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Rosetta's Philae Probe To Land On Comet Tomorrow
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."
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?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Nice vile condescending attitude you have going there jackass.
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)...
As a middle-aged adult(ish) geek, I think it is FUCKING cool ! Screwing around in Low-Earth Orbit is one thing. Going out and landing on a comet is awesome. Are you old enough to remember which TV you were glued to during the first manned landing on the moon? This isn't that cool, but it is damn cool nevertheless.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST