith in Lisp" post is interesting.

I'm not sure how I stand on "w/ a great language one does great things" vs "great engineers do great things with any tools they have" debate.

tim3333• 12 years ago

There's some discussion here, written by Attila Baksa who according to his linkedin is "Designer and developer of flight software of On-board Computer of the Rosetta Lander of ESA, which was successfully launched in 2003 and arrived to comet P67 in 2014."

eg: "The on-board software of the central computer of the Philae Lander consists of a real-time operating system and 8 application tasks. All these software modules are specially developed by our team for the Harris RTX2010RH microprocessor. The co-ordination of the scientific program and the overall control of the algorithms used by the application tasks are done by the MSO modelling language."

http://www.hiradastechnika.hu/data/upload/file/2004/2004_12/...

Also the "scheduling system, called the Rosetta SGS Scheduling Component" is discussed here:

https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/papers/chien_iwpss2013_schedu...

which uses a framework called APSEN written by NASA:

http://aspen.jpl.nasa.gov/

which takes code like this:

Activity prevalve removal {

duration = 15

slot subsystem

after prevalve prep with (subsystem == this.subsystem)

before prevalve replace with (subsystem == this.subsystem)

Reservation hydraulic lift usage {

resource = hydraulic lift; usage = 1;

duration = 5;

requires state prevalve-purged TRUE

requires state prevalve-illuminated TRUE

to control the thing

http://metahack.org/isairas97-aspen.pdf

spdy• 12 years ago

For anyone who wants to see how they got there

http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/

pretty mind blowing for me to plan ahead 10 years

muyuu• 12 years ago

That's pretty informative.

ajuc4• 12 years ago

And to near miss planets 4 times in that period just right to steal some momentum from them through gravity...

adregan• 12 years ago

Hope this isn't a dumb question, but how does Philae stay put? If the gravity strong enough to keep it on the surface? Also, as the comet nears the sun and parts of the comet start flying off, is there a threat of Philae getting swept along with it?

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

Harpoon, ice screw. Retro-rockets failed to deploy.

forgotpasswd3x• 12 years ago

The robot deployed harpoons to fasten itself to the 2.5-mile-wide ball of ice and dust.

gt565k• 12 years ago

the harpoons failed to anchor to the surface, according to mission control, which was just announced on the live coverage. It appears they will try to reshoot the harpoons at some point if possible.

a-priori• 12 years ago

I love how simple and low-tech this solution is. People have been using anchored ropes and cables of various kinds to fasten things together for millennia. People have been using harpoons at sea for whaling for centuries.

4ad• 12 years ago

Gravity is very weak, it harpooned itself into the surface. The comet doesn't come very close to the sun, only around 1.2AU or so.

owenmarshall• 12 years ago

Also, as the comet nears the sun and parts of the comet start flying off, is there a threat of Philae getting swept along with it?

To add to what everyone else mentioned: Philae's science mission is slated to last for 2.5 days - the batteries have ~65 hours of charge, that's it. The hope is that they may be able to charge it and keep gathering data afterwards.

So it's not going to last nearly that long.

the_rosentotter2• 12 years ago

Coverage of this has been very confusing.

The ESA live feed at most times show people in some kind of control room staring at screens. There is no apparent way to see any highlights, unless I want to try scrolling back and forth through the hour-long video stream.

At any given time, various forum threads seem to have more information than the ESA site, which seems to communicate mostly through either lighthearted tweets, one-line headlines, or general background articles.

All I want is a simple timeline of events, constantly updated with latest news and images. Instead we have forum threads where you have to dig through comments to find out what is the newest info.

jarek3• 12 years ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-29985988

Brakenshire• 12 years ago

The Guardian live-blog is good as well. Less tweet-heavy than the BBC:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/live/...

k-mcgrady6• 12 years ago

> "All I want is a simple timeline of events, constantly updated with latest news and images"

OT but it's kind of amazing that this is actually a simple request these days.

india_congrats• 12 years ago

Congratulations Europe. But why don't we hear people saying that the EU should focus on their poverty first and would be better off putting this money into getting the Greece, Spain, and Italy economies in order?

paglia_s• 12 years ago

I'm italian. There are two things I would like to point out: I read that the mission cost about 1.6 bilion $, with that money you don't solve much in countries of about 11, 45 and 60 milion people.

