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Welcome to a comet

esa.int

41–50 of 87 posts

Re: Welcome to a comet

#41
post #16

You know I have some bad days some times, but seeing shit like this just makes me think "What a fucking time to be alive!" It's truly incredibly and is sometimes that kick in the pants I need to keep on going. We are living in a golden age of humanity right now, at no point before in human history have so many people had such an incredible quality of life and never before has man been doing such incredible feats and…

Yes it is golden age as long as you disregard percentages and trend. "Some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth." http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats Economy seems like a boiler ready to explode, rich-poor chasm is widening like hell. Global peace doesn't look very rosy either. Not to mention what's happening on the environmental f…

I love the downvote-to-oblivion argument. Very educational. Sometimes I wonder why I bother at all with people like you.

So yeah - that's fantastic! "We" landed on a comet. Whoray! I'll let my newly unemployed mortgage-ridden friends know. It will cheer them up.

Now show me your teeth and downvote some more (middle finger).

Re: Welcome to a comet

#42
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is golden age as long as you disregard percentages and trend. "Some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth." http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats Economy seems like a boiler ready to explode, rich-poor chasm is widening like hell. Global peace doesn't look very rosy either. Not to mention what's happening on the environmental f…

805 million means the number is down more than 100 million over the last decade, and 209 million lower than in 1990–92. In the same period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3 percent globally and from 23.4 to 13.5 percent for developing countries. Source: http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/

Even if it is so (and we can talk for hours on the validity of this or that data) how do you find the fact that there are enough damned means of production to feed everyone and it's been so for decades now? Also how do you like the fact that there are now about 50-60 MILLION people in US that get food stamps. Or the fact that the wages for most of the western world are falling for 30 years now? ... Whatever.

Re: Welcome to a comet

#44
post #42
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

805 million means the number is down more than 100 million over the last decade, and 209 million lower than in 1990–92. In the same period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3 percent globally and from 23.4 to 13.5 percent for developing countries. Source: http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/

Even if it is so (and we can talk for hours on the validity of this or that data) how do you find the fact that there are enough damned means of production to feed everyone and it's been so for decades now? Also how do you like the fact that there are now about 50-60 MILLION people in US that get food stamps. Or the fact that the wages for most of the western world are falling for 30 years now? ... Whatever.

Before we cut space missions, can we please stop paying so much for warfare and spam first?

Re: Welcome to a comet

#45
post #32
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

805 million means the number is down more than 100 million over the last decade, and 209 million lower than in 1990–92. In the same period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3 percent globally and from 23.4 to 13.5 percent for developing countries. Source: http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/

That's insane, I had no idea there was any improvement, let alone that much! I just casually assumed the number would be growing along with our total global population, but to know it's actually decreasing as population increases? Wow.

Most of this has been accomplished by economic growth in the most populated areas, mainly China. The situation elsewhere didn't change that much.

Re: Welcome to a comet

#46

Moon, Mars, Venus, Titan, and now comet 67p. Absolutely amazing.

Space probe NEAR-Shoemaker landed on asteroid Eros in 2001!

What is amazing about this landing is that the probe had no landing gear, no shock absorbers, and was not designed in any way to land. NASA engineers tuned the orbit carefully and slowly and we're able to match velocities for a soft landing for what was otherwise supposed to be an orbiting spacecraft.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAR_Shoemaker

(Edit - fixed asteroid name)

Re: Welcome to a comet

#47
post #32
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

805 million means the number is down more than 100 million over the last decade, and 209 million lower than in 1990–92. In the same period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3 percent globally and from 23.4 to 13.5 percent for developing countries. Source: http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/

That's insane, I had no idea there was any improvement, let alone that much! I just casually assumed the number would be growing along with our total global population, but to know it's actually decreasing as population increases? Wow.

For these things the videos by Hans Rosling are a classic, all of them are great and shine a completely different and positive light on where we stand:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_and_ola_rosling_how_not_to_be_...

Look for the other videos as well, he has a few.

Re: Welcome to a comet

#48
post #10

Does it have a colour camera? or maybe it's a bandwidth-saving decision to transmit only B&W? or because of the lighting?

Apparently the visible light sensor has RGB color filters. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=PHILA... I would guess these are probably not a Bayer filter pattern, but filters that are mechanically swapped.

I remember having read long time ago that superposing B&W images took with those filters gives an also B&W image that our brain perceives as coloured. Does anybody know if this is correct or what's the name of that effect?

Re: Welcome to a comet

#49
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the visible light sensor has RGB color filters. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=PHILA... I would guess these are probably not a Bayer filter pattern, but filters that are mechanically swapped.

I remember having read long time ago that superposing B&W images took with those filters gives an also B&W image that our brain perceives as coloured. Does anybody know if this is correct or what's the name of that effect?

I'm not sure. I thought of the "False Color" concept, but that's pretty much the exact opposite of what you said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_color

Re: Welcome to a comet

#50
It almost seems like "landing" is too strong a word: Philae has a mass of 100kg and the gravity of Churyumov–Gerasimenko is estimated to be 10e−3 m/s2, which comes out to a weight of 3.5 ounces, or the equivalent of 100 grams on earth. Let's hope it holds!
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