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Philae has landed

bbc.com

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Re: Philae has landed

#141

Post by icebraining »

dwild wrote: post #119
throwit99 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health, welfare, lowering taxes, employment.... y'know, things that enrich real peoples lives. Space toys and exploration are fun for those working on them, but will this event transform civilisation? Nope. Did the moon landing really transform civilisation? Nope.

Does space exploration has the potential to transform civilization? Yeah it actually does. It represent funding in research, it represent dreams, it represent our future. It's also an amazing collaborative project between countries. Also let not forget that NASA only represent 0.5% of the US federal budget. Do you really want to lower your federal tax by 0.5%? Seriously? Please lower your entertainment budget, stop a…

I'm in favor of the space exploration spending, but your argument is terrible. (S)he could just as easily reply that if you believe that space exploration has so much potential to transform civilization, why don't you donate all your entertainment budget & etc to NASA?

Re: Philae has landed

#142

Post by jimktrains2 »

innguest wrote: post #135
kartikkumar wrote: post #53

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 Tu…

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…

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.

Re: Philae has landed

#143

Post by kamaal »

innguest wrote: post #109
sbarre wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Have you searched the other side of the argument? Perhaps then you'll understand why we're against this.

I've never understood the 'this OR that' argument. For the budgets nation states have, the spending is so diversified, one side can hardly complain that they are being treated unfairly or others are getting greater share of the budget.

You can do two or more things at one time, especially when they are totally unrelated.

I've heard this argument over and over during India's Mars mission on News debates, where people come on prime time television and complain health care, education or other sectors aren't doing enough progress so why go to Mars.

So what should those people do? If others don't do their job properly should they stop doing theirs? If there are other aspects of society not doing enough progress, lets fix that instead of stopping hardworking people from making progress else where.

Re: Philae has landed

#144

Post by ameister14 »

innguest wrote: post #107
return0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is the criterion importance? How about, governments shouldn't require protection money from its citizens? The way it used to be before 1913.

The way it used to be...in the United States, as regards solely taxes on income in peacetime?

Re: Philae has landed

#145

Post by incision »

tedks wrote: post #123
rybosome wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compou…

Hijacking the top comment in this subthread to make a meta-complaint: The comment-parents viewpoint is perfectly valid, but has been censored because of disagreement within the broader HN community. For all the talk about "free speech" that HN does when the topic is, say, not objectifying women, or making racial minorities feel included in tech, it certainly seems to perform an about-face when confronted with... obje…

>"Why should the comment-parent be flagkilled for expressing an unpopular opinion?"

A comment shouldn't be killed for expressing an unpopular opinion and I don't think this one was.

That comment is a perfect example of how not to state an opinion, unpopular or otherwise.

It states an opinion as absolute and demands proof otherwise while providing none of its own. This is recognized as awful, trollish behavior on any forum.

Further, the opinion stated is derisive and emotional. Finally, the it begs for downvotes repeatedly.

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be killed regardless of the view expressed.

Re: Philae has landed

#146

Post by mturmon »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #45
avz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're asking a reasonable question.

I'm not sure how Rosetta was run; it had a longer germination time than many missions.

But for a typical science-driven mission, there is a thing called a "Science Traceability Matrix", or STM, that has science goals down one side and measurements down the other side. Every science goal must be traced to one or more measurements that will achieve it, and every measurement must correspond to some goal. If the linkage is not clear, the measurement (i.e., instrument - one spacecraft typically has many instruments) will be booted.

For more: http://csc.caltech.edu/references/Grogan%20STM.pdf [page ~8 has a matrix]

The science goals, in turn, are arrived at through National Academies studies, typically Decadal Surveys, done once per 10 years (often with a midpoint course correction). Membership in the NAS is a very big deal that few scientists achieve; the expertise of these people is unreal. That is:

  state of science knowledge -> 
  decadal survey ->
  science goals ->
  traceability matrix ->
  specific instrument choices
This is idealized, but mostly the process follows these rules. A particularly good example is Earth observing satellites, which are governed by decadal surveys like this one:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13405

One of the outcomes of all the space funding over the years is that there is now a somewhat orderly process for attacking big questions systematically.

Re: Philae has landed

#147

Post by bd »

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...

Re: Philae has landed

#148

Post by john_b »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #33
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Space exploration is not for you. Your tax share of this mission, depending on where you live, is either zero or nearly zero. Asking for personal benefits from a space probe is silly.

However, your children, and their children, and so on will likely see benefits from it. The future is impossible to predict, however, so nobody can say what they will be. The principal benefit of missions like this is the new knowledge they generate. That knowledge is then the intellectual heritage of humanity for eternity, and can be used for any number of inventions, benefits, and future discoveries.

You are thinking too small. Even if somehow nothing ever comes of this mission, this is the sort of thing that humanity does not because it has survival value, but because it gives value to survival.

Re: Philae has landed

#149

Post by pron »

throwit99 wrote: post #114
crazypyro wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So effectively, you want to subsidise scientists working on some arbitrary aim (Space exploration), in the hope they'll invent cool stuff you can spin off... I don't think you need to subsidise science like this. Did we really get "propelled" into new age of technology half a century ago? Did the moon landing really change anything here on earth? Technology would have advanced just fine without it.

I think this is part of a bigger question: should you only spend on basic survival? Individuals in developed countries now spend most of their resources on things that go beyond basic survival: education, entertainment, arts. Shouldn't we spend our collective resources the same way? If as individuals we want to expand our existence beyond survival, I think as groups we should, too, and fund pure science, history research and the arts, even if no material benefits come out of it.

Re: Philae has landed

#150

Post by ajuc »

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 :)

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