Also, speaking for Italy, I don't think we need more money if we're going to waste it. We need to make reforms, stop wasting a LOT of money and so on

ommunist6• 12 years ago

You won't believe how much attention the EU gives to poverty issues. This is why there are no many poor people in the EU.

erazor42• 12 years ago

As a EU guy paying taxes i prefer giving my money to space program rather than into those useless corrupted politician who "govern" us.

ajuc4• 12 years ago

If people focused on poor in the past instead of science - peasants and slaves would be sligthly less abused, and slightly happier, but we would still use them.

Instead they focused on science and we don't need slaves nor peasants anymore.

Metapony• 12 years ago

I'm not european, but I imagine that the amount spent on this mission (which launched in 2004!) is miniscule compared to the amount that would be needed to fix a country's economy.

jedp2• 12 years ago

I'm reminded of http://xkcd.com/1232/

(Edit: Not intended to be snarky; I just think people do ask those questions all the time, and this xkcd answers it well.)

_nedR• 12 years ago

I am all for govt. funding scientific endeavours and space exploration like this. But one thing I don't like about the comic is it implies that many problems faced in the world like hunger and malaria are not easily solvable.

IMHO, It is quite simply a travesty that there is still so much absolute poverty and deaths (through malnutrition easily curable and/or preventable diseases) in the third world. Many of these problems were solved in the early 20th century- It is a lack of political will of governments and the collective apathy of its citizens, who are engrossed in their own first-world problems. To answer the xkcd comic: Yes. 15 years should be enough to at least halve world-wide deaths due to hunger and diseases like Malaria and Cholera, If the citizens of the first world make it a voter issue. Such endeavours will pay themselves multiple times over. (increased human output, new trading markets for companies, reduced population growth) And you don't need to sacrifice funding for scientific research to do it(coughs military budgets).

FlyingSnake• 12 years ago

This is an incredible day for science and Humanity. ESA, CNSA, ISRO, SpaceX etc have done a great job so far to carry forward the legacy of NASA and ROSCOSMOS to new levels.

Still can't believe ESA planned and landed a robot on a comet. Bravo!

kartikkumar4• 12 years ago

Absolutely stunning feat of engineering. My bosses are on the drill team for Philae and were amongst the nervy faces being beamed all over the world. Great example of what European nations can do when politics don't get in the way. ExoMars [1] and Bepi-Colombo [2] are perfect examples of the inverse.

Look forward to the first pictures from the surface. I'm at the Division on Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting [3] in Tucson at the moment, and there are already incredible results being presented based on data acquired by Rosetta. Stay tuned for a whole lot more!

[1] http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46048-programme-overview

[2] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/BepiColombo_...

[3] http://aas.org/meetings/dps46

throwit994• 12 years ago

At the risk of turning political, it's a great example of how our taxes are wasted. Playing with space toys shouldn't be funded with taxpayer money.

I'm sure I'll get downvoted to hell for this, but why should my money be funding this? Sorry, but it has no benefit whatsoever.

edit: Instead of downvoting a dissenting voice, why not argue your case - why should taxpayers fund space toys?

edit2: Well, looks like I'm banned from commenting. Good job dealing with those that don't agree with you...

return04• 12 years ago

I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent.

sbarre• 12 years ago

Ok I'll bite. Do you really believe space exploration has "no benefit whatsoever", or are you just trolling?

A cursory Google search returns all kinds of counter-points to your claim. If you really do believe this, perhaps some brief research of your own will change your mind..

vdaniuk• 12 years ago

This opinion is short-sighted. There may be zero practical attributable scientific or engineering benefits, though I am sure there will be plentiful.

However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! It is massively televized, broadcasted, discussed on social media and news aggregators. This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. And we need them inspired, motivated and engaged to build a better world for all humanity.

