Also a hat tip to the earlier missions (such as the Beagle probe that was lost on Mars) which emphasized the importance of retaining radio contact for as long as possible during landing and being able to send and receive commands with the minimum amount of hardware reconfiguration once landed.
Wowoweeeee! This is FANTASTIC news! One of the few times that I have felt like typing in all caps. Incredible news and a testament to the survivability of space hardware. It'll be interesting to see how quickly they can triangulate Philae's true position to better understand the amount of incident light reaching the solar panels. It'll also be interesting to see how much of the payload has survived. Any more data would be of huge scientific value!
Yes, amazing news, I am waiting for more data to come in to analyze the comet surface and the condition of the lander. This is obviously one the biggest achievement of modern space missions and ESA.
24W is pretty good. More data on the instrumentation onboard can be found in DLR's fact sheet [1]. So I'm guessing if the hardware has survived, we should see some more science data trickling in. Fingers crossed!
Yes, the power is pretty good. The temperature is currently told as -35 degree Celsius. I wonder how fast would the temperature variations be, with respect to the movement of the comet and how the lander with adjust to that.
Also an impressive achievement on the software side of things - no room for showstopper bugs here! It's not quite as simple as taking it offline, deploying some new code and starting it up again.
Is there any information on the processes used to have such a high level of confidence in the software? Lots of simulation? Relatedly, it might also be interesting to see a list of 'known bugs' and ways they've been worked around.
AFAIK it's similar to the processes for avionics software, but with even more attention to detail. This link came up recently on HN in reference to avionics:
Hmm, I am not sure if they would have very sophisticated software on the lander, in the way your thinking. I don't think any processing is done on the lander itself. It might be just primarily used as a remote sensing telemetry system. I suppose the lander would have a lot of power management circuits, some control circuits, sensor-actuator circuits, and transmitter-receiver communication circuitry. There would probably be a RTOS for real-time measurement and actuator motion.
Still, I think someone with specific expertise might give a better answer.
The NYTimes is running a nice collection[1] of the jaw-dropping photos of the comet from Rosetta over the course of the mission, including some from the past month, and the spectacular close fly-by in March.
As many faraway and strange places as we've explored in the Solar System so far, something about this comet – roughly the breadth of Central Park, yet with untold nooks and crannies – feels more coldly alien than anything else I've seen.
I wish Europe weren't so nuke-averse. The lander should have been powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), not solar panels. Then it would've had uninterrupted power for years and it could have been returning scientific data continuously since November.
Most of the US's long distance space probes have been powered with RTGs, which don't put nearly the same kinds of limitations on mission profiles. The New Horizons mission to Pluto, for example, is powered with 10.9 kg of plutonium that provides a steady 228 watts and enough heat to prevent the kind of cold-related damage we fear happened on Philae. That mission is so far from the Sun that it wouldn't even be possible with only solar panels.
You're blaming this on Europe being nuke averse, but Europe is not a homogenous area. While some European countries may be nuke averse, others have adopted nuclear power to a huge extent.
There are other reasons why an RTG might not have been appropriate for Philae. They're pretty heavy, and the lander is pretty light. Also, it is wasteful to use an RTG that could last many years when the mission is only expected to last several months.
You're right that Europe isn't homogenous, but it's not like every country in Europe has its own independent space agency. They have the ESA, which is nuke-averse. I was using "Europe" as a linguistic short-cut for the European space efforts, which are unified.
Per someone else's comment, RTGs don't have to be heavy. Wikipedia lists one as light as 2.1 kg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge... Keep in mind that RTGs replace not just the solar panel and electricity generating systems but also a lot of the heating system as well.
You can see the breakdown on Philae here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(spacecraft)#Design It uses about 16 kg total between the power system and thermal control system. You could fit in an RTG with the same or higher power output as the solar panels for the same mass. Philae in total is around 98 kg, which is definitely above the size threshold of craft that could be powered with an RTG.
"You could fit in an RTG with the same or higher power output as the solar panels for the same mass."
As an expert you should go work for ESA. I'm sure they need you. Oops, armchair space engineer, I forgot. If you need to look in Wikipedia, you have no clue about the subject matter.
Philae is a tiny little 100kg add on … 29 times heavier Rosetta (the orbiter) is the main course, Philae is this tiny little and quite experimental (though admittedly extremely cool – mostly because of exactly its novel mission) little hitchhiker.
RTGs are heavy and consequently have pretty much only been used on much heavier spacecraft and even then mostly only when being solar powered just wasn’t an option. For Philae, besides it being very lightweight, being solar powered was and is an option and the only reason it didn’t work out is because things went wrong during the landing …
How in the hell do you even get the idea that Nasa would have used an RTG in ESA’s place here?! They are not psychic. They couldn’t have predicted things going wrong during the landing … and why then put an RTG on this when that’s something Nasa themselves does only very, very rarely and only for very different missions with much more demanding payloads?!
What is this insanity? Why the need to get onto this political pulpit and spew out some unrelated political propaganda because you feel like what? What’s the point of this deliberate and pointless provocation?! Huh? I’m confused and angry at this abundance of irrationality.
RTGs don't have to be heavy and big. Sure one to power a car sized rover like Curiosity with large motors, science equipment, lasers, etc will be big. But one to power a little probe with 24 watts would be tiny. In the 70s there were actually nuclear powered pace makers implanted inside people, so the technology can definitely scale down: https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/Miscellaneous/pacemaker....
