You're right; all of the people who go to Mars will die.
Of course, all the people who stay here on Earth are ALSO going to die. And while it's quite likely that the ones who go to Mars are likely to die sooner than the ones who stay behind, that isn't quite so certain - and we'll learn lots of stuff about Mars, and about ourselves, in the attempt.
In his book "The Right Stuff", author Tom Wolfe noted that all of the streets at Edwards Air Force Base were named for dead test pilots. Getting out of bed and leaving home, and going into space, or out to sea, or even across town; these things can be dangerous. We can't attempt to avoid all risks and still remain human.
Our substantial magnetic field may be due to the merging of the iron cores of the Proto-Earth and Theia. Earth is the most dense planet in the solar system, and from what we know of Mars and Venus, we suspect that our iron core is far larger than the other terrestrial planets.
Venus has a super-thick poisonous atmosphere; it's at least possible that our large Moon has, over a period of 4+ billion years, "skimmed away" enough of our atmosphere to have protected the Earth from a similar fate.
Of course, we only think that our atmosphere is right because we evolved here, in this atmosphere; if the atmosphere had been different, we would have evolved differently, and (had intelligent life developed at all) we'd think that THAT was the right sort of atmosphere.
Why should the material composition of Theia have differed all that much from the Proto-Earth? They formed from the same planetary nebula, and at relatively similar distances from the Sun; shouldn't they have been similar in composition? And how can anyone state with any certitude, 4+ billion years later, how much of the merged Earth's crust was from Theia, and how much from the proto-Earth, and whether the lunar material was one, the other, or mostly mixed? It was a long time ago, and the Early Heavy Bombardment period would have stirred things up further. In fact, it's not unlikely that the Early Heavy Bombardment material was long-period debris from the original collision.
If Theia had formed substantially closer, or substantially farther away from the Sun, then the debris from the collision could hardly have remained close enough that the shards would coalesce to form the Moon. The differing orbital velocities would have seen to that.
" In short, removing it from the Internet would be impossible."
Not true. It would merely be "very difficult".
Finding a single actual THOUGHT inside the brain of Diane Feinstein; THAT would be impossible. That ancient bint has enriched herself stealing from the American treasury by persuading other government officials to overpay for her husband's corrupt thievery. She is the epitome of the self-serving crooked politician.
I realize I'm being quaint and old fashioned, and that nobody in D.C. cares at all about that ancient parchment, but I cannot see that "revenge porn" is anything that could be affected by the eighteen "Enumerated Powers" listed in the Constitution. These are the only legitimate powers that the Federal government has.
Of course, 80% of what the Federal government does violates the Constitution, so feel free to ignore me. But I think the STATES should prosecute "revenge porn" viciously.
Give them American citizenship, for this reason if for no other; when Belgium and Germany and France are all consumed by the Islamic State, when it imposes sharia law, they'll have someplace to flee to. Yes, it's possible that Belgian citizenship might get them entry to the US when darkness falls (and it may still happen here anyway) but the USA hasn't got the best record for accepting political refugees from Europe.
If they are American citizens, they're part of the family. And as Erma Bombeck once wrote, being family means that when you knock on the door, they have to let you in. (And if that wasn't Bombeck, it should have been.)
Perhaps it's unlikely - almost as unlikely as Islamic terrorists shooting up a French magazine office and a kosher deli. But it's worth considering.
That's part of it. The other parts were talking tough about Assad in Syria (and not DOING anything), and killing Khadaffi in Libya.
Vietnam: Crashmarik is exactly correct. The United States _won_ the war in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were powerless, and the US left. But then the Soviets spent 2 years giving the North everything they needed, and then the North attacked again. The Dems in the Senate banned any additional military aid to the South. The South fell to the communists.
That's one of the reasons why ISIS is so fierce now; they know that the US is an inconsistent ally, especially with this administration. We're not going to do anything about it. (Of course, that's what the Germans and the Japanese were counting in in 1940 and 1941.)
Medical "science" is finally approaching what ought to have been obvious; that the "epidemic" of asthma and allergies are most likely our own doing. Our homes are TOO CLEAN for children!
Babies have fairly primitive immune systems; like every other part of a baby, it needs to be trained. When babies crawl in the dirt and get exposed to "nature", their immune systems come to recognize what's normal. At some age - about a year or so - their immune systems begin to react to "new" things in the environment, and begin to fight them. So dust or pollen become a problem, especially if mommy has been keeping the house spotless and immaculately clean. Never rolled around on the floor with a dog? Never ever eaten peanut butter? By age 4, you're going to be deathly allergic to them.
Mothers; take your babies out into the yard! Let them crawl in the grass, like us old folks did when WE were babies. They need the vitamin D to prevent rickets, and they need exposure to earth so that they don't develop allergies to the Earth.
Science fiction writer L. Neal Smith has suggested that our descendants born on orbital habitats may never be able to come to Earth; they'll be allergic to it. It may be a matter of shipping a few tons of dirt and dust up to spread in the air filters, just to ensure that our grandchildren can come visit!
Neither Bush nor his team created the banner; the "Mission Accomplished" was for the SHIP, whose deployment had been successful. You lacked context, so your error is understandable.
Granted, for the President to give a public speech in front of that context-less banner was bad politics, but we've experienced far worse from the incumbent. For example, failing to send a representative - even the otherwise useless Sloe-Joe Biden - to Paris after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but flying himself to Saudi Arabia for the funeral of the king of the Saudis, Definitely bad politics - and bad international policy, as well.
More free expression is always better, and censorship is generally wrong. And self-serving.
But your other statements are flat-out hallucinations. Bush never claimed that the war was over, but for a couple of years, the level of violence in Iraq was at least dramatically reduced. ISIS didn't come into existence until Obama declared that he would withdraw all troops by a certain date, no matter what. Now that ISIS is doing whatever they please, Obama is waging a pinprick war against it, and trying to appease the real aggressors in Iran.
We used to wonder what in the hell was making these ultra-bright quasars; now we believe that they are "active" galactic cores which are in the process of forming a supermassive black hole in the centers. It's possible that two such black holes might form and orbit their mutual centers of gravity, but eventually they would merge. This merging is probably the source of the gamma ray bursts.
Planets couldn't form until enough hydrogen had been fused into metals and expelled by supernova. Complex life couldn't form until there were enough different heavier elements. It's at least possible that early races and civilizations were exterminated by GRBs when their galaxies were new; it's even possible that intelligent life formed near the Galactic core of our own galaxy before the supermassive black hole formed. (Larry Niven may have been right! Thrints!) They were all killed in the GRB when our own galaxy shined like a quasar. Now that the Milky Way has settled down into gentle middle age, other races can develop.
It may be unlikely, but it's possible that humans are the most advanced of these third-generation beings.
The "open office" plan has also been MOCKED for almost as long. cf. "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", a Monty Python spoof in which office drones in exactly that sort of "open office" make the office manager walk the plank, and then sail their office building into pirate battles against other insurance companies. Even by Monty Python standards, it was silly. Almost as silly as "open offices".
I once had a job in a much smaller version of that; one big cubicle with workstations at all four corners. Turn into the corner to your PC to actually "work"; turn into the center to collaborate or discuss things. That worked all right, but I cannot imagine being on the phone talking to customers in an "open office" environment.
I'm not the guy making the emotional "WE HAVE TO DO THIS IMMEDIATELY OR THE WORLD WILL BURN" arguments. Science isn't a thing; it's a method, a technique for discovering the truth.
A scientist will share his raw data so that other scientists can replicate his work. Warmists have not done so. Scientists will reveal their algorithms and explain their assumptions. Warmists have not done this, either. Scientists don't invent data, or make bogus and conflicting claims about their data. Warmists have. Scientists will attempt to make predictions about the future, and if their predictions are falsified, they modify their predictions. Warmists have been predicting greatly increased tropical storms and disappearing north polar ice caps. Neither has happened.
Warmists actively manipulate the "peer review" process, and attempt to have opposing views banned. Warmists claim that the government should hunt down and execute "deniers". OK, that's from the more hysterical faction, but it has been said.
The problem with the notion of "science denier" is that is entirely too close in concept to "heretic". The AGW advocates are entirely religious in their zeal, and their religious belief is that the End Is Near, and We Must All Repent!
Remember, before Al Gore got into politics and invented his own Church of Warmism, he had flunked out of Divinity School. Being the High Priest of Warming, he has invented his own religion - and every religion has to have heretics.