So yeah, it has at least ONE benefit.

fsloth• 12 years ago

It depends. What's your definition of 'benefit'?

crazypyro• 12 years ago

Because it has huge benefits and one could argue that the money that was funneled into NASA during the moon landings gave tax payers much more bang for their buck than all kinds of other research, social programs, bank bailouts, etc. These sorts of human achievement defining missions are really hundreds of thousands of hours of engineering dedicated to solving some of the hardest problems we can dream up.

You are way too short sighted if you cannot imagine the enormous benefits of having dedicated engineers, scientists and researchers working on difficult problems that don't have model-able, short-term returns. The exact types of problems that people only concerned with short-term balance sheets avoid like the plague. The exact types of problems that propel our entire civilization into new ages of discovery and technology.

stellar678• 12 years ago

Here is a nice long list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

matthewmacleod• 12 years ago

why should taxpayers fund space toys?

They're scientific research, not 'toys'.

rybosome5• 12 years ago

Nations have a long history of funding exploratory ventures. It is generally understood that the process is useful for a variety of reasons: it creates jobs, there is a small chance that something practical could be discovered, and most importantly it satisfies a basic human need to know more. With this mission in particular, we may be able to answer some very fundamental questions about the arrival of organic compounds (or even life) on Earth...surely that's worth spending some money on?

You have the right to feel however you want, but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad; the internet wouldn't even exist for us to have this discussion.

ajuc4• 12 years ago

Roseta mission is 1 400 000 000 euro. London summer olympics costed almost 10 000 000 000 euro. Consider the benefits.

Landing on comets and knowing what materials are there (and how to detect that from distance) will eventually let humanity explore solar system. In next 10000 years it's almost sure there will be at least one global cataclysm (huge asteroid impact, ice age, global warming, methane-producing bacteria boom, some supervulcaon could go off). It's just statistics, we're in borrowed time anyway.

How much would you pay to save human race?

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

Good luck pushing that opinion amongst elites who are more likely to be the beneficiaries of space program spending than the victims of austerity.

Space exploration for it's own sake is a self-perpetuating relic of the cold war.

ISL• 12 years ago

Your point is not unfounded, and it's our duty as research scientists to justify the value you receive for your money.

There's a famous example where a US Senator asked a similar question of a research physicist prior to the establishment of Fermilab, specifically tailored toward defense application [1].

SENATOR PASTORE. Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race?

DR. WILSON. Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about.

In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.

To address your concerns more directly: Basic and exploratory research pushes scientists to extract the very highest performance one can get from known technology. On occasion, that technology can do something exceptional (precision timekeeping, GPS, vaccines, medical imaging, etc.). The highly-motivated people who do this work tend to be willing to do it at low salaries and with limited chance for advancement, simply because they love the field. You can think of it as a low-cost government-run VC fund that aims for the occasional spectacular payoff at multi-decade timescales.

Another key benefit is education: research funding underpins the post-graduate education of most people in the physical scientists. Funding basic research, which companies won't usually touch, furthers the continuous supply of a top-notch skilled workforce for industry nationwide.

Furthermore, in many fields, retaining a trained and knowledgeable corps of scientists is an efficient way to retain the capability to respond to sudden and important societal needs (Manhattan Project, Ebola, asteroid mitigation, Fukushima, etc.).

I'm biased, as taxpayer dollars pay for my work, but I think you're getting a reasonable-to-excellent return on your investment.

[1] http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html

dang• 12 years ago

looks like I'm banned from commenting

For anyone who's wondering, we haven't banned this account. What happens is that when karma gets low enough to be in outlier territory, comments get auto-killed. This is a longstanding anti-troll measure.

In the future, we plan to have a "moderated" status for comments, rather than "dead", so that the community will be able to fix cases where the commenter is not a troll or has corrected their ways. In the meantime, if you ever notice something being [dead] unfairly, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is usually enough to correct it. (Edit: but do please allow for the variable latency of our email stack. We will get back to you, but there's no SLA on when.)

foxylad3• 12 years ago

Once upon a time, long long ago, the most powerful dinosaurs got together to consider the proposal of a young pterodactyl. The pterodactyl had come up with the strange proposal that the other dinosaurs should bring her food while she concentrated on devising ways to fly higher.

"Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off.

So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of.

And then a comet hit them and they all died.

kbart• 12 years ago

Wasted taxes? Are you serious? The outcome of this mission might be immense considering what possibilities are open if we manage to perfect such technologies. I'd say it's the greatest our race achievement after the Moon landing. Besides, the whole mission budget is only 1 billion euros (~1.2 billion dollars). If talking about wasting tax money, consider F-35 project which cost 1 trillion dollars and still counting, that's 1000 more than this mission.

return04• 12 years ago

Care to give a hint about what kind of results those are?

kartikkumar4• 12 years ago

Sure. You can look up the abstracts for the Rosetta sessions at DPS to get a better sense of the work that has been done and is being conducted [1]-[3]. Some of the highlights presented at DPS, based on the talks that I attended, include:

* Further image analysis has shown that Comet 67P likely has very low strength, perhaps in areas even just powders held together by van der Waals forces

* The Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO) has clearly detected water (+ isotopes) in the coma of the comet. MIRO results indicate that the top layer is dusty and loose.

* There is a clear thermal signature from the neck of 67P that doesn't match expected results.

* Magnetic field variations in the neighborhood of 67P pose an interesting puzzle that will hopefully shed more info about the core (http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/11/the-singing-comet/).

There were also a few sessions on other comets that have made the news (e.g., Siding Spring which had a close encounter with Mars recently)[4]-[6].

To address the issue of why any of this is important at all. It hits at the heart of our quest to understand the world around us. Although it's often hard to pinpoint everyday impact of this and related research, it is undoubtedly the case that it forms a vital piece of the puzzle of where we came from and where we're going.

[1] Rosetta 1: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876531/

[2] Rosetta 2 / Comet Coma Chemistry and Nuclear Outbursts: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876560/

[3] Hot Facts About Cool Comets: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876955/

[4] Comets K1 (PanStarrs) and A1 (Siding Spring): https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876530/

[5] Sun-grazing Comet ISON: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876567/

[6] Comet Dust, Tails, Trails, and Oddballs: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876561/

innguest6• 12 years ago

How can you people be so dishonest with yourselves and everyone else?

Look at the fallacious arguments you put forward:

- Nations have a long history of funding exploratory ventures. (appeal to tradition - doing something for a long time does not make it right to keep doing it)

- it creates jobs (unseen consequences - it destroys more needed jobs that would have been created or maintained had this money been used by those who earned it)

- there is a small chance that something practical could be discovered (citation needed; also, not a good enough reason to justify mass extortion)

- it satisfies a basic human need to know more (at what price? how much money is it fair to steal from the population in order to indulge the curiosity of those who largely can't be bothered to finish a book?)

- surely that's worth spending some money on? (no one is saying you can't spend your money on it. knock yourself out)

- but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad (appeal to emotion and consequences - this is coming from someone not curious enough to know how money works and why public works projects are the same as the broken window fallacy)

- Because it has huge benefits (citation needed)

- one could argue that the money that was funneled into NASA during the moon landings gave tax payers much more bang for their buck than all kinds of other research, social programs, bank bailouts, etc. (please go ahead and make that argument)

- These sorts of human achievement defining missions are really hundreds of thousands of hours of engineering dedicated to solving some of the hardest problems we can dream up. (Keynesian misattribution of value: "it takes a long time and a lot of effort so it has to be worth something!")

- You are way too short sighted (ad hominem)

- This opinion is short-sighted. (ad hominem)

- There may be zero practical attributable scientific or engineering benefits, though I am sure there will be plentiful. ("trust me, I know more than you do")

- However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! (appeal to emotion)

- This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. (anything mya be a trigger to anything until proven to be the case or not; if we're looking for triggers to sent guys and girls to STEM we should survey the alternatives and pick the most cost effective one; this is an improvised excuse for carrying on with public works projects)

- I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent. (stolen money should not be spent in more or less important things, it should be returned to their rightful owner so they can choose what to do with what they've earned)

cmc31• 12 years ago

(stolen money should not be spent in more or less important things, it should be returned to their rightful owner so they can choose what to do with what they've earned)

Just to be clear.. Your issue is not that money from taxes is spent on scientific research and space exploration, but really that you have to pay taxes?

ubernostrum• 12 years ago

Ah, the fallacy fallacy.

jimktrains2• 12 years ago

I'm unsure who you're quoting or what you're arguing.