Two reasons. One, in a lot of situations solar power is essentially guaranteed, and when there's no chance that there won't be sun solar panels are a hell of a lot cheaper. Second, there's a plutonium shortage in the US at the moment [1] making it really hard to secure an RTG.
I was under the impression that they thought the lander would be blown off the comet when it starts to shed ice and debris in large amounts around perihelion.
The European Space Agency together with the National Nuclear Laboratory are looking for a potential use of americium-241 in developing RTGs. So they aren't completely nuke-averse.
Also, wasn't NASA's Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator canned in 2013 due to budget cuts? And recently there were problems with procuring plutonium-238. RTG isn't a silver bullet.
The so-called "green parties" have caused a lot of environmental damage to Europe and the earth. Instead of relatively speaking quite safe nuclear power, in many places we are getting quite dangerous coal power. Pretty much just out of ignorance.
As far as I can tell, for the year of 2014, Germany's primary energy consumption breaks down approximately 15/35/20/30 for electricity generation, heating, transportation, and other [p.10]. Approximately 30% of the electricity generation is from renewable sources [p.5], which is split approximately 35/25/20/20 between wind, biofuels, solar, and other (including hydro) [p.6]. Nearly all of the contribution of renewable sources to heating and transportation is from biofuels [p.8--9].
tl;dr: Renewable energy accounts for approximately 30% of electricity generation in Germany. Overall, renewable energy accounts for approximately 11% of primary energy consumption.
In Germany old coal plants that were due to be decommissioned are now still running because nuclear plants are being switched off instead. Are you sure the good done by the greens outweighs the bad?
> In Germany old coal plants that were due to be decommissioned are now still running because nuclear plants are being switched off instead.
As far as I know that was one of the fears stated, but never actually happened. Do you have any sources stating that coal plants meant to be decomissioned now will run longer?
Not that again. No it does not take decades to pay back the energy cost of the production of Wind Turbines or Solar Panels. Win turbines have an average payback time of 2-8 Months.
Solar panels are far worse but even there the payback time for the complete System (Panel, Inverter, Installation, Transport) is between 2.5 Years to 1 Year depending on the panel technology [1]. These numbers are from a Frauenhofer Study from 2009 so one can assume that today's payback times are better than that due to slightly increased efficiency.
I highly doubt it's that short, that would mean that after 1 year you would make back all your money and everything after is profit?
I've never seen any numbers even close to that, they all give decades to make make back your money, even when selling the electricity at retail, and certainly not when selling at wholesale.
Why? This cursory Google search https://www.google.co.in/search?q=death+per+terawatt seems to say nuclear has less kills per terawatt-hour than coal, though obviously quantifying deaths from all these power sources is hard.
Have there been any documented cases of nuclear waste storage causing mortal danger, and if so, how do they compare to coal's waste storage (or, more precisely, the lack thereof)?
I don't know any details on either, but I'd suspect that the latter is a much greater threat than the former, and that the more we transition from coal to nuclear fission (and, alongside that, the more we develop ways to use nuclear waste more productively), the better.
The worst case is rather nasty though: the rendering of a large area uninhabitable and unusable for agriculture. There aren't a lot of sites in Europe where you can site a nuclear reactor far enough away to avoid either evacuating a major city or losing an agricultural region. There is no "away", as people like to say about rubbish.
Compare that large area to that consumed by business-as-usual for the alternatives though. E.g. the area rendered uninhabitable/unusable for hydro power is larger (per kwh). (Of course many people find a reservoir more attractive than a radioactive zone, but both are equally unusable for habitation or agriculture)
area rendered uninhabitable/unusable for hydro power is larger
That can be true of reservoirs (Lake Mead is huge) but isn't necessarily. UK's largest reservoir is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielder_Water at a mere 2 miles by <6 miles, supporting a piddly 6MW (yes, megawatts not gigawatts, I had to double check that). But that's subject to planning permission in a way that radioactive exclusion zones aren't. The UK suffered from Chernobyl fallout for years: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514492/20-years-on-B...
It's not that nuclear power is bad on average, it's just that the worst case scenarios affect potentially huge areas.
A clarification to the point about Kielder's power generation: Kielder reservoir is primarily for regulating the water supply, rather than power generation. There are many hydro-electric plants in the UK generating much more power.
Nope, at least not according to the figures I've seen (e.g., http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...). I think the main reason is that installing solar panels isn't perfectly safe. Nuclear comes out a long way ahead of solar -- but both are vastly ahead of coal.
"Europe" isn't nuke-averse; French nuclear plant designs are considered among the world's best, and Germany only backed off nuclear power when Fukushima happened.
In light of Fukushima I wish EVERYONE were more nuke-averse...
In light of Fukushima, everyone should be more aware of what happens when you don't properly maintain, and update your nuclear power plants. In light of global warming, and carcenogens released caused by burning coal, I wish every one were more pro-nuclear.
I would add that I hope we all take flood control recommendations more seriously in light of Fukushima, too. I recall that TEPCO knew that it wouldn't withstand a tsunami of that magnitude, and they proceeded to ignore that risk.
Germany backed off nuclear power in the 90s long before Fukushima. That process was merely slowed down before Fukushima and set back on track afterward.
