Wednesday will be a tense day for geeks

I think one of the Comet's residents has taken exception to the drop in and put parcel tape over the lens...

 

No FT, no comet.

 

Its less than 60 years, that's less than 1 human lifetime, since the first man made object was placed in orbit. Now we've had an object chase a comet for a full decade, catch it, and land on it.

As if its not immense enough when put like that, lets not forget that almost every detail had to be calculated in advance, before the thing even set off. Even apart from catching the comet up, the landing probe could only be done by a preprogrammed routine. The distance involved meant there was absolutely no possibility of an actual human remotely controlling it. Once the landing plan was devised, it had to be programmed up, and then entrusted 100% to the machine.

I can tell you, as a programmer, I would have hated to get that assignment. Imagine getting all the way there, then something daft like a rounding error means you miss by a fraction of a degree, and either smash the probe up or miss completely.

 

The Comet is 300 million miles away

 

And by comparison, the sun is about 93 million miles away. Rosetta has clocked up nearly 8 BILLION kilometers, that's about 5 billion miles.

Here's quite a cool little presentation:

http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/

5 billion miles over 10 years to score a bullseye on an object just 2 miles wide. How's that? That's impressive is that.

 

It always amazes me when they say how fast something is travelling in space.
Surely all things are standing still, speed is only relative to other objects, and they are all moving in different directions.

 

Oh, I don't know Woo

http://www.space-exploration.org/?page_id=12

Don't see we've got much choice other than to develop space tech & knowledge. What ever we'll have evolved into will have to leave this place in 5 aeons so we got to start somewhere.

Sunrise will be a little different in the future

 

Apparently, when it bounced, it takes 3 hours to stop bouncing .

 

Some things are more important than money. When we stop learning, we start dying inside. When there is nothing to inspire the next generation, they will have nothing to aspire to, and will achieve nothing, except to become a burden on a society that can't support them because there are no skilled workers, because there was no inspiration.

Its human nature to search for knowledge. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't be having this discussion because none of this computer gear that we're chatting on would have been invented, and we'd all still be living in the woods.

 

Hi Clueless 1. Speak for yourself, I much prefer a nice Cosy, Dry, Warm, Cave Any day.
Too many creepy crawlies in the woods. .

 

That's exactly my point. If it wasn't for our thirst for knowledge, we would still be living in the woods. You wouldn't have your cosy, dry, warm cave