Philae has landed (bbc.com)

On top of that it's the biggest acchievement of the European Space Agency.

And landing on a 4 km small rock 500,000,000 km from Earth after 12 years of travelling is in itself remarkable.

Edit: Several downvotes even though I tried to make it clear I'm FOR this kind of spending. My problem is basically how do you explain to someone on the street why spending $1bn on a mission to a comet is worth it when we don't know what benefits it will bring.

I wouldn't be a programmer with the space program, it inspired a life long love of science and technology.

Sarcasm aside, this is more due to Geneva Conventions rather than actual lack of Death Crystals on the moon.

A senator (ENLOW) has put an anonymous hold on building a supercollider, the white house deputy communications director (SAM) wants to help his old professor (MILLGATE) get the budget approved for it, and this is near the end of the episode:

  ENLOW
  I'm a Democrat, Sam. How's a 20 billion dollar astronomy lecture gonna help
  the President get elected?
  
  SAM
  It won't. "We've discovered a seamless, intellectual framework for the
  universe" isn't a good 30-second spot.
  
  ENLOW
  If only we could only say what benefit this thing has, but no one's been 
  able to do that.
  
  MILLGATE
  That's because great achievement has no road map. The X-ray's pretty good. 
  So is penicillin. Neither were discovered with a practical objective in 
  mind. I mean, when the electron was discovered in 1897, it was useless. And 
  now, we have an entire world run by electronics. Haydn and Mozart never 
  studied the classics. They couldn't. They invented them.
  
  SAM
  Discovery.

  MILLGATE
  What?

  SAM
  That's the thing that you were... Discovery is what. That's what this is used 
  for. 
  It's for discovery.

Which makes me wonder, since this is HN after all, if Rust wouldn't be an ideal candidate for coding this kind of layer in the future. Maybe a compiler targeting VxWorks is in progress somewhere.. ? :))

Science fiction has some great depictions of interstellar communications, such as my favorite by Vernor Vinge, the Hugo award-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. It is a most excellent space opera that prominently features an interstellar system like Usenet as part of the plot [3], as well as superhuman intelligence, physics, and all sorts of other wonderful bits.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep

I'm not sure how I stand on "w/ a great language one does great things" vs "great engineers do great things with any tools they have" debate.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/live/...

IMHO, It is quite simply a travesty that there is still so much absolute poverty and deaths (through malnutrition easily curable and/or preventable diseases) in the third world. Many of these problems were solved in the early 20th century- It is a lack of political will of governments and the collective apathy of its citizens, who are engrossed in their own first-world problems. To answer the xkcd comic: Yes. 15 years should be enough to at least halve world-wide deaths due to hunger and diseases like Malaria and Cholera, If the citizens of the first world make it a voter issue. Such endeavours will pay themselves multiple times over. (increased human output, new trading markets for companies, reduced population growth) And you don't need to sacrifice funding for scientific research to do it(coughs military budgets).

A cursory Google search returns all kinds of counter-points to your claim. If you really do believe this, perhaps some brief research of your own will change your mind..

However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! It is massively televized, broadcasted, discussed on social media and news aggregators. This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. And we need them inspired, motivated and engaged to build a better world for all humanity.

So yeah, it has at least ONE benefit.

You are way too short sighted if you cannot imagine the enormous benefits of having dedicated engineers, scientists and researchers working on difficult problems that don't have model-able, short-term returns. The exact types of problems that people only concerned with short-term balance sheets avoid like the plague. The exact types of problems that propel our entire civilization into new ages of discovery and technology.

They're scientific research, not 'toys'.

You have the right to feel however you want, but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad; the internet wouldn't even exist for us to have this discussion.

Landing on comets and knowing what materials are there (and how to detect that from distance) will eventually let humanity explore solar system. In next 10000 years it's almost sure there will be at least one global cataclysm (huge asteroid impact, ice age, global warming, methane-producing bacteria boom, some supervulcaon could go off). It's just statistics, we're in borrowed time anyway.

How much would you pay to save human race?

Space exploration for it's own sake is a self-perpetuating relic of the cold war.

There's a famous example where a US Senator asked a similar question of a research physicist prior to the establishment of Fermilab, specifically tailored toward defense application [1].

SENATOR PASTORE. Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race?

DR. WILSON. Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about.

In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.

