Rosetta landed

Yes, quite a remarkable achievement. I love this space exploration stuff, too.

Spreading democracy?

I wonder if Bruce Willis was aboard with a mission to blow the comet up?  

Wise men have google maps btw....

When they start drilling for water, the Newtonian reaction of any water fountain will blast this comet off it's original path and into a spiral towards Earth.............

"Friends of the Earth" will have to move up a notch !

Very impressed they managed to land a craft on a comet.

BUT. At the end of the day, it's just a total waste of time, effort and money, as was the building of the large hadron collider.

(Not as much of a waste of money as searching for MH370.)

Technological achievement can satisfy a high-level human "need" for some people in the same way that art and beauty can for others. I personally find the notion of being able to land on a comet profound.

But there is also much gain in terms of technology spin-off. The composite materials industry was basically borne from the Apollo space program (or at least given a huge boost). Theoretical and experimental particle physics and quantum mechanics has given us our modern electronic world within which I am typing this reply. I could go on.

Just as well mankind didn't block every chance of improvement because it was a waste of money. Still at least you could bemoan it by chiselling your bile on the wall of your cave.

Probably not though as you probably blocked the invention of language.

Very impressed that after being launched over ten years ago, Rosetta still works and was able to deploy its lander.  Acoording to its Wikipedia page, there are lots of experiments to carry out, but the one that caught my attention is this:

Previous observations have shown that comets contain complex organic compounds.^{[64][65][66][67]} These are molecules that are rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These are the elements that make up nucleic acids and amino acids, essential ingredients for life as we know it. Comets are thought to have delivered a vast quantity of water to Earth, and they may have also seeded Earth with organic molecules.^[68] Rosetta and Philae will also search for organic molecules, nucleic acids (the building blocks of DNA and RNA) and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) by sampling and analysing the comet's nucleus and coma cloud of gas and dust,^[68] helping assess the contribution comets made to the beginnings of life on Earth.^[64]

An astonishing achievement and at a billion pounds or so fantastic value for money. Can't wait to see the pics and find out if there's water or amino acids there.

Sounds like Popeye.

I tried to resist but failed: why is developing a Statement amplifier at 150k apiece more meaningful than    landing on a rock moving along an elliptical orbit at 60,000 kilometers per hour or checking our understanding of the fundamental laws of Physics in LHC? In all cases we try to push back Nature's limits on us poor mortals. 

A good technological achievement,

shame they dropped a clanger when it bounced into a crater...

I don't think anybody is suggesting developing the Statement amplifier is more meaningful than landing on a comet. In fact everybody's in agreement that landing on the comet is an outstanding achievement.

However, the whole reason for landing on the comet was so somebody could claim, "we where the first to land a craft on a comet". The cock and bull story claiming the origin of life on the earth could be discovered, is simply a justification for spending so much time and money.

In fact, who cares where the water on earth came from.

The scientists continued brave faces and faux positivity is painful to watch. As ever it's the images, resultant awe and philosophical recalibration that is the most enduring legacy of such adventures. Not the 'samples'.

G

Well the next landing on a comet will occur after I retire assuming I survive that long.

This was a remarkable effort, but given the problems on home planet Earth, perhaps it could have waited until we - as the human race - had solved: This being human over-population, which is the elephant in the room that no World-class leader has yet dared even to mention ...

ATB from Georg

FFS George, change the bleedin' record! (Or in your case, should that be acoustically recorded 78?)

Not to worry, George. The human over-population problem will solve itself in due time. A population collapse is inevitable. Space exploration is a much more intellectually stimulating topic to discuss.

Kevin,

Please understand, that I want the human race to be active and thriving in five generations time, and actually as long as the Earth can support human life, which is not Eternity ...

Unless the over-population of humans and therefore a style of living that is urban ... is addressed within the two or three next generations, then we might as well forget the idea of landing on comets.

It is a question of honestly addressing priorities.

As a journalist [I assume that is a correct assessment, but may be wrong], surely you should be all for free speech rather than trying to dismiss views that you find uncomfortable.

Probably because you see the truth of it, but would rather become an ostrich and bury you head in the sand about the ONE BIG ISSUE that will determine the survival of the human race ....

Please act more liberally about the freedom to state views you disagree with and find uncomfortable.

Argue against them, by all means, but don't deny the fact that they can and must be stated ...

ATB from George

After all of the cheerleaders lose their breath, we find out that the piece of crap bounced around and then landed 1 kilometre away in a "half pissed" posture, with one of it's legs sticking up and it's solar panels non-functional. What a great achievement...

We have better things to spend our money on.

Yeah what a load of crap, the thing (Comet 67P) is only two miles across, only has one ten-thousandth of the Earth's gravity, is only travelling at about 34,000 mph and is only 300 million miles away, it's nothing much really to get excited about, no achievement at all really, a kid could do better, everyone's getting excited over nothing and yes, the Rosetta mission cost a billion euros, we could have spent it on something useful, like 1/00th of Trident or a 50th of HS2 or something like that or teaching people the difference between "its" and "it's" or giving it to me...

[falls over, frothing at mouth, continues to rant incomprehensibly]

What are you on about? Nobody said you weren't allowed to express an opinion, I was merely making a comment on the dreary predictability with which you shoehorn your views about population control into just about any thread going.

What makes your intervention here even more bizarre than usual is that you're conflating two issues that are completely unrelated.

If you want to solve what you see as "overpopulation" then you allow women more control over their bodies, build a welfare safety net and decent health provision, educate people, give them a reassurance that they won't need huge families to provide for them in old age, stop the oppressive meddling of priests and mullahs. It is no coincidence that in largely secular countries (principally Western Europe and Japan) with high degrees of economic development and education, plus female emancipation and a welfare provision, birthrates fall.

Rather than moaning about spending a comparatively small amount of money on a stunning and potentially hugely important scientific and technological achievement (which has also provided thousands of people throughout Europe with employment, has captured the world's imagination and provided a rare piece of good news in what has been a pretty depressing year, and which will hopefully inspire countless scores of future scientists), why not comment on the religious, political and economic systems which really lie behind the overpopulation? (And maybe - here's a thought - also do it in a thread where it's a bit more relevant?)

Perhaps you can't, because that would force you to rise above the glib reiteration of ill-thought-out waffle; which is perhaps why you continue, as you have done for for years, to snipe at scientific and exploratory endeavour.

And don't flatter yourself - I don't find your views "uncomfortable", so you're not the fearless contrarian warrior, wielding the sword of a truth no-one else dare express, you obviously imagine yourself to be. I merely find them (said views) odd, inchoate and completely irrelevant in the context of a thread about a space probe (but hey - that's the Internet!). Rather than making me uncomfortable, the philistinism and lack of imagination expressed in many of your posts never fails to both astound and depress me.

A remarkable achievement.

Meanwhile, I wonder if the affordable housing slated for our nearby town will ever be built, how many wards and clinics my local hospital will close to make it through the rest of the financial year, if everyone in the world will ever have clean drinking water, and on a more parochial note, if my post will turn up before teatime.

Yes, it is remarkable indeed.