GregA

Gotta love how a certain faction of people will smear anyone who disagrees with them. This is probably the biggest failure of social media. Comets are not made of what everyone was expecting them to be made of. It is a discovery of a huge magnitude, huge overwhelming science success. The only failure is that ESA is doggedly sticking to a political point of view on science, in an effort to not offend people who have spent their life on a theory of comets as dirty snow balls, and physicists who refuse to accept that space has an electrical charge, in the face of now overwhelming science. Scientists should be better than to divide into red vs blue tribes like this.

Use an explosive to fire a nail or piton into the rock or regolith. vent the explosive so it provides all the needed forces to set the nail. Small light and fail safe. The problem they are having with Rosetta is that they designed it to land on a surface that is mostly water ice. If Rosetta had been launched after Deep Impact it would have informed their design choices. They would have known the surface of comets has no water ice, and is made of carbonaceous chondrite. They were working with the best information they had at the time,

Galactic scale extinction events, thus explaining the Fermi Paradox.

Comets are negatively electrically charged. As they move through the Suns electric field, a sputtering process carves material off of the surface. A standard asteroid spends no time in the outer solar system, as a result, it is electrically neutral with regards to the electrical field of the sun.

Water is liberated when you heat Carbonacious condrite, which is composed of about 22% water. This also happens to match exactly what Deep impact found in the debris field. There is no water ice on comets. The evidence is now overwhelming. Edit: mod is this post ok?

What part of.... there is no water ice, are you misunderstanding? Also from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_(spacecraft) we read this from their results... "Initial results were surprising as the material excavated by the impact contained more dust and less ice than had been expected." These new results just confirm those earlier results that all the water is tied up in carbonaceous chondrites. Now we have absolute and total proof that this thing is not made up of 20% water ice. Which is vastly different from "dirty snow ball" theory btw.

hmmm no. IT is pretty clear that what is going on around comets is electrical in nature. That the comet is apparently entirely composed of carbonaceous chondrites is the smoking gun. The comet has picked up a positive charge from the outer solar system. As it gets to the inner solar system the rocks are broken down by a sputtering process. Thus the liberated water we can see in the coma. ESA is of course going to be very careful and deliberate as they release science. But this comet is literally an earth shattering new revelation.

Well then again. The auger feet would be for snow drift like surfaces, the harpoons would be for ice like surfaces. Because if there is any harpoon device anywhere that fires projectiles into concrete or stone, I am unaware. /wild speculation The harpoons did fire, pushed the lander off of the rock, and that is why the craft bounced so high? /end wild speculation But I am inclined to trust ESA when they say the harpoons didn't fire.

Those auger shaped ones that are on the lander? Yes. Yes, an auger shaped drill bit is incapable of of penetrating rock. If I were drilling in rock or concrete I would use either a masonry bit, with a hardened steel tip. Or alternatively I would use a core drill, with a diamond carbide tip. I would never use an auger bit on rock. The auger bit I use, I use to cut holes in ice when I go ice fishing.

LOL. Yes, thats why they put harpoons and ice screws onto the probe. Because ESA thought the surface would be made of obviously carbonaceous materials. You guys are a chuckle a minute.

The Comet is not made of ice. Everyone thought it would be made of ice. They were wrong. This mission is going to rewrite all of particle physics. They obviously have very basic theory about the cosmos wrong. Particle physics is officially a crank science now.

Proposed new thread rules. You get to be critical of ESA for their landing on comet technique when you can stick a "landed on comet" trick of your own devising... No, Kerbal missions don't count. Way to go ESA!!! You advanced landing on Comet science more than anyone else in history! Well done. On the other hand, shame on planetary science, and particle physicists. You guys need to step up your game. You so far have failed to give us a basic reason why every small object has a double lobe shape like that, and provide a basic mechanism for why there is water in that there coma when there is obviously none on the comet.

/spacexfanboy The SpaceX Falcon Heavy, is three Falcon 9 rockets bolted together with struts and cross feed. When it is launched later this year, it will be the heaviest lifter devised, but for the Saturn rocket that launched Apollo Missions. However IRL, the amount of fuel that is needed to feed a rocket makes SpaceX's cross feed only a partial solution. The center rocket will still be throttled down until first stage separation, to conserve fuel in the center tank. If Kerbal wanted to make fuel cross feed more realistic, they would simply limit the rate which fuel is capable of flowing through the crossfeed. But it is an efficient way to make bigger rockets (IRL, I am not going to argue with SpaceX's methods, but then Im a fanboy) it add nominal weight to rockets, it uses the existing engine turbo pumps to move the fuel around. As far as the aerodynamics is concerned... I was a Space Shuttle fanboy for many years, and I have spoken to numerous NASA engineers and astronauts about this... The space shuttle had ~horrible~ sub hypersonic aerodynamic qualities. They deliberately launched the Space Shuttle at sub optimal rocket equation speeds until something they called MaxQ to compensate for this. I qualify with, I am not an aerospace engineer... The reason Asparagus staging works so well in Kerbal, and not irl is because Kerbal rocket hardware is a much larger percentage of total vehicle weight than IRL. IRL, there is not as much advantage to building with an Asparagus design.

If I were sitting on an asteroid falling towards periapsis, then right at periapsis I pushed myself of of the asteroid, would I pick up kinetic energy greater than my strength in pushing off the asteroid? I think I am fundamentally misunderstanding this somehow. Does the energy from the Oberth effect come from leaving mass behind at periapsis, that I carried towards periapsis?

