we just landed a friggin' robot into a friggin' commet mind blowing
Not really we... Just very few people, most of us have no idea how they've done it.
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Philae has landed
241–250 of 309 posts
Re: Philae has landed
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 po…
Taxation might not fit the strict definition of theft (easy when the gov creates its own jargon), but it is the threat of force to take property from someone against their will. I mean, how many of us are giving money directly to the gov by our own volition? I don't know of anyone. We were born into this system and we never agreed to it. Let's at least be honest about that. > There are no examples of large population…
> We were born into this system and we never agreed to it.
This is akin to complaining about being born a human, or with two arms, or a white boy.
Re: Philae has landed
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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 oursel…
To say that we are "more" than just atoms is worthless without defining what that actually means. Magic dust doesn't have much of a place in reality, and that seems to be what you're offering. Why can't we just be a collection of atoms?
Saying science thinks we're just atoms and "random emergent behaviors" is no better than those pushing intelligent design saying evolution is a "random" process. It shows gross ignorance of how order can emerge from chaos, and the processes we already understand.
And, as best as I can tell, nobody would care if we disappeared tomorrow. The universe would keep on universin' as it always has. The reason to rejoice thinking this way is because of how amazing it is that we have the ability to know this and do things to prolong ourselves and our species.
Re: Philae has landed
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
That 3rd link is very cool. Do you know what does the "comet speed" means on it? Is it its speed relative to the earth ? It's going at 18km per second, so around 65 000 km/h (40,000 mph). People manage to land something that left from earth starting at a speed of 0.00km/h and then traveled 6.5 billion km to an object going at that speed, all of this happening 500 million km away. It is amazing!
Its speed is most likely relative to Sun. Earth moves at about 30km/s relative to sun. So that's your minimal starting speed.
Speeds are generally given relative to the object being orbited, so in this case the Sun.
Re: Philae has landed
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
How can one care about what will happen within the next 10,000 years?
You don't have kids yet, I take it? One of the most universal desires parents have is for our children to live better than we did, hence the sacrifices we make to fund education etc.
Re: Philae has landed
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to talk about spending priorities, how about the folly of the Iraq war, trident, etc. those cost huge amounts more than this mission? Not everyone has the same priorities as you. Thank goodness at least some of our money is spent on things which might benefit humanity in the long term , like discovering how the solar system was formed or whether life was formed on earth or elsewhere.
...where did I indicate I would rather spend that money on war and weapons? My comment actually states: "Don't get me wrong I'm all for these kinds of missions". As for your long term benefits: Great so we find out how the solar system is formed or where life was formed - now what? Those are really cool things to know but what do we do with that information? The reason I'm curious about this is that although I want t…
> I find it difficult to actually justify spending that money on answering questions. There must be some tangible benefit.
Maybe they haven't been discovered yet. Application can lag theory or basic experiments for a very long time. Did the car come right after the wheel? Did the iPhone come right after Ohm's Law? Maybe this will aid comet/asteroid mining missions. Or optical image processing. Or orbit optimization for long solar system traverses. I think it's very shortsighted to pursue only research that has visible short-term benefits, because you could be missing out on countless innovations that are below the horizon. We can't predict the future. But I also think application is unnecessary, and that there is inherent value in understanding our world.
In any case, while I don't know how much the average European pays for ESA in taxes, I do know the average American pays something like a few bucks to fund NASA. So you're quibbling over the use of a tiny proportion of resources to answer some big questions.
Re: Philae has landed
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you not? We are not talking about throwing away everything to insure ourselves against future catastrophe, we're putting a small portion towards a bit of futureproofing. Seems smart to me.
To be clear I love to see funding going towards science. But 10,000 years is too damn much. People are placing chronologically the technological singularity within the next 100-200 years. For all practical purposes, 10,000 years ahead it's simply a different universe for me.
You said "within the next 10,000 years". So where's your cut-off point? 1,000? 100? 10?
There are things we need to prepare for and there are advantages to starting now. Every advance we make is a foundation for something else. I think there are things we take for granted today that only exist because of some urge to explore and learn thousands of years ago.
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
To be selfish, I'm keen to see what we can find out about our world (including beyond Earth obviously) in my lifetime. Something like the comet landing is a step along a far bigger path to getting all our eggs out of a single basket situation.
Re: Philae has landed
#248Absolutely 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…
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 ban…
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.
Re: Philae has landed
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you not? We are not talking about throwing away everything to insure ourselves against future catastrophe, we're putting a small portion towards a bit of futureproofing. Seems smart to me.
Ah, that's just your DNA talking. Otherwise we could be immensely pleased with the amazing experience of being alive, and when our time is up allow Mother Universe to move on without us. Perhaps after we are wiped out, another better form of life will take hold and really do amazing things, fueled by our decay. Besides, it looks like our own behavior is going to do it for us, so might as well "love the bomb".
I guess that speaks to the dichotomy of urge in humans. We are equally as likely to sit on our butts staring mindlessly at something on a screen as we are to strive for extending the reaches and hopes of our species.
I hope it could be us that will do those amazing things you mentioned.
Re: Philae has landed
#250Amazing 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 sc…
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.