Weather is inherently unpredictable; Sacramento, CA (where I live) has already had more rainfall since December 1 than all of last year. El Nino events are even less predictable than "average" weather is. Meteorologists are only beginning to understand the underlying patterns of an El Nino. Is this going to be an El Nino year? I wouldn't place bets either way. The Japanese have a word, "modoki", which means "the same, only different". At least one prediction is for an "El Nino Modoki".
The NASA report today (based on data collected earlier in the year) says that California would need 11 TRILLION gallons of rain to make up for the drought. Entirely coincidentally, there was a bit (on the generally-unreliable TV news weather) yesterday that said that this year's rainstorms dropped 10 trillion gallons on the state so far this month. Not all in the right places, of course; parts of Napa County were getting an inch an hour, which is nearly Philippines style rain. The ski resorts in the mountains are rejoicing in a couple of FEET of new snow.
I'm all in favor of increasing water storage, but there are too many Greens in San Francisco who want to tear down what we already have. For example, there's a great place on the North Fork of the American River near Auburn, CA, and they were about a third of the way into preparing for a dam, when the eco-freaks decided that since California is earthquake country (true enough, but not near Auburn) that we shouldn't build any dams. Then they wanted to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and tear down the dam - despite the fact that most of San Francisco's water comes from Hetch Hetchy!
I guess they thought that unicorns would fly into SF with magical water spigots. Which wouldn't be the strangest thing that they believe....
Certainly, flat-rate water has been a major factor in wastage of water in California. We only got water meters installed here in Sacramento about 4 years ago, which has resulted in a tripling of our water rates - and quadrupling of the pay to the bureaucrats who get sinecures on the various water boards.
But California is a boom-and-bust state when it comes to water. We have 3-5 year drought periods that alternate with floods, such as the floods of 1986 and 1997. If this actually turns into an El Nino year (the forecasts for this are mixed, but generally unreliable either way) this may be another flood year. Folsom Lake and Lake Shasta were at historic lows 3 weeks ago, and have been at least partially refilled since December 1. And it's raining right now, with more rain predicted to continue through Friday.
How ENTIRELY coincidental is it that the weatherman here in Sacramento, CA reported yesterday that the storms since December 1 have dumped 10 trillion gallons of water on the Golden State!
Granted, only about 10% of that has fallen in catchment areas that feed into our many reservoirs and lakes, and rainfall doesn't percolate into the ground water for years - but this is a STUNNING example of the AlGore Effect.
I'm an agnostic Jew; I'm not certain that God exists. But I _AM_ certain that He has a great sense of humor, and delights in confounding pompous braggarts.
We're pretty sure that most large galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the center. We know that some very-VERY-far away astronomical objects are very active in radio and X-ray output; we call these "quasi-stellar radio objects" or "quasars".
Is it not at least remotely possible that these facts are related? My physics degree is 30 years old and I have only sort-of kept up with the news, but it seems at least possible that those gamma ray bursts and quasars are symptoms of the formation or expansion of those black holes. Nearby galaxies seem quiescent by comparison, so since our observations of the very distant objects are also views back in time, I think it likely that those gamma ray bursts are more like childish temper tantrums, and that our own Milky Way has grown up and matured and is now ready to create new life of its own.
It's entirely possible that life on Earth arose about as early as it could have, and that we may be among the "senior" intelligent lifeforms around. Or, perhaps we're entirely alone, which carries with it its own philosophical baggage. It's interesting to speculate, but it's foolish to make definitive statements when we are 99.9% ignorant of what's actually out there.
An additional 5 pounds in mass at launch would have required many times that much in additional fuel. Ounces are important in spacecraft design, especially when you're planning on a 10-15 year timeline. The ESA probably made the best decisions that they could, and second-guessing is idle speculation.
Any of my "it's too bad that..." sentiments have to be balanced with the extraordinary achievement of launching the Rosetta probe, of getting it to the comet, of actually LANDING on the thing, and getting any pictures at all from it. And if it finally spins back into the sunlight, we may still get stuff from it. Especially since the harpoons apparently didn't function, and that it has an effective weight on the order of grams, and that comets do generally release gas and dust into space. Philae could easily be carried back into space with any puff of gas. It probably won't happen, but..... Who knows?
Slashdot Mirror
You're right; all of the people who go to Mars will die.
Of course, all the people who stay here on Earth are ALSO going to die. And while it's quite likely that the ones who go to Mars are likely to die sooner than the ones who stay behind, that isn't quite so certain - and we'll learn lots of stuff about Mars, and about ourselves, in the attempt.