Sounds like they for got to set up their Action Groups when they were in the VAB, and are having trouble right clicking on them because of the poor lighting and dark colors. I think if they just install the Action Groups Extended mod, they can set up the action group while they are in flight. Anyone have an email for ESA so I can tell them the fix?

With lobes on top!

If I use status quo science it is provable. You get there by deduction. All possible quantum effects have been ruled out. The standard model is complete. There are no more as yet unseen particles that can account for the motions of galaxies. There is no longer any hope for WIMPS, MACHOS, or MOND. All those areas of research are now closed off. Therefore, Dark Matter comes from somewhere, or Scientists misunderstand the universe in fundamental ways. Im not even going to touch Dark Energy... But it has similar implications. It is not a question of if they exist. It is a question of how many, and what kind. What is the nature of the Bulk, can we probe it from inside this universe, is that even possible? Clearly gravity can travel across the universal barrier, can anything else? This is the same technique that physicists used to determine that Inflation had to be true btw...

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-wasnt-higgs-particle.html#nRlv I don't know how to feel about this. They want to ditch LHC and build an even larger device, in an attempt to find even heavier particles, even though the LHC has found butkus in those domains. Notice how they are all diplomatic about it though? Carefully pointing that Higgs is the wrong weight, and the failure to find more particles... It matters because, the Standard Model predicts a whole bunch of heavier particles. With the discovery that there are no heavier particles, all the theories about what Dark Matter, and Dark energy go out the window, because in all likely hood they reside in different universes. Without dark matter and dark energy, all of modern cosmology pretty much falls apart. (It all fell apart back in the 90's with the discovery of tired light aka accelerating expansion but I digress) But more to the point, about 60 years has now been spent on a dead end area of research, with little to show for it. Well except for the spin off technologies, but I think we could have developed wifi for a lot less than 200 billion dollars if we really tried... Oh and if anyone is interested, a statistical noise filter is used to make GPS really accurate. Your little GPS receivers don't have the capability to run all the tensor calculus needed to guesstimate your location while taking longitude and altitude into account. A number of papers find the effects of Relativity in the statistical table that is used, but it is really small. Apparently there have been a whole host of experiments to find small scale frame dragging as well, but they have all ended with negative results. About the only verified by relativity science I can find is the Procession of Mercury, but even that is questionable. Lots of incongruous results were thrown out just like WMAP. Science as it turns out is an imperfect science...

No you did not find the Higgs Boson. To find the Higgs Boson you needed to find heavier particles as well(for supersymetry). The results of LHC are only consistent with Higgs if you engage in histrionics. The only reason I concede the signal that was found at LHC is the Higgs that that correctly or incorrectly, everyone is calling it Higgs. Never mind that all the qualifications for it to be Higgs were all failed. It is too light, there were no heavier particles found. Period. Full stop. That is not science, that is politics. Also, lol, you don't know how GPS works. Hint, it is popular mythology that relativity has ~anything~ to do with it. That you do not know this makes me seriously doubt your claimed credentialing. LOL. The airforce calibrates the clocks and locations manually on all the satellites every day. Simple trigonometry is all the math that your little GPS device does. Things like Humidity have a far larger effect on drift than Relativity. LOL. Also, MRI is the result of a THEORY FAILURE. MRI was discovered on accident. LOL. Also, the entire history of IC's has been about refinements of photography, and has nothing to with with quantum mechanics other than a post hoc description of how semiconductors works. You repeatedly fail, yet you want us to believe that you are a PHd. Im sorry, but you are not nearly as smart as you think you are...

Phil Plaits description of time dilation near a black hole was wildly incomplete. He utterly failed to consider the effects of frame dragging within a spinning black holes ergosphere, which are quite large. Large enough that an object merely as dense as our Sun requires us to account for frame dragging to predict the procession of Mercury. In the movie they describe it as an older black hole, which means it would have picked of the angular momentum of all the matter it ever consumed. Meaning that it could easily have a ergosphere large enough to effect the flow of time, without increasing its mass. Also, Larry Niven wrote a novel about people living in the accretion disk of a Neutron Star. In the forward the author goes to great lengths to explain the mathematics of this, that it is at least plausible. (Integral Trees iirc) I stand by my earlier assessment that Phil Plait is a partisan hack, and he attempting to blind everyone with science, in an effort to torpedo this movies politics.

, I know with absolute certainty that you and I are equal peers in all matters of obtaining, handling and machining neutronium. That both you and I have had exactly the same impact in the technology of dealing with this exotic substance.

Hey kids, this is what the old timey physicists who believe in superstitious ideas like "Supersymetry" looks like. Also, I don't spend large amount of time studying sciences that that have no basis what so ever for describing 96% of the quasi-observable matter in the cosmos, theoretical or otherwise. (because all the candidates have been eliminated by a Higgs that weighs too little, and a total failure to find heavier particles)

/points and laughs Bwhahahahah inflation!!!! hahahahaha. Oh thats rich!

Ahhh yes, then you know that LHC is a failure by its own definition. Before launch they defined failure as "failing to find particles heavier than Higgs" which is exactly what happened. Now go back and read the Higgs announce again. Look at what gauge theory said the weight of Higgs would be, now look at what QM said Higgs would weigh. Notice that? Look Im sorry you backed the wrong horse, but multiverse is totally freaking confirmed.

Higgs is too lite. LHC failed to find heavier particles add up to smoking gun evidence. Multiverse to totally freaking confirmed. The only questions are why kind, and how many. Anyone who says otherwise is an anti-science denier.