This has to also be kept in mind when considering nuclear power in Germany. The nuclear plants in Germany are so old that whether you are pro or contra on nuclear power, shutting down the existing plants is more or less a non-issue.
It is probably also a lot easier for the US to launch a space probe with a nuke power source than Europe.
Regulatory requirements are very different and I am sure the US would not be too happy if Europe where to launch something with a nuke onboard without their approval.
It's not "a nuke", it's a relatively small amount of radioactive material that is sealed inside a very strong capsule designed to survive almost any imaginable catastrophe during launch. The launches are from the coast out over the water. Yes there are still some risks, but in the grand scheme of things, the risks are nothing compared to the importance of exploring the universe.
Even if we hadn't resumed production, I'd still be arguing that the simple fix is to resume production and continue using the proven technology, not to simply give up on it.
Does anyone have any insight on what the team does while waiting for the lander to wake up? Or in these past months when it wasn't sure if Philae had successfully landed? I know in movies the team would be depicted as hunching over blinking consoles 24/7 and tapping keys furiously until something happened...but how is the team organized to work in the long haul? Are there a few scientists and engineers devoted to the operational status of the lander, while the rest work on examining past data that it has sent? Or they're working on researching the next prototype lander?
A couple of things come to mind, though I'm speculating.
Operations: Rosetta and Philae are a pair of robots 300 million kilometers from earth, one on a comet and the other orbiting it. Rosetta's orbits require a bit of work, if I remember correctly it's not a stable orbit and Rosetta needs to be within communication range of Philae while Philae is in the sunlight.
Science: Interpreting data is not easy and probably takes months in many cases. Once they've come to their conclusions they have to write and publish their papers which takes time.
Planning: They have to plan what they will do with Philae's future awake time which is filled with unknowns and opportunities that may only happen once.
Well Rosetta was still operational orbiting the comet and they always hoped that Philae would wake up again, I doubt they would have transferred any significant number of people to other projects.
With any luck we will have livestream of a comet entering Perihelion from the surface.
This is potentially the space mission of the Century.
More surface data is going to change what we know about Solar System formation.
Looks like Philae awoke earlier and has accumulated 8000 data packets for transmission to Earth, via Rosetta - fingers crossed for more surface photos later today :D
Coupled with Matt Taylor's seat of the pants trajectories through the tail and coma, solar panels buffeted by highly turbulent solar wind - this is going to be a super exciting science adventure.
Now we have located Philae, CONSERT'S volumetric map of the comet interior will find out the interior structure and hopefully resolve the contact-binary question.
That is if the tidal forces of Jupiter don't tear 67P apart.
The maximum transmission window has been 84 seconds from Philae to Rosetta.
Only the Rosetta sensors are 'live' - contact with Philae is still intermittent - they don't know where it is and the German team with the Hi-Res camera is refusing to release the photos of the surface that could potentially reveal Philae's location.
From the file cache it is observed that Philae woke up 3 days ago but they may were looking in the wrong place and missed it.
Radio telemetry could locate it but aligning Rosetta's antennae and flight path with the mouth of the crevasse or cave where Philae is wedged has only resulted in a few intermittent transmission mostly only 10s of second long so not enough to download anything or issue new orders.
When enough glimpses have been received triangularion may be possible - but the CONSERT radio signal is designed to penetrate 67P.
Precise location triangulation proved impossible in the days CONSERT was operational before Philae's hibernation.
Full resumption of Philae is not assured at this stage.
67P grows ever more volatile as Perihelion fast approaches.
When I'm feeling particularly melancholy I tell myself that none of the apps I've made are ever going to outlive me, and they really don't matter in the scheme of things.
But this... this is cool. Someone somewhere has programmed that lander so that it's able to not only able to locate earth (whilst hurtling through god knows where on a big rock) but also successfully re-establish communications. Those developers must be having a good day today, finally seeing their work come to fruition.
I believe the lander is communicating via the Rosetta probe which is relaying its data to earth. (This design meant that Philea needs to dedicate very little power to radio transmissions.) It’s still awesome though :)
"In any case, by March 2015, when the comet is closer to the Sun,
it is likely that the lander will become too hot to operate. [...]
It will next pass through perihelion on 13 August 2015,
186 million kilometres from the Sun."
Yes and no. The original plan intended that Philae would have power due to being in the sun, but the lander bounced off of the comet and landed in a different place then expected, in the shadow of rough terrain.
Due to this the original set of experiments had to be completely run on battery, although the battery capacity was not intended for this.
So ESA had to hibernate it early, hoping one day it would get enough sunlight to be able to operate again, and allowing them to do more experiments – which happened now.
I really thought the thing was lost when it bounced off a kilomter from the comet. The main-stream news-coverage (for me) ended in dissapointment. So did the lander actually fly back after that bounce and savely land on the surface? Great to hear.
It didn't fly back. It bounced, as in what goes up must (unless it achieves escape velocity), come back down. The comet has gravity, just like earth. Just not much, because it is much smaller than earth
The bouncing did not mean, that it went off the comet. It just landed very roughly and ended up in a place next to a wall with little exposition to sunlight.
The irony of shaming people for what they wear seems to be totally lost on some, given that they're the same who will ardently oppose it in contexts that are more favorable to their ideological positions.