In his book "The Right Stuff", author Tom Wolfe noted that all of the streets at Edwards Air Force Base were named for dead test pilots. Getting out of bed and leaving home, and going into space, or out to sea, or even across town; these things can be dangerous. We can't attempt to avoid all risks and still remain human.
If it's that important, rent a small safe-deposit box at the local bank. Copy as much as you like onto a portable hard drive, and put it in there.
Our substantial magnetic field may be due to the merging of the iron cores of the Proto-Earth and Theia. Earth is the most dense planet in the solar system, and from what we know of Mars and Venus, we suspect that our iron core is far larger than the other terrestrial planets.
Venus has a super-thick poisonous atmosphere; it's at least possible that our large Moon has, over a period of 4+ billion years, "skimmed away" enough of our atmosphere to have protected the Earth from a similar fate.
Of course, we only think that our atmosphere is right because we evolved here, in this atmosphere; if the atmosphere had been different, we would have evolved differently, and (had intelligent life developed at all) we'd think that THAT was the right sort of atmosphere.
Why should the material composition of Theia have differed all that much from the Proto-Earth? They formed from the same planetary nebula, and at relatively similar distances from the Sun; shouldn't they have been similar in composition? And how can anyone state with any certitude, 4+ billion years later, how much of the merged Earth's crust was from Theia, and how much from the proto-Earth, and whether the lunar material was one, the other, or mostly mixed? It was a long time ago, and the Early Heavy Bombardment period would have stirred things up further. In fact, it's not unlikely that the Early Heavy Bombardment material was long-period debris from the original collision.
If Theia had formed substantially closer, or substantially farther away from the Sun, then the debris from the collision could hardly have remained close enough that the shards would coalesce to form the Moon. The differing orbital velocities would have seen to that.
" In short, removing it from the Internet would be impossible."
Not true. It would merely be "very difficult".
Finding a single actual THOUGHT inside the brain of Diane Feinstein; THAT would be impossible. That ancient bint has enriched herself stealing from the American treasury by persuading other government officials to overpay for her husband's corrupt thievery. She is the epitome of the self-serving crooked politician.
I realize I'm being quaint and old fashioned, and that nobody in D.C. cares at all about that ancient parchment, but I cannot see that "revenge porn" is anything that could be affected by the eighteen "Enumerated Powers" listed in the Constitution. These are the only legitimate powers that the Federal government has.
Of course, 80% of what the Federal government does violates the Constitution, so feel free to ignore me. But I think the STATES should prosecute "revenge porn" viciously.
Give them American citizenship, for this reason if for no other; when Belgium and Germany and France are all consumed by the Islamic State, when it imposes sharia law, they'll have someplace to flee to. Yes, it's possible that Belgian citizenship might get them entry to the US when darkness falls (and it may still happen here anyway) but the USA hasn't got the best record for accepting political refugees from Europe.
If they are American citizens, they're part of the family. And as Erma Bombeck once wrote, being family means that when you knock on the door, they have to let you in. (And if that wasn't Bombeck, it should have been.)
Perhaps it's unlikely - almost as unlikely as Islamic terrorists shooting up a French magazine office and a kosher deli. But it's worth considering.
That's part of it. The other parts were talking tough about Assad in Syria (and not DOING anything), and killing Khadaffi in Libya.
Vietnam: Crashmarik is exactly correct. The United States _won_ the war in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were powerless, and the US left. But then the Soviets spent 2 years giving the North everything they needed, and then the North attacked again. The Dems in the Senate banned any additional military aid to the South. The South fell to the communists.
That's one of the reasons why ISIS is so fierce now; they know that the US is an inconsistent ally, especially with this administration. We're not going to do anything about it. (Of course, that's what the Germans and the Japanese were counting in in 1940 and 1941.)
Only a thousand? There should be a thousand A DAY.
Medical "science" is finally approaching what ought to have been obvious; that the "epidemic" of asthma and allergies are most likely our own doing. Our homes are TOO CLEAN for children!
Babies have fairly primitive immune systems; like every other part of a baby, it needs to be trained. When babies crawl in the dirt and get exposed to "nature", their immune systems come to recognize what's normal. At some age - about a year or so - their immune systems begin to react to "new" things in the environment, and begin to fight them. So dust or pollen become a problem, especially if mommy has been keeping the house spotless and immaculately clean. Never rolled around on the floor with a dog? Never ever eaten peanut butter? By age 4, you're going to be deathly allergic to them.
