Ah! thanks for this, I had no idea this existed . I have been reading Steve Squyres' - Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet for the past few months , and its pretty awesome. He gives a really wholesome perspective of what it took to get a ride to the Red Planet. I 'm going to read these journals kinda .. in parallel to the part of the book which explains post landing incidents.
A substantial chunk of ESA's budget comes through EU. So the cost of UK's membership in ESA might increase, as they won't be participating through EU anymore.
That's the kind of thing that is hard to justify to Brexiteer voters though... "Now that we're rid of the EU, we have a unique opportunity to pay more tax money to other intergovernmental organisations!"
"Some 20 per cent of the funds managed by ESA now originate from the EU budget."
I'm not disagreeing with you, but it seems unlikely that UK just won't participate in that 20% of ESA activities anymore. So they'll have to renegotiate the membership fee to account for that.
Britain can't unilaterally decide to do that. So, a renegotiation is needed.
That's a big problem with Brexit. Some highly visible supporters promoted the idea that Britain will simply be able to dictate new and more favourable terms for everything that happens through the EU framework currently.
It's essentially the same as what Trump is saying -- "I'll deal with China. I know how to make deals. I'll make a great deal" -- With no specifics on what the deal would be and why the other side would accept it.
I'm sure they will continue, but as an EU member state working in the EU is much easier. Perhaps the skill levels will overcome any friction from visas and bureaucracy.
Its heart breaking to see these missions come to an end though they are all planned only for a few weeks in the first place. I m really glad that Philae came along this far , this was a really really complicated mission - Right from soft landing on the comet nucleus( remember the previous attempts in getting to a comet were impact probes) , loosing that one thruster prior to detaching from Rosetta , having troubles with primary & second batteries , going into safe mode , hibernating and re-awaking again , constant absence of sunlight to recharge batteries and all the delay in receiving signals back from Rosetta - This must have been one heck of an emotional ride for all the involved engineers and scientists. Mad Respect !
I m not sure if Philae conducted all the originally planned experiments or not , Would love for someone to comment on that.
And I love what message they had in the final video update, - now that they shut down the communication module of Rosetta that would talk to Philae - all those power would be used to conduct other experiments ! They managed to throw in some positivity there.
I thought the Philae lander was incommunicado anyway because it landed in shadow and its batteries ran down. Shutting off the system which is supposed to communicate with it doesn't really seem like a milestone.
Sure, but for what purpose? The mission was done, nothing to see here anymore.
So the ESA would have traded the (very small, but not zero) risk of radioactive contamination from a launch failure for not enough additional research gain.
AIUI the lander (Philae) is believed to have failed because it landed in a valley where its solar panels couldn't collect enough energy. Had the lander used an RTG it would likely have worked, returning valuable science data.
It also would have been a lot heavier. There is certainly an excessive fear of nuclear stuff that pushes for space missions to use solar when RTGs would be more suitable (Juno may be an example of this) but this does not seem to be one of those cases.
Instead of nazi analogies, how about we should not involve internet memes into discussions?
It's called a "law", but it's just a joke observation someone made. And it's not that enlightening in the first place.
Fascism was one of the most important events and currents of the 20th century. And it's full of analogies to draw and historical lessons.
If we can't draw historical analogies from the most important historical event of modern history, where should we draw them from? Ancient Rome? The Falklands war? The 1900 Paris World Expo?
Wow... please reread the title of this discussion, "Philae Lander: “It’s time for me to say goodbye” . Godwin's law is pretty much the dictionary definition to your incoherent reply. The fact that you can't seem to grasp this is just sad.
Science didn't give us Mengele. If at all, Mengele gave us science [1], although of course that science is tainted with the blood and pain of his subjects.
[1] The fine print: I don't know if there are actual preserved recordings from his research that bore any scientific value.
>The fine print: I don't know if there are actual preserved recordings from his research that bore any scientific value.
Sure, but that's either during to his clumsiness in experiments, or because of our refusal to accept such horrendous material for further use (even if they are scientifically valid otherwise).
That is, not due to some inherent logical or methodological impossibility of combining science with cruelty. If anything, not caring about the consequences (to people, animals, the environment, etc) can even accelerate scientific study.
That's why I brought it as an example.
To main it the point that we need to draw some lines through external normative systems (religion, morals, ethical concerns etc), because science itself is just a method of inquiry, nothing inherent in it about being humane or responsible.
True, you don't really want that stuff to fall into the wrong hands. NASA seem to like RTG's though and used them for New Horizons and a few others. Apparently they share since it's used in Cassini as well.
There is not enough light to power probes after a certain distance. That's why they have to use the RTG's in mission like New Horizons. There was also a shortage of the Radioactive material to make the RTGs, but that seams to be solved with NASA producing its own material.
> There was also a shortage of the Radioactive material to make the RTGs
From my understanding, this shortage is caused by the lack of nuclear power facilities in the USA - which supports the GGP's point about negative political/public reactions to anything nuclear.
We have a lot of nuclear power plants. There hasn't been much new construction, but there hasn't been much decommissioning either. It makes up about 20% of our total electrical generating capacity.
The problem is that turning nuclear reactors into Pu238 requires a lot of extra work and equipment. They produce small amounts, but separating it out is tough. You can make more by irradiating other waste products, but that's not easy either. Apparently some stuff used for making nuclear weapons can be used for this purpose (note that nuclear weapons use Pu239, not 238) and the shortage happened because those facilities were closed.
France has over 80% nuclear - there's no shortage of that in the EU.
But actively seperating out the required materials is the same processing step as is required for building nuclear weapons, and that's something that's a political problem, and will cost you a lot of money to prove and inspect everything every few days to ensure it's only used for civil uses.
