Philae has landed • Hacker News Board

Re: Philae has landed

#41

Post by owenmarshall » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:40 PM UTC

adregan wrote: post #21

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?

> 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.

Re: Philae has landed

#42

Post by sktrdie » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #12

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.

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...

Re: Philae has landed

#43

Post by valarauca1 » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #12

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 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.

Re: Philae has landed

#44

Post by india_congrats » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

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?

Re: Philae has landed

#45

Post by k-mcgrady » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:42 PM UTC

avz wrote: post #29

k-mcgrady wrote: post #12

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.

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…

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.

Re: Philae has landed

#46

Post by brianpgordon » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:42 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #12

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.

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.

Re: Philae has landed

#47

Post by ffk » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:44 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #12

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.

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]

Re: Philae has landed

#48

Post by FlyingSnake » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:45 PM UTC

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!

Re: Philae has landed

#49

Post by notfunk » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:45 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #17

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.

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.

Re: Philae has landed

#50

Post by noselasd » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:46 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #17

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.

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...