10 years and 6.5 billion kilometers later (give or take a few inches)…
The spaceship Rosetta’s landing probe Philae will be landing on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Tomorrow. We hope.
The comet is currently hurtling through space at 24,600 miles per hour and its nucleus is only 2.5 miles wide. Scientists compare the task to a fly trying to land on a speeding bullet.
PS: Why couldn’t they have scheduled this thing to land on 11.11 at 11 o’clock 11 in the morning?
The next wave of vociferous protests by residents complaining about excessive aircraft noise is being preprogrammed in Germany. Even if the airport in question is in the middle of German nowhere.
California-based XCOR Aerospace is developing a suborbital aircraft called the Lynx space plane which will carry paying passengers to the stratosphere. Unfortunately for them, capable engineers that they surely are, none of these guys has ever been to Germany. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had the not-so-bright idea to try to use an airport near Cuxhaven for their so-called Sea-Airport.
Germans don’t like airport noise, you see. They don’t like technology that isn’t German, either, or any of that other futuristic Scheiß (crap). And they don’t like “neoliberal” globalisation plans for world revolution (literally, this time). And they don’t like millionaires, either. A ride aboard the Lynx will retail at around $95,000. That means it’s time to agitate again or something, before the project can even begin. Bah! Hamburg! I mean Humbug!
Das Projekt sei freilich erst “in den Anfängen einer Ideenfindung.”
Observing Hermann 