Rosetta Reaches The Comet

I have mixed emotions about this sort of project. We spent a boatload of money and untold brain power solving a problem through science, math and engineering. An incredible achievement.

But, aren’t there more pressing practical problems on Earth which would have benefited from this kind of massive effort?

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As this blog entry goes out a spacecraft has reached a comet. That’s never been done before.

Rosetta launched in 2004 and will arrive at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 6 August. It will be the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the Sun, and deploy a lander to its surface. Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA.

ESA is the European Space Agency. They’re running the show.

I have mixed emotions about this sort of project. We spent a boatload of money and untold brain power solving a problem through science, math and engineering. An incredible achievement.

But, aren’t there more pressing practical problems on Earth which would have benefited from this kind of massive effort?

Rosetta, still around 60 miles away from 67P, is transmitting incredibly detailed photos of the weirdly shaped comet. Some have compared the shape to a duck. Potato shaped objects are much more common.

Was it once two separate entities that somehow fused? Does it contain pristine samples from the dawn of the universe 13.77 billion years ago? There are sure to be surprises.

After orbiting this tiny space chunk (about 2 1/4 by 2 1/2 miles though quite irregular) for a while Rosetta will move to an orbit of 30 miles, then 15 miles. Finally, probably in November, a capsule will be deployed from Rosetta to the comet’s surface.

Is this money well spent? It’s certainly splashy science… amazing science. I wish there was a well defined practical payoff.

5 thoughts on “Rosetta Reaches The Comet”

  1. Ever since the first time we shot a rocket into space, some people have complained that the money could be better spent here on Earth to solve more pressing issues. They are short-sighted people. In the long run, many things did benefit us thanks to the science used for space exploration. As for the practical payoff after the exploration of this rock, that payoff most likely will not occur immediately, but it certainly will happen down the road apiece. Only time will tell. 🙂

    1. Kevin – I understand what you are saying. Lots of discoveries did come from NASA, but that’s not how they do it anymore. Our programs are much more mature with much less innovation. Granted, the engineering problems are immense, but it’s mainly reusing solutions not inventing new ones. This is to be expected. No one wants to pay to reinvent the wheel.

      1. I see your point. I guess now it’s probably more about exploration and learning about our origins, but my hope is that they might find a substance in this rock, or any other kind of ancient space debris, that can lead to a cure for cancer or any other medical breakthrough.

  2. As a young man in Germany around 1930 Wernher von Braun, and others, began to experiment with small rockets. They soon realized that we now had propulsion that could function in zero atmosphere and dreams of trips through the vacuum of space began. How would men breath? Could they survive the G forces? Would they burn up on reentry?

    Hitler rose to power and these rocketeers now had funding to develop a V2 sized rocket to deliver a one KG bomb about 100 miles to England. It also had to be small enough to go through railroad tunnels. It was supersonic. In England a building would suddenly explode for no apparent reason. At first the English thought they might be gas explosions. It was not long before they realized a rocket had arrived before the sound of the rocket arrived.

    After the war, Operation Paperclip snatched up von Braun and dozens of Nazi scientists and settled them at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. They developed all of our early rockets until their crowning achievement, the 1.5 million pound thrust first stage booster on Saturn 5. The Apollo rocket weighed 6 million pounds. Strap on 5 boosters for 7.5 million pounds thrust and you are in business. It was mostly trial and error, and a lot of luck. “Men Walk on Moon” was the NY Times Headline. Then they rolled up all the blueprints and that was that. I’m glad I saw those grainy images on a vacuum tube TV in my childhood living room. Was there anything America could not do? Little boys like me were encouraged to study science and engineering. So I did.

  3. It’s sometimes easier to get unilateral support for a project in space (and far away from Earth) than it is to get support for a project that would do a much more good here ON earth.

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