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Philae has landed

bbc.com

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Re: Philae has landed

#301

Post by k-mcgrady »

grey-area wrote: post #279
k-mcgrady wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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…

"Don't get me wrong I'm all for these kinds of missions" Which you then contradicted by whining about not seeing the benefit of it; you're clearly not all for this mission or you wouldn't have derailed this top thread with your concern troll. There doesn't have to be a tangible, short term benefit for these missions to be considered worthwhile by the majority of humanity, so your question is irrelevant to them. If yo…

>> "I can't help you."

That's fine. There are plenty of other answers to my legitimate question (certainly wasn't trolling) and those were able to help me.

Re: Philae has landed

#302

Post by kingmanaz »

nathan_long wrote: post #206
bane wrote: post #139

Earlier 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…

>Boogiemen like the belief that humans are more than collections of atoms and random emergent behaviors?

"Behind all of these dehumanizing practices is the idolization of science, an attitude that results in the attempt to reduce all things to the level at which they will be fit objects for study according to the canons of natural science. The massive material success of science has made it seem to many a panacea. It suffices to claim that a thing must be attempted for the sake of science in order to silence all abjections. Nonetheless, although the achievements of science are in themselves great and great are its benefits to mankind, it is absurd to believe that science is man's highest good, let alone the highest good in itself" (Hildebrand, "On Science Fetishism").

Now the Almighty demands, "Why do this people approach With their mouth and their lips, To pay honour to Me, While their heart is far off? Their reverence is worthless to Me;-- It teaches the doctrines of men!

"So on this Race I lay wonders, Add wonders to wonders, Destroying its scientists' science, And baffling its scholars' researches." Fools! Is the Formed thought its Framer? Can the Work tell the Workman, "You never made me?" Or the Made tell its Maker, "You do not know how?"

Isaiah 29:13-16

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

"It is a characteristic symptom of immaturity to feel oneself more mature and independent than men of previous times, to forget what one owes the past, and, in a kind of adolescent self-assertion, to refuse any assistance" (Hildebrand, "On Temporal Parochialism").

Re: Philae has landed

#303

Post by squidcactus28 »

sktrdie wrote: post #55
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.

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 we…

I think there's probably some CFML involved too?

Re: Philae has landed

#304

Post by saraid216 »

fit2rule wrote: post #275
saraid216 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would honestly be faster to ship it overseas.

I'm quite fine with putting stuff in a holding LEO with robots and having it sit there, waiting for delivery by parachute to my pals and I while we sit in the bliss of an industry-free paradise here on Earth. If we move all the poisonous things to space, where it belongs, we make a better Earth. You bet I'd love to be designing package delivery systems which bring me my new softhard from space. Put all manufacturing…

> the bliss of an industry-free paradise here on Earth

See, that's what you should've mentioned the first time. :P

I'm cool with that dream. I just thought you were hoping to get stuff faster by dropping it on our heads.

Re: Philae has landed

#305

Post by mathattack »

caio1982 wrote: post #268
mathattack wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

All I see on cnn.com is "#WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant" and it's been very inactive in my Facebook feed. Maybe I need less superficial friends?

I wonder if it's different in the US because it didn't come from NASA. (I'm just as happy enjoying the science with someone else footing the bill)

Re: Philae has landed

#306

Post by foxylad »

tripzilch wrote: post #288
foxylad wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

You weren't there. This is not how it happened at all. The strong and mighty individualist T-Rex was enslaved by the communist mammals. The once idealistic Pterodactyl was forced to evolve into a chicken, bereft of its flight, today kept in captivity by the trillions, bred by robots, for meat and eggs. Their feathers fill our pillows. How ironic that Mankind's dreams are birthed atop their crushed wings. What gives u…

+1 for Eddy Izzard!

Re: Philae has landed

#307

Post by collyw »

Brakenshire wrote: post #154
jarek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Guardian live-blog is good as well. Less tweet-heavy than the BBC: http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/live/...

The guardian seems to have made more fuss about the guys shirt than the actual event.

Re: Philae has landed

#308

Post by innguest »

TomGullen wrote: post #211
innguest wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue is, whoever wants to accomplish something that takes a lot of money to make happen, should do like ARKYD and make a kickstarter or any other peaceful alternative, that allows for every individual to choose whether they'd like to participate. My issue is that running to the government, just because it already has guns in place pointing to every individual's head in case they don't pay, and saying "we'll steal…

Serious question, why don't you move to a country that has a tax system that you agree more with? No one is stopping you, it would be a free market victory. I do actually think you have a bit of a point. It would probably be more ethical to spend the space exploration money in other areas. However, there is much lower hanging fruit for things to cut out before we reach space exploration (warmongering and defence budg…

Serious answer: I moved here to the US because this is supposed to be the Land of the Free. No other country has such an amazing legal foundation to allow for Liberty; the founding fathers came here exactly because they wanted to move to a place that had a tax system they agree with more. But in the past few generations we've destroyed this.

So it's not I that have to move somewhere else. I've already moved. I've moved to where there can be Freedom, and where there once was. I'm here because I believe in Freedom and I think we can get it back, no thanks to people like you that are OK with the erosion of this most Enlightened idea.

The real question is, those who don't believe in freedom anymore, why don't they move to Europe or something? That's what Europe has always been, so go there. People came here from Europe so they could be free, and you're spoiling it for us. This is a land of immigrants that want to be left alone. If you're not that, then at least don't complain, and it would also be nice to stop silencing those that still think this is a good idea.

To your other points, what you mentioned aren't the lower fruits, those are the most high up fruits. Lower fruits are things that can more easily be decoupled from the scope of the government. ARKYD and similar projects prove there's no need for government in sending things to space, plus all the work by Virgin and Space X. So this is a low hanging fruit and people need to understand we need to decouple this from the government purview. Defense is super hard to decouple, requiring the whole population to be armed as you have in Switzerland.

Re: Philae has landed

#309

Post by TomGullen »

innguest wrote: post #308
TomGullen wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, why don't you move to a country that has a tax system that you agree more with? No one is stopping you, it would be a free market victory. I do actually think you have a bit of a point. It would probably be more ethical to spend the space exploration money in other areas. However, there is much lower hanging fruit for things to cut out before we reach space exploration (warmongering and defence budg…

Serious answer: I moved here to the US because this is supposed to be the Land of the Free. No other country has such an amazing legal foundation to allow for Liberty; the founding fathers came here exactly because they wanted to move to a place that had a tax system they agree with more. But in the past few generations we've destroyed this. So it's not I that have to move somewhere else. I've already moved. I've mov…

> The real question is, those who don't believe in freedom anymore, why don't they move to Europe or something? That's what Europe has always been, so go there. People came here from Europe so they could be free, and you're spoiling it for us

I am there!

> This is a land of immigrants that want to be left alone. If you're not that, then at least don't complain

You mean the native Americans?

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