Some people just don't find value in sustaining. This is why we are no longer hunters and gatherers or simple plot farms anymore. Is this good or bad? That's not really a good question, because it is an is; it's neither good nor bad.

yequalsx• 12 years ago

Few people agree that taxation is the same as theft. You appear to be someone who does have this view. That is fine but it is not a commonly held belief and generally is subject to derision and down voting. This should not come as a shock to you.

A very large percentage of people believe that having a functioning government is necessary and taxation is a necessary component for this. There are no examples of large populations of humans (many millions for the definition of large) living well without government. There are lots of examples of the reverse being true. That is, finding places where large populations live quite well with a government. Correlation not implying causation and all that, one can reasonably conclude that a functioning government, and hence taxation, is a necessity for large populations to live well.

There are lots of examples of functioning governments performing badly and subjecting large populations to miserable conditions. This means that people need to be vigilant with regard to the governance. It's good for people to question the decisions their governments make and people at the fringe can provide nice counter balances to group think and a herd mentality. Calling taxation theft might be a bit too extreme though.

Overall I think your view of each individual funding themselves only what they feel deserves funding is highly impractical and ignores human nature. Specifically it ignores the free rider problem. It also ignores that such a method is highly inefficient. Government is much more efficient than the solution you posed in another post of yours.

It is nice to fantasize about being like Daniel Boone and going it alone without need for government but in a nation of 350 million people that ability does not exist for any but a very few. The go it alone mentality does not scale well to large populations and have the net effect of making us all poorer.

tjradcliffe• 12 years ago

It's clear you object to taxation and redistribution, not scientific research. As such, your argument here is inappropriate, since this discussion is about science and technology, not taxation.

I suggestion you take your arguments to an economics and politics blog. In the meantime, unless you are a completely dishonest hypocrite, you will stop using everything that has been funded by the coercive taxation you so incoherently decry. That would include most medicine--including vaccines and anti-biotics--as well as a good deal of dentistry, GPS, cell phones, computers, and indeed all semi-conductor technology, as well as roads, railways, airplanes, radio, sailing ships, and almost everything else.

While almost all technology has a private component in its development, it almost all has a fairly significant component that was funded by coercive taxation. Since you believe for some reason that coercive taxation is a bad thing--despite it being responsible for massive increases in human well-being. It seems a bit odd to be against something that has been, empirically, unarguably, responsible for so much good. It's a bit like being against capitalism, or free trade.

rybosome5• 12 years ago

I think we simply have different core values. It appears that you believe that the ability for an individual to have total control over their money is a basic right. I believe that an individual has a fundamental responsibility to the society into which they were born; this is vague and nebulous, but a portion of this responsibility includes funding scientific and educational projects if they are so able.

Science has, many times in the past, embarked upon a path to which there was no obvious benefit, yet ultimately came upon a discovery or application which improved the lives of humans immeasurably. Could Halley have had any idea how large the impact would be when he coerced Newton to record calculus and the laws of gravity in a book? What about Michael Faraday's fascination with electricity, generously supported by the Royal Society?

People aren't, as a whole, equipped to understand the long-term consequences of our actions. Predicating funding for something so essential to all of the progress made in the last few centuries on this faulty understanding would cripple our development. A government which attempts to offset the massive social cost of such a missed opportunity with speculative research is doing its duty to its citizens. We don't know what we don't know; evaluating scientific research with your limited cost/benefit analysis fails to take into account the enormous opportunity cost of a lost discovery.

As others have noted, taxation which funds things you don't agree with is a basic fact of modern life, but it has benefited you immensely - complaining about this funding model while you enjoy its output seems disingenuous.