Mothers; take your babies out into the yard! Let them crawl in the grass, like us old folks did when WE were babies. They need the vitamin D to prevent rickets, and they need exposure to earth so that they don't develop allergies to the Earth.
Science fiction writer L. Neal Smith has suggested that our descendants born on orbital habitats may never be able to come to Earth; they'll be allergic to it. It may be a matter of shipping a few tons of dirt and dust up to spread in the air filters, just to ensure that our grandchildren can come visit!
Fascinating! Why has the Flashlight app used 6.5MB of data? I've now turned that off. Thanks!
Neither Bush nor his team created the banner; the "Mission Accomplished" was for the SHIP, whose deployment had been successful. You lacked context, so your error is understandable.
Granted, for the President to give a public speech in front of that context-less banner was bad politics, but we've experienced far worse from the incumbent. For example, failing to send a representative - even the otherwise useless Sloe-Joe Biden - to Paris after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but flying himself to Saudi Arabia for the funeral of the king of the Saudis, Definitely bad politics - and bad international policy, as well.
More free expression is always better, and censorship is generally wrong. And self-serving.
But your other statements are flat-out hallucinations. Bush never claimed that the war was over, but for a couple of years, the level of violence in Iraq was at least dramatically reduced. ISIS didn't come into existence until Obama declared that he would withdraw all troops by a certain date, no matter what. Now that ISIS is doing whatever they please, Obama is waging a pinprick war against it, and trying to appease the real aggressors in Iran.
If I had mod points, I'd mod this up. Excellently said!
A photo of the incineration of the Jordanian pilot, with the legend
"Waterboarding no longer bothers me."
Warning: Graphic Photo, and general political incorrectness
http://www.theospark.net/2015/...
We used to wonder what in the hell was making these ultra-bright quasars; now we believe that they are "active" galactic cores which are in the process of forming a supermassive black hole in the centers. It's possible that two such black holes might form and orbit their mutual centers of gravity, but eventually they would merge. This merging is probably the source of the gamma ray bursts.
Planets couldn't form until enough hydrogen had been fused into metals and expelled by supernova. Complex life couldn't form until there were enough different heavier elements. It's at least possible that early races and civilizations were exterminated by GRBs when their galaxies were new; it's even possible that intelligent life formed near the Galactic core of our own galaxy before the supermassive black hole formed. (Larry Niven may have been right! Thrints!) They were all killed in the GRB when our own galaxy shined like a quasar. Now that the Milky Way has settled down into gentle middle age, other races can develop.
It may be unlikely, but it's possible that humans are the most advanced of these third-generation beings.
The "open office" plan has also been MOCKED for almost as long. cf. "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", a Monty Python spoof in which office drones in exactly that sort of "open office" make the office manager walk the plank, and then sail their office building into pirate battles against other insurance companies. Even by Monty Python standards, it was silly. Almost as silly as "open offices".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I once had a job in a much smaller version of that; one big cubicle with workstations at all four corners. Turn into the corner to your PC to actually "work"; turn into the center to collaborate or discuss things. That worked all right, but I cannot imagine being on the phone talking to customers in an "open office" environment.
I'm not the guy making the emotional "WE HAVE TO DO THIS IMMEDIATELY OR THE WORLD WILL BURN" arguments. Science isn't a thing; it's a method, a technique for discovering the truth.
A scientist will share his raw data so that other scientists can replicate his work. Warmists have not done so. Scientists will reveal their algorithms and explain their assumptions. Warmists have not done this, either. Scientists don't invent data, or make bogus and conflicting claims about their data. Warmists have. Scientists will attempt to make predictions about the future, and if their predictions are falsified, they modify their predictions. Warmists have been predicting greatly increased tropical storms and disappearing north polar ice caps. Neither has happened.
Warmists actively manipulate the "peer review" process, and attempt to have opposing views banned. Warmists claim that the government should hunt down and execute "deniers". OK, that's from the more hysterical faction, but it has been said.
https://devilsneuroscientist.w...
The problem with the notion of "science denier" is that is entirely too close in concept to "heretic". The AGW advocates are entirely religious in their zeal, and their religious belief is that the End Is Near, and We Must All Repent!
