Rosetta's Philae Probe To Land On Comet Tomorrow 74
An anonymous reader writes: After more than 10 years travelling, the Rosetta mission will take its next, momentous step by landing the Philae probe on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko tomorrow. How f!@#$%ing cool is that?! Follow the landing live using the webcast, blog, or Twitter feed. (Keep in mind there's a 28-minute delay due to the time it takes the radio signals to reach Earth). Here's the scheduling info: "For the primary landing scenario, targeting Site J, Rosetta will release Philae at 08:35 GMT/09:35 CET at a distance of 22.5 km from the center of the comet, landing about seven hours later. The one-way signal travel time between Rosetta and Earth on 12 November is 28 minutes 20 seconds, meaning that confirmation of the landing will arrive at Earth ground stations at around 16:00 GMT/17:00 CET. If a decision is made to use the backup Site C, separation will occur at 13:04 GMT/14:04 CET, 12.5 km from the center of the comet. Landing will occur about four hours later, with confirmation on Earth at around 17:30 GMT/18:30 CET. The timings are subject to uncertainties of several minutes."
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It's an annoyingly old pseudomeme :(
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One of the powers that actual adults have is to be able to not swear and express themselves in other fashions. You up to that?
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I'm sure the irony eludes you.
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Apparently the anonymous summary author isn't up to it. He's trying to use the profanity without actually saying the word. While I agree with you, cold fjord, as an adult I feel people should use that ability to express themselves and either say the word or not. This pussyfooting* around is silly.
*Uh-oh! Now I've done it!
Re:How f!@#$%ing cool is that?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How f!@#$%ing cool is that?! (Score:4, Informative)
I want to disagree. I mean yeah, Man on the Moon. In any universe, that is going to be cool. But that appears easy compared to Rosetta.
10 years to get there, circling through the solar system how many times? Then catching a comet with just about no gravity, and slowing down to pace it. Even 'orbiting' it a few times, which is really just firing your rockets to go in a circle.
And then landing? The Moon is a freakin' parking lot with stripes compared to that comet. Plus, having an astronaut came in handy when what's his name had to manually land with seconds to go.
Yes, I remember. But I was a kid, and I guess I figured they did that shit all the time. I didn't appreciate anything. Now, in hindsight, I know different, and appreciate (somewhat) what they did during Apollo. But this seems harder than that, and thus, cooler.
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One of the powers that actual adults have is to be able to invent new and particularly offense swear words to tweak puritan-types.
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One of the powers that actual adults have is the ability to communicate in a civilized manner without trying to tweak anyone or thinking they're sticking it to "the man" by attempting to be cool or edgy.
Unless we're abandoning the whole concept of trying to live in a civilized society except when it comes to the stopping of war which is routinely promulgated on here.
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Intelligent people also have the ability to act intelligently and get over irrational fears of certain words arbitrarily deemed to be bad. This usually involves questioning society's values. I guess that would make many people who insist that any word they don't like is "uncivilized" (a completely subjective term) rather irrational. Some words are just objectively bad and uncivilized. The magical opinion fairy decided it.
Unless we're abandoning the whole concept of trying to live in a civilized society except when it comes to the stopping of war which is routinely promulgated on here.
You know, you've got a point there. If someone says a word that you don't like, they're
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I know civilizations where it is ok to rape and then "honor kill" one's sister. Definitions of "civilized" vary, I reject yours also.
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Somehow pretend 'swearing' is more adult?
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One of the powers that actual adults have is to spell rite.
When you want to say "fucking" it's spelt F U C K I N G.
Oh, by the way it's an ESA mission.
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Thanks, I'm enjoying the irony.
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Woosh.
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One of the other powers that actual adults have is the intelligence that one word has no more ability to injure us than any other, and allow people to swear all they like, because it does us no harm.
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I'm curious, in your travels do you ever meet any humans?
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And there is a word for that aren't "oversensitive": sociopaths.
I see you're practiced at avoiding detection.
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Ooooh, are you one of those "over sensitive" people? Sure looks like it.
Why don't you come out into the open. "Bob" right?
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I'll probably be flamed for this, but saying words can't hurt you is utter crap. It's possible to have an attitude that prevents certain comments from hurting you, but that simply means you have no emotional investment in the person using the words.
Words can, and do, hurt. Sometimes to the point where physical injury would've been a blessing relative to the damage the words caused.
The Bible says it best. What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
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I'll probably be flamed for this, but saying words can't hurt you is utter crap.
Words can't cause physical injury. Offense is also taken, not given. By dwelling over the words of others, you cause intangible emotional damage to yourself. It's seems to be hard for almost everyone to overcome the desire to inflict emotional damage upon oneself, but nonetheless, people should strive to do so, rather than having pity parties.
But really, this isn't about attacking others, but about certain words arbitrarily being deemed 'bad.' Then, a lot of these people treat these words as if they don't j
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"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can really hurt me".
How f!@#$%ing cool is that?! (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe his phone's ducking autocorrect won't let him.
Re:Light is too slow (Score:4, Insightful)
Space is not too big. The speed of light is too slow.