People were asking for him to dress appropriately, he apologized, happy end. I mean, that’s a neat solution to someone wearing a really dumb and inappropriate shirt and no one every had to be fired over this … nor am I really aware of many people demanding that?
He wasn't internationally labeled as an inappropriate dresser, he was internationally labeled a sexist. That crossed a line and the fact he had to give a tearful apology on one of the biggest days of his career without making that distinction or defending himself in any way is disgusting.
What the fuck are you even talking about. You make no sense. And people are allowed to cricise people who are in very public places in obvious positions of power and who also act as role models. That comes with the job, you know. Sometimes you might have to face criticism and sometimes that criticism might be a bit unfair or harsh. Oh my god, the horror. What an unbelievable thing. (I think that’s something you have to allow groups of people who were oppressed and specifically excluded from science for centuries, you know.)
He dealt with it and that’s that.
I’m astonished how suddenly people want to treat someone like a raw egg while simultaneously decrying people who voice their criticism (and it’s mostly criticism, no offense!) as too delicate or always taking offense. It’s so weird (probably because it’s an argument made completely in bad faith, just to complain about bad feminists or some similar misogynist bullshit link voting websites are so good at spewing).
> I think that’s something you have to allow groups of people who were oppressed and specifically excluded from science for centuries, you know.
I disagree with this on so many levels. He wasn't attacked by women, in your argument only women have "earned" the right to be abusive to him because it's somehow reasonable to punish him for things done by men who are no longer around? Either way, he was attacked by the social justice movement and last I checked there has not been a concerted effort to exclude them from science.
In general, you get special concessions to fight back against people who have oppressed you directly, by the time you start attacking a group's grandchildren for what they did to your grandparents you're just being a jerk.
> just to complain about bad feminists or some similar misogynist bullshit
Have I oppressed you? Have I excluded you? This is not an appropriate way to talk to somebody who simply disagrees with you.
His act was a sexist act. It was unintentional, but one can still help sustain an unjust system without intending to. I'm sure it sucked for him; I've found it painful enough to get called out for my mistakes in small groups. But we shouldn't let our sympathy for that overwhelm our sympathy for the many, many more people hurt by sexism in our society.
Deciding that one guy's feelings are more important than the women he harmed is one way patriarchy has sustained itself for thousands of years. Big public mistakes require big public apologies.
When it's the lead scientist of a 10 year project to land something on a comet 100 million miles away and he decides to wear a shirt a friend made for him, yeah his feelings are important. But that's not the point, the point is the group saying others must be held responsible for their public actions refuse to take responsibility for their own.
It was a tactless showing of power based on a skewed sense of social justice and it overshadowed a momentous occasion.
It's ironic as anything that the excuse for the abuse he took is literally "he shouldn't have worn that if he didn't want that to happen."
What horrible actions are people refusing to take responsibility for? As far as I can tell the sequence is:
* He wore the shirt on international broadcast
* People around the world objected
* He admitted the error and apologized
* People accepted his apology
Also, it's not clear to me that he was the lead scientist, and he only joined Rosetta in 2013.
The rest of what you have looks to me like sweeping assertions. Quite a lot of people, me included, think it was a proportional reaction driven by a reasonable sense of social justice, and it was his casual sexism that spoiled a momentous occasion.
Your last line is just sad. I assume that's just willful ignorance and a lack of empathy, but in case you really can't tell the difference: rape victims get harmed for going about their lives, so bringing up what they wear is shifting blame to the victim. But here the shirt is the thing causing harm, so it's reasonable to call it out.
Here you show your difficulty perceiving men as victims. He didn't just apologize, he broke down crying. He was being tried in a court of public opinion where he was not allowed to explain or defend himself. Look at what happens to men who refuse to prostrate themselves to the social justice mob: they lose their jobs (even if they founded the company: Brendan Eich, even if the have a Nobel Prize: Tim Hunt.) Threatening somebody's career for an honest mistake and then celebrating their tears is, in a word, scary. It's bullying and I'm touched that others have come together to show him support (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/matt-taylor-rosetta-proje...)
The reason I bring up victim-blaming is that even when it's pointed out to you, you don't see it. Benefit of the doubt suggests it's because you don't believe that what happened to him was wrong.
An aside: nobody asks what the effect this charade has on young boys looking at a career in science. It tells them that an undergrad in physics (which is 10x the work of most degrees), and a PhD in magnetohydrodynamics (which would be literally impossibble for most people), and 10 years hard work as a scientist still won't be enough to earn them the benefit of the doubt.
> Also, it's not clear to me that he was the lead scientist, and he only joined Rosetta in 2013.
True, apparently Taylor joined Rosetta in 2013. He joined the ESA as a project scientist on different mission in 2005 before getting the Rosetta job. Notice that here (http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/43058-mission-team/) his name is second from the top. He's a superstar.
All of this is so far blown out of proportion that the fundamental argument isn't being challenged, is "casual sexism" really what's keeping women from careers in science? I'm not convinced.
Since you're calling people out for being anonymous in this conversation just remember you get to have your name attached to your arguments without risking your social life and career.
I can perceive men as victims. But here he is not a victim. He thoughtlessly did something bad in front of the whole world. People told him that he did something bad. Lots of people, many of them angry. This upset him and he apologized. Forgiven and forgotten, end of story. Except, apparently, for bitter anti-feminists who can't help bringing this up every time Rosetta is in the news.
