Rosetta Team Proposes Landing On Comet To Finish Mission

schwit1 writes: Rather than simply turn off the spacecraft when its funding runs out at the end of 2015, Rosetta's science team has proposed that the mission get a nine-month extension, during which they will slowly spiral into the comet and gently land. Their proposal is similar to what American scientists did with their NEAR spacecraft, which hadn't been designed to land on an asteroid but was successfully eased onto the surface of Eros, where it operated for a very short time.

Comments

It's not important

[Anonymous Coward]

What's more important is that they all wear shirts that don't hurt fragile women's minds

Re:It's not important

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so narrow minded. What about sandwiches?

Re:It's not important

[SuricouRaven]

It should be reversible. Sci-fi pinups on the outside. If anyone objects, flip it around to expose even more explicit images and a caption: 'I landed a robot on a comet, I can wear whatever I want.'

Re:It's not important

[davester666]

Because "Bitches And Sandwiches Are Only Useful For Fucking" sounds crazy.

Re:It's not important

[geniice]

Last time they wore silly shirts they messed up the landing. I fail to see why they should be given a second chance.

Re:It's not important

[Anonymous Coward]

why all the hate? what is the problem with you? Seriously, why denigrate others? Do you have failings that make you jealous or feel the need to attack others to make yourself feel good. Treat others how you'd want to be treated and you might get a bit more love and respect in your own lives. Or at least move to a haters website and leave /. alone. .

Re:It's not important

[davester666]

whoosh. I wasn't agreeing with the original statement, just showing why it didn't include sandwiches.

Re:It's not important

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Maybe there's no ambiguity, but not all people prefer sex with dogs.

Re:Not until the purges are complete

[Anonymous Coward]

transsexual

Is that woman that was once a man, or a person with mixed genitalia including breasts?

We're going to have a tough time staffing space programs with criteria like this.

Re: Not until the purges are complete

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't just want anyone working on these space programs.

Re: Not until the purges are complete

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Half of Tumbler are self identified bipolar transgendered bisexual polyamorous turtle-kins with diabetes. I bet it wouldn't be hard to hit the quotas at all, as long as you ignored things like qualifications.

Re:Not until the purges are complete

[Livius]

Why are assuming we will only staff with humans? Won't someone think of the AIs?

Re: sourceforge is spreading adware installers imp

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesomest comment every! Thanks for the laugh and spew.

Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is everyone talking about?

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Kohath]

Here's the info: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Rosetta+s...

Short version:

A team of sceintists and engineers spent many years and millions of dollars to land a spacecraft on a comet -- an unprecedented achievement in human history. One of the scientists wore his lucky shirt which depicted anime characters.

Feminists and gender warriors decided that landing a spacecraft on a comet wasn't important -- their supposedly hurt feelings about the pictures on the shirt were the only thing worth talking about that happened that day. Rather than telling the gender warriors to go fuck themselves (or, more appropriately, to go achieve something themselves before coming back and making demands), the scientist was forced to make a tearful apology.

In some circles, this has led to a backlash against the gender warriors. So every time anyone achieves anything significant, people say "What really matters is what kind of shirts they were wearing!" - as a reminder of the incident, and a way to contrast achievement versus entitlement.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

shirt which depicted anime characters

You should get some glasses.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[geniice]

"A team of sceintists and engineers spent many years and millions of dollars to land a spacecraft on a comet -- an unprecedented achievement in human history."

Nope. Deep Impact managed the first landing. Philae managed the first, second and third softish landings.

"Feminists and gender warriors decided that landing a spacecraft on a comet wasn't important -- their supposedly hurt feelings about the pictures on the shirt were the only thing worth talking about that happened that day."

Err no. There was some criticism of the shirt yes but there was no suggestions that the wider landing shouldn't be talked about (although since at that point the ESA were still keeping the initial data from the landings under wraps there wasn't much to discuss).

"Rather than telling the gender warriors to go fuck themselves (or, more appropriately, to go achieve something themselves before coming back and making demands), the scientist was forced to make a tearful apology."

No he wasn't. I assume the PR people told him to apologise but the tears were entirely optional. Of course given that they were trying to spin multiple failures into a success story there not completely slick handling of the matter can be forgiven.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the scientists wore his lucky shirt which depicted anime characters.

It's the kind of shirt a 12 year old boy might think is cool. And be his lucky shirt.
(And it's not anime. More like something you'd see on the mudflaps of a truck).

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, it's people who are butthurt about the outrage who are still going on about it.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, it's the jews, not the nazis, that are still going on about the holocaust.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if you want to define this guy's entire career around his shirt, when he and everyone else has moved on, that's your business.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Kohath]

How is it any of your business what his shirt looks like?

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Kohath]

People aren't talking about the shirt. People are talking about the unjust bullying that the gender warriors engage in.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't have an opinion? In that case, how is it any of your business what's any of my business?

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's disrespectful to the mission and reflects poorly on Slashdot that the only thing people want to discuss about the mission is, apparently, that.

Re:Uh, T-Shirts?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's the kind of shirt a 12 year old boy might think is cool.

TIL that the adult female artist/designer of that shirt is actually a 12 year old boy.

Re:Debian rejects game due to authors sexist belie

[Anonymous Coward]

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement for being allowed to contribute to opensource?

Yes. But only until the reeducation camps get up and running.

Or two people / two shirts

[DrYak]

Next to the guy with the "Naked-girls" shirt, let the second interviewee be one of the female scientist wearing a shirt with "masochistic men in bondage" printed picture on it.

Space hygeine

[RockDoctor]

Since it would remove one lump of orbiting hardware from the Solar System which would otherwise end up being an un-tracked bit of debris, then that is a non-trivial argument for them trying this. Otherwise who knows what orbit the spacecraft would end up on?

Eventually, as the comet erodes, then both parts of the spacecraft would end up in orbit, but within the (mildly unpredictable) envelope of the comet's other natural ejecta, which doesn't really add to the space-debris problem. Though where the launch cowlings etc go, I've no-idea. One would hope for re-entry, but the mission design may not have included that at build time.