If none of the science experiments that
took twenty years in the making work then what’s the point? But never mind. The
scientists high on their own bullshit have desperately looked round and come up
with something they think they can crow about. Well at least it got there! Having followed the comet or whatever
they think it is through space over millions of miles they manoeuvred the probe
into orbit then successfully detached a small landing craft. Yes, that was
indeed an achievement but it was only a small part of the mission which was to
land, conduct scientific experiments and send back data. And so far it’s done
little to nothing except kind of crash!
Let’s start from the beginning. The
European Space Agency Mission to land a vehicle on a Russian named piece of
space debris took twenty years to put together. Twenty years of carefully
planned space engineering science which gave employment to hundreds of
scientists, technicians, engineers and administrators at a very considerable
cost. These people weren’t GCSE candidates, they were supposedly experts. The
vehicle that was supposed to land on the fast moving body whose surface surprisingly
turned out not to be ice at all was constructed in the UK by a company which
specializes in turning out space satellites. Trouble is, satellites travel in
space. They’re not supposed to land on fast moving low gravity bodies and
attach themselves to surfaces of unknown composition. Given the extreme
difficulty of achieving this one might have thought that the primary task of
its designers would be to find an absolutely fail safe way of achieving a
permanent fixed anchorage. Instead they came up with what can best be described
as a Heath-Robinson solution, that of firing harpoons from the landing craft’s
feet into the surface in the hope of gaining a firm attachment.
What happened we are told is that the
harpoons didn’t work. They either failed to fire or failed to penetrate the
surface material. Which they haven’t told us. Success here was crucial
for getting the craft to stay on the surface after it landed. Given
this failure one needs to ask a number of questions. First, was the firing
mechanism repeatedly tested during the lengthy period of the landing craft’s
construction? Secondly was it tested on a wide variety of surfaces of different
hardness and density? This being an absolute requirement in the scientific
preparation for achieving the all-important successful anchorage. As things
turned out this wasn’t achieved and the landing craft bounced off. So before
the Mission scientists made with the self-congratulation and high fives maybe
it was something they should have first and foremost tied down!
But now they’re saying it was simply bad
luck! What, after all those years of preparation at considerable taxpayers’
expense these so called space scientists are saying it was bad luck that when
the craft came back down after its initial bounce, the details of which were at
first coyly hidden by Mission Control, somewhere they hadn’t intended.
Furthermore it was lying on its side in a crevice next to a cliff in shadow, somewhere
its solar powered batteries wouldn’t work because no sunlight could get to
them. Oh dear, oh dear… It doesn’t sound like science to me. More like some
place where politicians go to get their excuses for fuckups.
Actually it’s all fairly straightforward.
In order to achieve any science at all the craft had to successfully land somewhere
on the rock in sunlight for its batteries to work. That came first above
everything. From there came the science, the real objective of the Mission. Now
the jokers at the European Space Agency in Germany are saying that the real
goal was to get the Orbiter to keep pace with the rock and get into orbit round
it. Well yes, that was for starters but it wasn’t the fundamental purpose of
the Mission. First, orbit had to be achieved then a successful landing only
after which the Mission could really get moving. Well it didn’t and part of the
fiasco is not just that it failed but the fact that the scientists and
administrators involved have been treating the taxpaying public who funded
their work with disrespect by continually spewing out half-truths and bullshit.
You numpties failed, so please don’t keep making
excuses and trying to tell us you didn’t. You had twenty years to put it
together and billions of euros and you fell at the second or third crucial
hurdle. If everything depended on achieving permanent touchdown then why didn’t
you nail it? The harpoons failed to fire… Now what kind of rubbish is that?
When were they supposed to fire? Was it when sensors in the lander feet were
instantly activated by the immediate proximity of hard surface? If so why did
they fail to penetrate that surface and finally what process was used to exert
downward force in close to zero gravity conditions?
There is alas another way of looking at
things. The Lander was put together in the UK. Trouble is, while we were once
great designers, builders and engineers, that was a long time ago. Since
Thatcher and Blair did away with much of our industrial and manufacturing sectors
we’ve become a nation given over to other things like financial services and
cheap labour service occupations with consumerism and a bit of history and
heritage chucked in. Sorry to sound a cynical note but what we’re good at doing
in the UK these days is Remembrance, Heritage and Swindling which in our cheap labour GCSE economy means zero hours
contracts, tax dodging galore by the rich, the labour of our youth being
grossly exploited and demeaning. These are the things that characterize the
world of work today for many British people, not scientific and technical
excellence, so a space vehicle lander that doesn’t actually land isn’t
much of a surprise!
In Britain today appearance is everything
with substance and excellence of secondary value. Perhaps that’s why our
spacecraft are no good at landing where they should or else disappearing altogether.
The fiasco not so long ago of a British Mars Mission run by Colin Pillinger,
otherwise known as Pillinger the Pillock
is a case in point. With the landing all hyped up by the BBC as a great British
space triumph and the Duke of York all hot and ready in the studio to give it
his royal blessing, contact was suddenly lost with the Lander which
mysteriously vanished as it was about to touch down, never to be heard from
again! Oh dear! It wasn’t long before the good duke himself disappeared in a
puff of smoke when the whole fiasco became evident! But then there was always a
chance that contact might be re-established, or so it was put out, only the
hours ran by and it wasn’t. Maybe it was just a bad landing. If so no-one seems
to have figured out what went wrong and learned from the mistake because here
it is all over again. A bit like England’s performance at the Football World Cup.
Disastrous, but never mind that. Talk it up! Talk it up as a learning experience!
Saturday
morning 15th November. As I predicted
the battery’s dead and the much vaunted comet lander just a useless piece of
junk stuck on a rock doing nothing. Oh there’s been talk of its instruments drilling
into the surface but no further information to go with it! There’s also been
talk about somehow shifting the craft into the sunlight but nothing substantial
about that either! It’s all the usual Mission Control bullshit! Well let’s hope
the scientists and engineers stuck in their seats will show a little remorse
after their recent cock-a-hoop antics and wait till they get some serious
results from the science before any more bragging kicks off. After all, it was
the taxpayer’s money you stuffed in the dustbin with your ill thought out
project so in future let’s have a little more modesty, and don’t keep on
telling us how well you all do when you quite plainly don’t!
And if you thought you was sending into space… to find another race…
well you can kiss it. You people have got a whole lot of serious thinking to do
before sticking out your hands and asking for money.
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