I too have said and done dumb, hurtful things, been called out, and tearfully apologized. That's not victimhood. It's being a vaguely responsible human.
> the benefit of the doubt
What doubt did he fail to benefit from? The accusation is that he wore an inappropriate shirt on an international stage while representing an important scientific effort. I am not seeing a lot of room to doubt that was true. The general assumption I saw was that it was something he did thoughtlessly, with no understanding of the impact. So to the extent that his motivation was unknown, I'd say he got plenty of benefit of the doubt.
> I'm not convinced.
You say that like I might worry, but I don't. Quite a lot of views change in a progressive direction not because any given individual learns anything, but because those defending old errors die off. Note the rate of change here is pretty close to the rate of death:
We've been moving toward gradually less sexism for the last couple hundred years. I figure it's going to be at least a century more. If you have sincere questions (as opposed to argumentation in question form) I'm glad to answer. But otherwise, feel free to remain unconvinced. Your participation in bettering the world would be useful, but history suggests it's far from necessary.
> Since you're calling people out for being anonymous in this conversation just remember you get to have your name attached to your arguments without risking your social life and career.
Sure, but this is mainly true because I'm an older white guy. Just based on that status, I can get away with almost anything and still be employable.
I agree that things have changed such that for the first time older white guys can no longer be guaranteed total impunity for being openly and vocally bigoted while occupying high leadership roles. I agree that this sucks mildly for people like me. Now I have to do the slightly difficult work of actually caring how my words might impact other people, and the actually hard work of learning how to apologize well when I fuck that up.
But as far as I'm concerned, that is good news. Certainly for everybody who isn't an old white guy, as they can throw off some of their burden of fear of unpleasant consequences for saying things that might upset older white guys. I think it's good even for we old white guys. Privilege stunts people. I'm glad to live in an age where decreasing power imbalances mean a decrease in distorted communication.
In the situation of the shirt a reasonable reaction would be to not hijack the publicity earned by the Rosetta team and to deal with the issue once the mission was at a point where the lead scientist could be pulled aside to talk about his wardrobe choices.
Benefit of the doubt means that you accept your own fallibility, not that you use weasel words and implications to communicate the outright accusations you're making. To be clear, the accusation was at best that this guy in his stupidity is responsible for the gender gap in science. If you're a jealous keyboard warrior that's even better than calling him aggressively sexist because now you get to call him stupid even though he's the one with a PhD in magnetohydrodynamcs and you barely got a communications degree.
In your view of history women have entered science as the barriers of sexism have fallen so you believe fighting sexism is a Very Important Cause. But in the time period of science we've also had several major technological revolutions and science itself has drastically changed. That means you can't choose two signals and establish a cause-and-effect relationship between them.
These days STEM fields are the only ones feminists get to complain about because women dominate education at almost every level except for STEM fields. But we don't talk about women being 60% of college students, we don't talk about young black men having a 50% high school graduation rate while their female counterparts are doing significantly better. Instead we talk about the STEM gap and if we resist we get shamed into public apologies?
> If you have sincere questions (as opposed to argumentation in question form) I'm glad to answer.
I'm not sure if you realize how condescending it is to assume that you have nothing to learn from me but this is a great opportunity for me to learn from you. It's a common point in these conversatins where the person I'm speaking to assumes I just don't understand their One True Worldview. Next you realize I do, after that you decide I'm too emotionally attached to my privilege to admit the truth. Then, if this were in person, the public shaming and social penalties would begin and wouldn't stop until I gave an unqualified apology and retracted all previous statements.
> But as far as I'm concerned, that is good news.....I'm glad to live in an age where decreasing power imbalances mean a decrease in distorted communication.
I look at this and I see hegemony[0]. A social group with a significant amount of power over you has publicly shamed you (call-outs are done in public for a reason) into at least one tearful apology and as a result their worldview became your own. There was a time the Left thought this was a tool of evil people, seeing it become business as usual has been....interesting.
> In the situation of the shirt a reasonable reaction [...]
That's a fine claim to make, but I don't agree with your judgment of reasonable, and neither to a lot of other people. Your theory that we can make major cultural changes through polite, meek requests is... unproven: https://thenib.com/great-moments-in-peaceful-protest-history...
As Deborah Blum puts it, "I do have sympathy for anyone caught in the leading edge of a media storm. But if we are ever to effect change, sometimes we need the winds to howl, to blow us out of our comfort zones."
> the accusation was at best that this guy in his stupidity is responsible for the gender gap in science
I believe the actual accusation was that he was contributing to maintaining the gender gap, not that he was responsible for it.
> we don't talk about young black men having a 50% high school graduation rate while their female counterparts are doing significantly better
Actually, intersectional feminists talk about this quite a bit. They just don't think the solution is to stop fighting sexism.
> Instead we talk about the STEM gap and if we resist we get shamed into public apologies?
Yes, all this middle aged white dude resistance to a dollop of accountability for one's actions is really about helping black men. Now pull the other leg.
> I'm not sure if you realize how condescending it is to assume that you have nothing to learn from me but this is a great opportunity for me to learn from you.