Remember, before Al Gore got into politics and invented his own Church of Warmism, he had flunked out of Divinity School. Being the High Priest of Warming, he has invented his own religion - and every religion has to have heretics.
Weather is inherently unpredictable; Sacramento, CA (where I live) has already had more rainfall since December 1 than all of last year. El Nino events are even less predictable than "average" weather is. Meteorologists are only beginning to understand the underlying patterns of an El Nino. Is this going to be an El Nino year? I wouldn't place bets either way. The Japanese have a word, "modoki", which means "the same, only different". At least one prediction is for an "El Nino Modoki".
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc...
The NASA report today (based on data collected earlier in the year) says that California would need 11 TRILLION gallons of rain to make up for the drought. Entirely coincidentally, there was a bit (on the generally-unreliable TV news weather) yesterday that said that this year's rainstorms dropped 10 trillion gallons on the state so far this month. Not all in the right places, of course; parts of Napa County were getting an inch an hour, which is nearly Philippines style rain. The ski resorts in the mountains are rejoicing in a couple of FEET of new snow.
I'm all in favor of increasing water storage, but there are too many Greens in San Francisco who want to tear down what we already have. For example, there's a great place on the North Fork of the American River near Auburn, CA, and they were about a third of the way into preparing for a dam, when the eco-freaks decided that since California is earthquake country (true enough, but not near Auburn) that we shouldn't build any dams. Then they wanted to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and tear down the dam - despite the fact that most of San Francisco's water comes from Hetch Hetchy!
I guess they thought that unicorns would fly into SF with magical water spigots. Which wouldn't be the strangest thing that they believe....
Certainly, flat-rate water has been a major factor in wastage of water in California. We only got water meters installed here in Sacramento about 4 years ago, which has resulted in a tripling of our water rates - and quadrupling of the pay to the bureaucrats who get sinecures on the various water boards.
But California is a boom-and-bust state when it comes to water. We have 3-5 year drought periods that alternate with floods, such as the floods of 1986 and 1997. If this actually turns into an El Nino year (the forecasts for this are mixed, but generally unreliable either way) this may be another flood year. Folsom Lake and Lake Shasta were at historic lows 3 weeks ago, and have been at least partially refilled since December 1. And it's raining right now, with more rain predicted to continue through Friday.
How ENTIRELY coincidental is it that the weatherman here in Sacramento, CA reported yesterday that the storms since December 1 have dumped 10 trillion gallons of water on the Golden State!
Granted, only about 10% of that has fallen in catchment areas that feed into our many reservoirs and lakes, and rainfall doesn't percolate into the ground water for years - but this is a STUNNING example of the AlGore Effect.
I'm an agnostic Jew; I'm not certain that God exists. But I _AM_ certain that He has a great sense of humor, and delights in confounding pompous braggarts.
We're pretty sure that most large galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the center. We know that some very-VERY-far away astronomical objects are very active in radio and X-ray output; we call these "quasi-stellar radio objects" or "quasars".
Is it not at least remotely possible that these facts are related? My physics degree is 30 years old and I have only sort-of kept up with the news, but it seems at least possible that those gamma ray bursts and quasars are symptoms of the formation or expansion of those black holes. Nearby galaxies seem quiescent by comparison, so since our observations of the very distant objects are also views back in time, I think it likely that those gamma ray bursts are more like childish temper tantrums, and that our own Milky Way has grown up and matured and is now ready to create new life of its own.
It's entirely possible that life on Earth arose about as early as it could have, and that we may be among the "senior" intelligent lifeforms around. Or, perhaps we're entirely alone, which carries with it its own philosophical baggage. It's interesting to speculate, but it's foolish to make definitive statements when we are 99.9% ignorant of what's actually out there.
An additional 5 pounds in mass at launch would have required many times that much in additional fuel. Ounces are important in spacecraft design, especially when you're planning on a 10-15 year timeline. The ESA probably made the best decisions that they could, and second-guessing is idle speculation.
Any of my "it's too bad that..." sentiments have to be balanced with the extraordinary achievement of launching the Rosetta probe, of getting it to the comet, of actually LANDING on the thing, and getting any pictures at all from it. And if it finally spins back into the sunlight, we may still get stuff from it. Especially since the harpoons apparently didn't function, and that it has an effective weight on the order of grams, and that comets do generally release gas and dust into space. Philae could easily be carried back into space with any puff of gas. It probably won't happen, but ..... Who knows?