AYBABTME• 12 years ago

Space exploration is your best bet at fleeing to a world where nobody would be able to tax you, where you'd live like a true free man on the land.

simonh• 12 years ago

There are a lot of answers to this, but I think the central point of the post is not being addressed.

The job of democratic government is to take responsibility for the things that the people choose to delegate to it.

I am not a doctor, a scientist, a hydraulic engineer, a military officer, a policeman, a lawyer or a civil engineer to name just a few relevant specialisms. I don't have the time, expertise or inclination to get involved in choosing how government should address all of the services it provides. Therefore I am happy to participate in choosing political leaders who I and my fellow citizens delegate to make those decisions for me.

I do not think it is reasonable or would be beneficial for every single citizen to have to decide how every single penny of tax money should or should not be spent. I cannot believe that a system organized in that way could ever be made to function no matter what modern communications and decision making (voting) technology we used.

Finally, living in a society ruled by laws is a system of coercion. Our fellow citizens are coerced into not robbing each other, not murdering each other, not driving their cars the wrong way down one way streets, and yes not avoiding paying tax. If you don't like that, tough.

bane• 12 years ago

I agree, stunning stunning bit of science and engineering. Everybody involved in this should be beaming with joy.

Once again the light of reason continues to chase away humanity's ancestral boogiemen.

wozniacki2• 12 years ago

I wish we lived in a world where the layman - the Joe Nobody - could grasp how truly momentous this is.

Too often the gravity of such endeavors is lost too quickly, from our collective imagination.

We need to reanimate the sense of wonder among the non-science inclined people everywhere, to make more of these efforts possible.

Live feed of the press conference which should start in a bit:

rosetta.esa.int

Some cool links:

http://wpc.50e6.edgecastcdn.net/8050E6/mmedia-http/download/...

http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/avZGG4q_460sa_v1.gif

http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/

nathan_long• 12 years ago

Once again the light of reason continues to chase away humanity's ancestral boogiemen.

Boogiemen like the belief that humans are more than collections of atoms and random emergent behaviors? Because if those are your boogiemen, there's no particular reason to rejoice in reason, or anything else for that matter - it's all ashes in the end, and nobody will be left to care, whether we colonize Andromeda or blow ourselves up this afternoon.

Science is a collection of methods for determining facts. I find it odd when people describe it in religious-sounding terms and simultaneously scoff at religion.

But perhaps I misunderstood you?

Cthulhu_8• 12 years ago

idk what a feat of science, engineering and maths has to do with vague allusions to lights of reasons and the other high-and-mighty semi-religious language being used in reference to this event.

vanschelven• 12 years ago

The video of Rosetta's 12 year journey in space is both impressive and informative:

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2013/10/Rosetta_s_tw...

kaeluka• 12 years ago

I have been following this mission for months now. I was completely obsessed. Didn't get much work done today, that's how excited I was. That must be how groupies feel like :)

Amazing landing, whether or not the screws are in: hitting the comet is already amazing!

kartikkumar4• 12 years ago

Just an update: the harpoons did fail, but the engineers were very concerned about marked fluctuations in the telemetry. There was a suggestion that the lander might actually be tumbling, but those fears seem to have been allayed by the fact that the oscillations seem to have stopped. The engineers will comb through the data over the coming hours, in anticipation of the next downlink, which should be around 4:30am CET (13th Nov). It seems like there might have been bit of a bounce, and the lander might have landed twice! So long as the downlink is available during the next pass, it seems like the lander has weathered the worst of the landing.

Science data has been downlinked, so fingers crossed we'll get some nice images from the surface pretty soon! There's a nice shot of the lander on the way down released already [3].

Sources:

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30031531

[2] Personal communication from ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany

[3] https://blog.flickr.net/en/2014/11/12/rosettas-philae-probe-...

wozniacki2• 12 years ago

Here's a brief explanation of NASA's role in the mission for those eager to find out how they assisted

  ALICE , MIRO, and IES will provide information about the 
  dynamics of comet C-G: how it develops its coma and tails,
  and how its chemicals interact with each other, and with 
  radiation and the solar wind.

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/nasas-role

and a glossary of the various terms used.

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/rosetta-glossary.

( Only adding because I didn't see it mentioned elsewhere. Not for the sake of partisanship or to take away from ESA's grand accomplishment. )

mathattack2• 12 years ago

I have to say this is Science Awesomeness at it's best, and I'm bothered by the lack of media coverage. Perhaps if all of us posted and retweeted we could get some motion on this?

ryanhuff• 12 years ago

When my mom hears about stuff like this, it feels like it's getting enough coverage.

caio1982• 12 years ago

Perhaps you have access to bad media outlets? No criticism, I really wonder why is that because in Brazil we are seeing headlines like "like the discovery of the americas", "we landed in a comet, better than science fiction" (top 5th news for over a day in the biggest news portal of the country), "making history" and "understanding our origins" :-) it's all pretty exciting

sktrdie4• 12 years ago

  More analysis of @Philae2014 telemetry 
  indicates harpoons did not fire as 1st thought

Ouch, seems like it didn't land? https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/532575061543485440

edit - the landing is confirmed, however the harpoons did not fire: https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/532579871202238464

masklinn3• 12 years ago

It did land, here's the next tweet:

It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding

but the harpoons may have failed to fire.

easytiger• 12 years ago

Why does it need to anchor itself? It's not like it will blow away?

sktrdie4• 12 years ago

Ah my bad. Nonetheless it seems like harpoons did not fire. Tweet from just 30 secs ago: https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/532579871202238464

Can it stay on the surface without the harpoons?

32faction2• 12 years ago

land =/= secure.

those harpoons are what is supposed to anchor Philae to the comet. the problem is the reaction thruster, the thruster that counteracts the force generated by the harpoon shot, (to satisfy Newton's 3rd law) is faulty.

So they're hoping that when they reshoot the harpoon, the foot screws will be anchored enough to hold it in place. If not, theyre hoping that Philae won't launch too far off the surface so that they can just "reel" Philae back in.

bd2• 12 years ago

Emily Lakdawalla tweets from the control center:

Ulamec: signal kept coming and going "but we always got it back." Possibly indicates unstable, or tilted.

Ulamec confirms the harpoons did NOT fire. There is much they currently do not know.

Ulamec: a central rod was pushed into lander 4 cm by landing. Indicates soft rather than hard surface (rod would've pushed more into lander)

Just had a chat with Mark McCaughrean and I feel a bit calmer....

McCaughrean: @Philae2014 is down on the surface of the comet and it is transmitting signals. Science instruments are getting data.

Yes, McCaughrean confirmed this. RT @JPMajor: @elakdawalla So the ice screws on the lander's feet have at least dug in I assume?

https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/532578862086250497

------------------------------------------

And overview of the German DLR stream's briefing (via reddit live stream):

Good news:

--- Touchdown, all the signals that trigger on touchdown worked.

--- Still communication, which means the lander did not tilt or topple.

Bad news:

--- ADS thruster did not fire, that is the issue was already known beforehand.

--- The anchors did not fire, this confusion was due to the rewind motors for the anchors going into action, but the harpoon wasn't actually fired.

--- Team doesn't know if it rebounded or not / if it's on the surface. Thus they don't dare issuing a re-firing signal for the harpoons, because they don't know in what position the lander is. Current Situation:

--- The arm that damped the landing force only moved very little, which indicates a very soft surface. Which might mean if it rebound the rebound was very soft as well and in this case might settle down again.

--- On board computer is waiting for new commands.