I don't mind as being seen as condescending here, but that's not my point. My point is that I have limited time, and I don't think spending it rehashing stale arguments with dedicated antifeminists is a good way to work towards the goals I have. If somebody actually wants to learn something, I'm glad to help them out. And if I end up with questions, I'll surely ask them. But absent that, I have better things to do.
> I look at this and I see hegemony[0].
Yes. There was an entrenched pro-sexist cultural hegemony that has lasted thousands of years. It is finally dying. I want that replaced with an anti-sexist cultural hegemony, because that shifts us in the direction of a more even distribution of power. I personally hope that what comes after that is the dissolution of hegemonies, but primates being what we are, I suspect the best we'll be able to get is an anti-kyriarchic hegemony. My target for that is 2100, but I've always been an optimist.
> A social group with a significant amount of power over you has publicly shamed you [...]
This is an incorrect reading (and also false), but hey, don't let me get in the way of your fantasies.
> their worldview became your own
Also false. I'm not much of a fellow traveler in that I have a number of deep philosophical disagreements, but our goals are aligned for the next few decades or so.
> As Deborah Blum puts it, "I do have sympathy for anyone caught in the leading edge of a media storm. But if we are ever to effect change, sometimes we need the winds to howl, to blow us out of our comfort zones."
She's implying social change only happens when forced by some group of activists and therefore activism isn't responsible for the collateral damage it causes. Many things cause social change so I think the role of "howling winds" may be overstated. In addition, one must make the argument that this particular form of activism is genuine and deserves solidarity.
> I believe the actual accusation was that he was contributing to maintaining the gender gap, not that he was responsible for it.
He may not have been blamed for it (the gender gap predates him by centuries) but the responsibility was placed on his shoulders.
> Actually, intersectional feminists talk about this quite a bit.
They try and I commend them for that.
> I don't mind as being seen as condescending here, but that's not my point. My point is that I have limited time, and I don't think spending it rehashing stale arguments with dedicated antifeminists is a good way to work towards the goals I have. If somebody actually wants to learn something, I'm glad to help them out. And if I end up with questions, I'll surely ask them. But absent that, I have better things to do.
I'm open to being persuaded and I don't think you can accuse me of deflecting or not taking what you say seriously. In fact I would love to be persuaded, the social punishments for disliking feminism are steep.
> I want that replaced with an anti-sexist cultural hegemony, because that shifts us in the direction of a more even distribution of power.
No it doesn't, that's only true if being male is a meaningful predictor of power, but it isn't. You can see this in poor white males: class outweighs sex and race combined. Feminism isn't interested in addressing or critiquing the real institutions of power, they want the power for themselves. It could even make the power distribution worse because those in power will have the outward appearance of equality.
I'm not sure what your political background is but ideologically your anti-sexist cultural hegemony bears striking similarities to the dictatorship of the proletariat(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria...) which was rejected by the socialist libertarians of the time and would later become the platform of Lenin and Stalin. Anybody adopting this type of thinking should be aware of the horrors it has brought in the past.
> Also false. I'm not much of a fellow traveler in that I have a number of deep philosophical disagreements, but our goals are aligned for the next few decades or so.
The reason I say their worldview has become your own is because sometimes it seems like you're reading their script. I don't actually know you.
> She's implying social change only happens when forced by some group of activists and therefore activism isn't responsible for the collateral damage it causes.
If you can give examples of quick, major social change that don't happen when somebody pushes pretty hard, I would be interested to see them.
Also, I wouldn't say that they aren't responsible for collateral damage. But as long as the collateral damage is lower than the damage caused by the continuance of the problem, I don't think they'll mourn much. In particular, I am not willing to prioritize the hurt feelings of old white guys who a) have benefited from sexism, and b) who are (unconsciously) sustaining a sexist situation over the harm they are doing (and the large amount of hurt feelings caused by it).
> He may not have been blamed for it (the gender gap predates him by centuries) but the responsibility was placed on his shoulders.
Sure. Is that fair? No. Is it more unfair than it being placed on the women forced to deal with it? Definitely not.
> No it doesn't, that's only true if being male is a meaningful predictor of power, but it isn't.
There are also class differences, but that doesn't mean that sexism didn't or doesn't exist. For millennia women were effectively property of males. We are moving away from it, but we are far from done yet. Power is still disproportionately in the hands of men.
> Feminism isn't interested in addressing or critiquing the real institutions of power, they want the power for themselves.
Depends on the feminist, really. But my general heuristic is that moving in a direction where more people have access to power is good, so even if we only shift the power from n well-off white guys to n*2 well-off white people, I'll call it a provisional win. And any shift in the power structures makes easier to make further changes. E.g., gay marriage is proceeding more quickly and easily than interracial marriage, and trans rights quicker still.
> anti-sexist cultural hegemony bears striking similarities to the dictatorship of the proletariat
It also bears striking similarities to America in the age of de Tocqueville; we had a native opposition to concentrations of power that we have gradually lost. I'm not going to sweat this one too hard.
> I'm open to being persuaded and I don't think you can accuse me of deflecting or not taking what you say seriously. In fact I would love to be persuaded, the social punishments for disliking feminism are steep.
Feel free to drop me a line, then; I'm glad to discuss this.
Did he harm any women by wearing a goddamned shirt? Thank goodness he was wearing a shirt; I know I would rather see any kind of shirt rather than pasty scientist skin.