To address your concerns more directly: Basic and exploratory research pushes scientists to extract the very highest performance one can get from known technology. On occasion, that technology can do something exceptional (precision timekeeping, GPS, vaccines, medical imaging, etc.). The highly-motivated people who do this work tend to be willing to do it at low salaries and with limited chance for advancement, simply because they love the field. You can think of it as a low-cost government-run VC fund that aims for the occasional spectacular payoff at multi-decade timescales.

Another key benefit is education: research funding underpins the post-graduate education of most people in the physical scientists. Funding basic research, which companies won't usually touch, furthers the continuous supply of a top-notch skilled workforce for industry nationwide.

Furthermore, in many fields, retaining a trained and knowledgeable corps of scientists is an efficient way to retain the capability to respond to sudden and important societal needs (Manhattan Project, Ebola, asteroid mitigation, Fukushima, etc.).

I'm biased, as taxpayer dollars pay for my work, but I think you're getting a reasonable-to-excellent return on your investment.

[1] http://history.fnal.gov/testimony.html

For anyone who's wondering, we haven't banned this account. What happens is that when karma gets low enough to be in outlier territory, comments get auto-killed. This is a longstanding anti-troll measure.

In the future, we plan to have a "moderated" status for comments, rather than "dead", so that the community will be able to fix cases where the commenter is not a troll or has corrected their ways. In the meantime, if you ever notice something being [dead] unfairly, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is usually enough to correct it. (Edit: but do please allow for the variable latency of our email stack. We will get back to you, but there's no SLA on when.)

"Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off.

So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of.

And then a comet hit them and they all died.

* Further image analysis has shown that Comet 67P likely has very low strength, perhaps in areas even just powders held together by van der Waals forces

* The Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO) has clearly detected water (+ isotopes) in the coma of the comet. MIRO results indicate that the top layer is dusty and loose.

* There is a clear thermal signature from the neck of 67P that doesn't match expected results.

* Magnetic field variations in the neighborhood of 67P pose an interesting puzzle that will hopefully shed more info about the core (http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/11/the-singing-comet/).

There were also a few sessions on other comets that have made the news (e.g., Siding Spring which had a close encounter with Mars recently)[4]-[6].

To address the issue of why any of this is important at all. It hits at the heart of our quest to understand the world around us. Although it's often hard to pinpoint everyday impact of this and related research, it is undoubtedly the case that it forms a vital piece of the puzzle of where we came from and where we're going.

[1] Rosetta 1: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876531/

[2] Rosetta 2 / Comet Coma Chemistry and Nuclear Outbursts: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876560/

[3] Hot Facts About Cool Comets: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876955/

[4] Comets K1 (PanStarrs) and A1 (Siding Spring): https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876530/

[5] Sun-grazing Comet ISON: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876567/

[6] Comet Dust, Tails, Trails, and Oddballs: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876561/

Just to be clear.. Your issue is not that money from taxes is spent on scientific research and space exploration, but really that you have to pay taxes?

Some people just don't find value in sustaining. This is why we are no longer hunters and gatherers or simple plot farms anymore. Is this good or bad? That's not really a good question, because it is an is; it's neither good nor bad.

A very large percentage of people believe that having a functioning government is necessary and taxation is a necessary component for this. There are no examples of large populations of humans (many millions for the definition of large) living well without government. There are lots of examples of the reverse being true. That is, finding places where large populations live quite well with a government. Correlation not implying causation and all that, one can reasonably conclude that a functioning government, and hence taxation, is a necessity for large populations to live well.

There are lots of examples of functioning governments performing badly and subjecting large populations to miserable conditions. This means that people need to be vigilant with regard to the governance. It's good for people to question the decisions their governments make and people at the fringe can provide nice counter balances to group think and a herd mentality. Calling taxation theft might be a bit too extreme though.

Overall I think your view of each individual funding themselves only what they feel deserves funding is highly impractical and ignores human nature. Specifically it ignores the free rider problem. It also ignores that such a method is highly inefficient. Government is much more efficient than the solution you posed in another post of yours.

It is nice to fantasize about being like Daniel Boone and going it alone without need for government but in a nation of 350 million people that ability does not exist for any but a very few. The go it alone mentality does not scale well to large populations and have the net effect of making us all poorer.