--- There will be more telemetry in 30 minutes, but contact lost in 120 minutes, so the final verdict could be known only tomorrow.

http://www.reddit.com/live/tw0cnch7nxjx/

JoblessWonder• 12 years ago

Man, measuring how far a rod moves into the lander to gauge depth/surface tension/type? So simple and smart.

jmccreery• 12 years ago

No announcement yet, but just now in the ESA webcast of the control room everyone stopped, gathered around a guy that I assume is the team lead, and are now going home. I have a bad feeling about this.

humanfromearth2• 12 years ago

I highly recommend this video that explains how Philae works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-77-Z_DHTlY

rodolphoarruda• 12 years ago

"Philae has made the first, historic landing on a comet, after descending from its mothership"

To me, no other statement could be more impacting. Earth is finally sending motherships to space. feeling mind-boggled

bd2• 12 years ago

First images from Philae's ROLIS camera:

-----------------------

1) 3km above comet:

https://twitter.com/DLR_de/status/532587248555143169

2) Few seconds before landing:

https://twitter.com/nanotousch/status/532593372218023936

3) First surface image?

http://i.imgur.com/0XK8Ar4.jpg

4) Possibly a new image from the descent?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2QySLrCUAAZbEL.jpg

Edit: no, here is the source (Rosetta's NavCam from yesterday):

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/11/NAVCAM_top_1...

-----------------------

Rosetta Lander Imaging System (ROLIS)

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=PHILA...

ajuc4• 12 years ago

Wow, I listen to the solutions they invented to hibernate the probe safely - to save on the electricity they had to hibernate it, but then it could have change orientation relative to sun, and wouldn't have enough energy to wake up.

So they disabled the orientation system to save energy, but first they made the probe rotate quickly to stabilise it like a gyroscope.

That's stuff from sci-fi books / Mc Gyver movie :)

ommunist6• 12 years ago

This is huge. In both technical and political ways. And bringing all the details into live online event is twice as huge. I just watched the guy reporting the unsuccessful initial anchoring of the probe, and I felt so happy that I could see this. Incredible. By the way the lander software runs on Harris RTX2010 processors -- the US contribution.

jnem• 12 years ago

Total non-sequitor but...I'm surprised no one else has yet made the observation that Philae Lander put together is philaender, or philander. Juvenile post of the day award anybody?

pbhjpbhj2• 12 years ago

ITT downvoting to invisibility because you disagree with someone honestly held and cogently expressed opinions.

Silencing diverse opinions is quite possibly the worst facet of HN.

TomGullen5• 12 years ago

Libertarian world philosophy is totally bunk (if that's what you were referring to). I down vote most of that because it's generally ridiculous.

pbhjpbhj2• 12 years ago

Just that opinions off the norm seem to be too readily moved to opacity -> 0. The idea that government shouldn't freely use taxation to fund projects that apparently only return a mild satiation of curiosity is a valid opinion, for example, and was apparently expressed honestly, without malice.

I'm not settled on where I stand with that (I tend towards cooperative and communist ideals) but I certainly don't stand on the side of "those expressing these views need to be censured" (nor censored as it happens); which is what appears to be happening.

It's possibly that I'm being over-sensitive towards the failings of the HN UI as much as anything.

ganzuul• 12 years ago

But what if you were no longer allowed to hold this particular opinion? If we generalize the postulate, it does not compute.

Killah911• 12 years ago

It is just me or has the story evolved into something a bit less jubilant in the course of the last two hours. It's an amazing feat, but this stuff is always a huge gamble.

As someone's who's worked on a few spacecraft project I feel really bad for the team(s) (recently worked on one which didn't go so well, years of work down the tube). Even if it didn't go perfectly I hope they're commended for the work they've done so far & the landing they achieved.

jarmitage• 12 years ago

Three.js version of the comet http://cabbi.bo/rosetta/

shitlord• 12 years ago

Awesome! Think of all the nice desktop backgrounds I'm going to have.

I am wondering what this will mean for humanity. Do you guys think the insights we gain from Philae will be as impactful as the ones from other space missions?

Cthulhu_8• 12 years ago

If it turns out the asteroid is full of platinum or other rare / expensive minerals, unlike the moon which seemed barren rock, it'll be enormous and the start of the true space age IMO.

JulianMorrison• 12 years ago

First successful unintended lithobraking in the history of space ;-P

apa-sl• 12 years ago

Awesome! Launched over 10 years ago (our "smartphones" back then had 1mpix cameras, youtube was not born yet, etc), travelled +6,5b km and nailed a target 3-4km wide...

Philae has landed

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