Yes, yes he did. Which many of the articles on this topic will explain to you in detail. Not that I expect a literal anonymous douche to have done the work to understand the problem.
If you would like to do some reading and still have actual questions, feel free to ask me, preferably by email. As I state in my profile, anonymous posters get a lot less leeway from me, and I'm not really interested in doing Sexism 101 for somebody who can't be bothered to spend 15 minutes with Google.
Let's make a deal: you turn up using your real name and ask sincere questions that demonstrate some command of the material. In turn, I'll treat you with respect, rather than as some goof who uses anonymity to avoid accountability for his ugly opinions.
It's a pejorative term meaning "social justice warrior", almost invariably intended as an insult. In my experience, there's no well-defined meaning to the term (it covers a lot of ground), but it does send a pretty consistent message about the person using it.
There is also a pretty consistent message sent by identifying the term as pejorative and insulting, to be fair. There's a huge false dichotomy that holds that anyone who utters that phrase cannot possibly be progressive, when in fact the more likely scenario is that the speaker is progressive and is tired of a certain class of tactics overpowering the message.
This thread is exhibit A, to that end. Look how many people are up in arms about the shirt and have really lost the plot of what they're mad about, and still invest their lives arguing over the shirt months after it was dead and gone and the guy apologized, in response to a one line aside from the original commenter that was interpreted as permission to get opinions off chests. There's a person nearby fervently arguing about the shirt without even having seen the shirt, and yet we are supposed to accept that this is the best path to equality and progressive change?
I am not sharing an opinion (seriously, read my comment again), but I can tell from voting that it wouldn't matter anyway. My opinion would probably surprise the people voting on this comment, but I know better after several years than to ever speak to Hacker News about this topic and expect a coherent response. Again, I point to the thread.
I'm not sure that I know which way you mean that initial comment. I don't see there being any question that "SJW" is almost always intended as an insult: it's almost universally used by people who disapprove of that philosophy, and the term "warrior" is clearly meant as mockery. (I've occasionally seen folks say, "Why do they think that's an insult? I'd be proud to wear that label!" But that's a very different thing.)
I absolutely agree, though, that it also tells you things about the speaker when someone takes the time to speak up and say, "Hey, that term is used as an insult." (Disapproval of name-calling is only one of those things.)
Your error is the presupposition that it matters, and that we are indebted to you for gracing us with your speaking up about it. Misogynistic anti-progressives, as well as progressives who fetishize three letters and rail about their insulting properties, have nearly identical DNA when it comes to caring about self-image which is what it says about you.
Someone called you a SJW. Oh, no. What does it matter if you stay strong for what you believe? If you strongly believe in equality and comfortable environments for all, it will not matter what you are labeled or called, because you're above it. Soiling yourself with arguing about the term completely devalues whatever opinion you had. I see lots of people speaking up about the term "SJW," and I lose respect for every single one of their points of view. I'm not alone in that, based on conversations I have with people who don't take the time to subject their opinions to voting like this.
One can be progressive and distance themselves from much of the "SJW identity." The problem is that progressives like yourself would consider such a person moderate, and that's where you're disconnected from reality. I can tell that about you just based on the two comments I've read alone (especially your logical leap from one side of the colon to the other in your second sentence, that insulting a person implies beliefs), and I've trained that on far more people than yourself; I've also never been wrong. Yes, I've inferred a lot about you from what you're saying, but since I've never met you I cannot possibly be expected to behave otherwise.
Put another way, my biggest problem with the intersection of progressivism and the Internet these days is that both the SJW and anti-SJW camps have made everyone forget what the point of all of it actually is, and we're focused more on the failures of individuals like a shirt. The SJW-like progressives are just as complicit in that, but any opinion daring to say that is immediately seen as anti-progressive. Look at the effect: we're talking about an article of clothing months later.
Remember when I said my opinion would surprise you? Watch me hold these three simultaneously: I thought the shirt was mildly amusing, millions who have never met the person slamming him in public was unacceptable, and if it made someone in his workplace uncomfortable they should be empowered to speak up and all parties involved have a reasonable and productive conversation and potential behavior correction without fear of retribution.
Most people would read and understand all three. The current debaters would stop at the first one and rail me into oblivion. That's my problem. I'd call those people SJWs, and your initial comment which started this thread is that you can identify something about me based on that. Clearly, you cannot.
Because I would feel uncomfortable if my boss wore a shirt of dicks all over it. Its inappropriate in any professional setting other than porn star or pimp. It's sexist objectification of women, and undoubtedly makes some of his peers uncomfortable. Not cool.
edit: I should have googled the shirt first, somehow in my mind is was a lot worse than it was. It was more tasteless than anything.
edit2: I kept digging, looking for more angles, and it is still bad. Impossibly figured hyper sexualized illustrated women don't belong in the workplace.
When those clothes belittle an entire class of people. It sends a message to his female peers that he views them primarily as objects, and as human being second. If he wore that to my office, he would be rightfully fired on the spot.
Me, me, me, it’s only about me! That’s what you sound like – and that’s not what mutual respect looks like. Mutual respect means communicating with others and finding an ok solution for everybody, not wearing whatever the hell you want (and it also means that you better be careful especially around sensitive things, like potentially objectifying depictions of women, especially in a context were women have long been denied access, and to be proactive in your behavior in those contexts, because the people affected by it may feel or actually be unable to speak up).