I suggestion you take your arguments to an economics and politics blog. In the meantime, unless you are a completely dishonest hypocrite, you will stop using everything that has been funded by the coercive taxation you so incoherently decry. That would include most medicine--including vaccines and anti-biotics--as well as a good deal of dentistry, GPS, cell phones, computers, and indeed all semi-conductor technology, as well as roads, railways, airplanes, radio, sailing ships, and almost everything else.

While almost all technology has a private component in its development, it almost all has a fairly significant component that was funded by coercive taxation. Since you believe for some reason that coercive taxation is a bad thing--despite it being responsible for massive increases in human well-being. It seems a bit odd to be against something that has been, empirically, unarguably, responsible for so much good. It's a bit like being against capitalism, or free trade.

Science has, many times in the past, embarked upon a path to which there was no obvious benefit, yet ultimately came upon a discovery or application which improved the lives of humans immeasurably. Could Halley have had any idea how large the impact would be when he coerced Newton to record calculus and the laws of gravity in a book? What about Michael Faraday's fascination with electricity, generously supported by the Royal Society?

People aren't, as a whole, equipped to understand the long-term consequences of our actions. Predicating funding for something so essential to all of the progress made in the last few centuries on this faulty understanding would cripple our development. A government which attempts to offset the massive social cost of such a missed opportunity with speculative research is doing its duty to its citizens. We don't know what we don't know; evaluating scientific research with your limited cost/benefit analysis fails to take into account the enormous opportunity cost of a lost discovery.

As others have noted, taxation which funds things you don't agree with is a basic fact of modern life, but it has benefited you immensely - complaining about this funding model while you enjoy its output seems disingenuous.

The job of democratic government is to take responsibility for the things that the people choose to delegate to it.

I am not a doctor, a scientist, a hydraulic engineer, a military officer, a policeman, a lawyer or a civil engineer to name just a few relevant specialisms. I don't have the time, expertise or inclination to get involved in choosing how government should address all of the services it provides. Therefore I am happy to participate in choosing political leaders who I and my fellow citizens delegate to make those decisions for me.

I do not think it is reasonable or would be beneficial for every single citizen to have to decide how every single penny of tax money should or should not be spent. I cannot believe that a system organized in that way could ever be made to function no matter what modern communications and decision making (voting) technology we used.

Finally, living in a society ruled by laws is a system of coercion. Our fellow citizens are coerced into not robbing each other, not murdering each other, not driving their cars the wrong way down one way streets, and yes not avoiding paying tax. If you don't like that, tough.

Too often the gravity of such endeavors is lost too quickly, from our collective imagination.

We need to reanimate the sense of wonder among the non-science inclined people everywhere, to make more of these efforts possible.

Live feed of the press conference which should start in a bit:

rosetta.esa.int

Some cool links:

http://wpc.50e6.edgecastcdn.net/8050E6/mmedia-http/download/...

http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/avZGG4q_460sa_v1.gif

http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/

Boogiemen like the belief that humans are more than collections of atoms and random emergent behaviors? Because if those are your boogiemen, there's no particular reason to rejoice in reason, or anything else for that matter - it's all ashes in the end, and nobody will be left to care, whether we colonize Andromeda or blow ourselves up this afternoon.

Science is a collection of methods for determining facts. I find it odd when people describe it in religious-sounding terms and simultaneously scoff at religion.

But perhaps I misunderstood you?

  ALICE , MIRO, and IES will provide information about the 
  dynamics of comet C-G: how it develops its coma and tails,
  and how its chemicals interact with each other, and with 
  radiation and the solar wind.

and a glossary of the various terms used.

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/rosetta-glossary.

( Only adding because I didn't see it mentioned elsewhere. Not for the sake of partisanship or to take away from ESA's grand accomplishment. )

Can it stay on the surface without the harpoons?

those harpoons are what is supposed to anchor Philae to the comet. the problem is the reaction thruster, the thruster that counteracts the force generated by the harpoon shot, (to satisfy Newton's 3rd law) is faulty.

So they're hoping that when they reshoot the harpoon, the foot screws will be anchored enough to hold it in place. If not, theyre hoping that Philae won't launch too far off the surface so that they can just "reel" Philae back in.

I'm not settled on where I stand with that (I tend towards cooperative and communist ideals) but I certainly don't stand on the side of "those expressing these views need to be censured" (nor censored as it happens); which is what appears to be happening.

It's possibly that I'm being over-sensitive towards the failings of the HN UI as much as anything.