Actually the speed of light is just about perfect for the photon. At the speed of light, time dilation/spatial contraction allows it to be pretty much everywhere on its world line at the same "time". Thus space is certainly not too big for the photon (if you ignore inflation).
So the problem isn't that space is too big, nor that light is too slow, but how finite beings like us experience time (i.e., life is definitely too short)...
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Then all we have to do is remove the space between us and the comet, and the signal will get here faster.
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I think you can do that with Photoshop.
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Dang, I already commented, so no mod for you.
That might be the most profound thing I ever read on /.
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And space is too big... aint no one got time to wait 30minutes just for 1 leg of the transmission
Go invent something faster, Einstein.
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and Ireland
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All together (Score:1)
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that was funny
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Thank you, Ben Affleck.
We're landing on a comet (Score:2)
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I guess there is no real objective measure of what constitutes the peak of human achievement in space. But this has to be up there with the best of them. Go you good thing!
I think one of the candidates for the peak of human achievement in space is the Apollo 11 moon landing done on manual. Or perhaps the first space walk by the USSR...
The comet landing, however, is probably right up there with the other top robotic achievement in space. FWIW, the mars curiosity sky crane one of the other top 10 that comes to mind...
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I call BS on your BS. Nearly all the stuff that made space flight possible were human achievements on the GROUND.
Most humans in space have been part of nearly ballistic trajectories or computer controlled robots. On many missions, human presence in space was largely for vanity reasons and the missions could have been accomplished with robots. However, there are a few times when humans were key parts of the accomplishment in SPACE which is what I was pointing out. That takes nothing away from other folks
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Hoping for a nice electrical discharge are you?
Electric Universe Preditions (Score:3)
Let's see if the lander has an electrical anomaly on the way down. Should be interesting.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/... [thunderbolts.info]
Re:Electric Universe Preditions (Score:5, Informative)
There's about as much chance of that happening as you revising your theory when it doesn't match observations: practically none.
I'm wondering what Talbott and Thornhill have been reading, or perhaps I should say what they have been smoking, because their description of the observations does not match the ESA's. [nasa.gov] It has lots of water [esa.int] and a dust trail, [arxiv.org] and while there has been some unexpected magnetic activity [esa.int], there isn't some electrical bogeyman waiting to jump out at the lander — and it's not like the scientists involved aren't paying attention to such things. Apparently in order to believe in EU not only do you need to ignore a century's worth of physics (including Einstein), you also have to ignore current observations and make up your own. This is beyond intellectually dishonest and far into flat-earth crackpot territory.
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Ah come on man, you're being a little hard on them. Whoever wrote that definitely fancies himself a scientist. That's enough. Zealots often find things. Even when they're wrong, they sometimes discover something, even if it wasn't what they were looking for. But intellectually dishonesty is not true; they believe that shit. and crackpot is just not nice.
You go, electric universe people! I await your wonderful discoveries, submitted to the appropriate scientific journals, and then disseminated to plebs like
Re:Electric Universe Preditions (Score:5, Informative)
It's not what they believe that makes them intellectually dishonest, it's denying and inventing observations. Crackpot is not nice but it is accurate.
I await your wonderful discoveries, submitted to the appropriate scientific journals...
EU people have a hard time getting published, and never in reputable journals.
Whoever wrote that definitely fancies himself a scientist. That's enough.
This contradicts the above, and fancying yourself a scientist is enough for what exactly? Enough to lie to people? No, the important part of being a scientist is not dressing in a lab coat, having a PhD (the EU guys are in no danger of that), or making predictions. The important part is being empirical, testing your predictions in a methodical way, and adapting your theory to match those observations. There is no more value to what Thornhill and Talbott's writings than any other lunatic's ravings. If you want to cheer on pyramid energy, crystal therapy, homeopathy, or the Electric Universe, that is your business, but it has no place in science.
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These aren't my theories I just find some of them interesting. It makes some sense that there should be a charge differential between a region close to the sun and far away. I am actually looking forward to the data.
Check out the math (Score:5, Interesting)
Animated gif of the probe's path, from launch to rendezvous. [imgur.com]
Disparity in Accuracy (Score:1)
Wait a second - you're telling me that a probe has been traveling for years on end and will be precisely placed on an object moving several thousands of miles per hour, yet no one knows, even within a rough guesstimate falling within a minute or two, when a signal from the same probe confirming the landing will first arrive?
Maybe the probe delivery engineers should take over for the communications team...
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Currently the landing will take place at 15:34 UTC, five minutes for landing operations (harpoons, engine firing to prevent rebound), then first photos will be taken and broadcast, with the signal's arrival 28 minutes later. So, 16:02 UTC for telemetry data, 16:07 for first imagery.
About 20 minutes tolerance for automated decisions/adjustments is allowed, but the tolerance is not expected to be used really.
GO (Score:5, Informative)
Semi-live coverage for the bandwidth-impaired (Score:5, Informative)
Webcam sound (Score:1)
TOUCHDOWN !! (Score:2)