Yea, we're incredibly intolerant. Men and women in equal roles, with equal pay, and a healthy diversity of cultures, ideas, and religions. Everyone feels comfortable suggesting an idea, or challenging a preconceived notion. The only real rule is Don't be a douche. You wouldn't like it.
The fact that you use a gendered pejorative[0] that refers to men while claiming to have a "healthy diversity of cultures" is both ironic and representative of modern PC-culture.
Yea, as douche points out, I was making a play off his username. Also, I wasn't aware the term douche applied to only white men. It certainly has no racial or gender connotation where I live in Canada.
I have a shirt with rockets all over it. I am sure some feminist would call them dicks.
That said, I don't think that dicks are the same class as women's breasts. Impossibly figured hyper sexualized illustrated women? What does that even mean?
and here we are, exciting scientific news and you've spent over an hour discussing a shirt that unfortunately got posted to the Internet, whether it made the wearer's co-workers uncomfortable or not, whether it fits the wearer's environment culture or not, nobody knows, but a whole lot of people sure like any excuse for being outraged.
Let's say for the sake of argument that this shirt -- which was a present from a female friend, by the way -- wasn't appropriate in his workplace. Isn't that something for the people in his workplace (a workplace which had several women in positions of authority, by the way, so there's no reason to think the situation wouldn't have been addressed) to sort out? Was it really necessary to pillory the man as a sexist in worldwide media and force him to make a tearful apology on international television? Can we at least agree that the whole situation was ridiculously blown out of proportion?
The guy didn't just wear it in his workplace, in which it would be mainly up to his workplace.
He wore it while representing a major scientific effort to the world. During a period where we are working very hard to drag our culture out of millennia of patriarchy, race-based dominance, and other primitive idiocy. And while a great number of people are trying very hard to solve the diversity issues in science.
So no, it was not blown out of proportion. He was unlucky in that this is a moment of transition. 25 years ago nobody bothered would have felt safe speaking up, and 25 years from now things will hopefully have changed enough that one mistake won't be emblematic of a major societal problem. But today's today. And today we have a lot of people whose toes have been stepped on all their goddamn lives.
Is anyone allowed to disagree with you about whether or not distributed punishment incited by careless journalists and carried out by mobs of bored and uninformed strangers is the best way to "drag our culture out of millennia of patriarchy, race-based dominance, and other primitive idiocy"? Or does asking questions like that make me a supporter of patriarchy, race-based dominance, and other primitive idiocy?
"And today we have a lot of people whose toes have been stepped on all their goddamn lives."
So it's okay to destroy someone who had never been one of the toe-steppers for wearing the wrong shirt?
See, this is the thing. You can bang on all you like about the evils of patriarchy, but at the end, you are advocating that random people who at best committed a minor faux pas that should be dealt with in their own workplace should be destroyed by the mob. It's as if I decried the number of people who die in traffic accidents and in response advocate that anyone who gets a speeding ticket get put in front of a firing squad. It's wrong, and you're trying to distract yourself from that fact by pretending that you are somehow bravely fighting the patriarchy by choosing the least intimidating possible target.
If you can personally demonstrate the effectiveness of a better way than calling out people causing problems, I am sure plenty of people will follow your example. But if all you have to contribute is armchair carping, don't expect anybody to take you very seriously. That's not a novel position here; few programmers on HN weight highly the advice from non-programmer managers on how to program.
Also, I agree with arrg that you're being ridiculously hyperbolic. The guy spoke to the world; the world spoke back. The guy wasn't "destroyed" or put in front of "a firing squad"; he's still a functioning human being who is employed and everything. He apologized and as far as I know the apology was generally accepted. The only people I see bringing this up now are dudes apparently sore over the fact they are no longer beyond criticism for various sexist idiocies that, yes, no matter the intent, are part of how patriarchy is maintained.
"If you can personally demonstrate the effectiveness of a better way than calling out people causing problems, I am sure plenty of people will follow your example."
I have a great suggestion which would have worked perfectly and not caused any excessive harm: if anyone in his workplace was bothered by his shirt, they should have talked to his manager, and those actually affected could have resolved the issue like adults. Does every trivial workplace slight need to be dealt with in the international media?
"That's not a novel position here; few programmers on HN weight highly the advice from non-programmer managers on how to program."
Except this is not a situation where a bunch of managers weighed in and said that this guy should be shamed worldwide. This is a situation where a whole bunch of random bored strangers decided to make an example of him. Please forgive me if I'm not convinced this is how an experienced manager would deal with it.
I say again that basically nobody who's taking action on this issue is interested in advice from anonymous peanut-gallery members. If you want to change how activism is done, demonstrate your better way.
> Does every trivial workplace slight need to be dealt with in the international media?
No, only the ones where the person has chosen to represent a major project in the international media. Which is the case here.
> This is a situation where a whole bunch of random bored strangers decided to make an example of him.
He spoke to the world. The world spoke back. The people doing so were generally neither random nor bored. Quite a lot of them were working female scientists, for whom this is a major and very personal issue.
Also, you aren't getting the analogy. Here, you are the useless manager trying to tell feminist activists how to better do their work, work you show no sign of understanding or even caring about.
"If you want to change how activism is done, demonstrate your better way."
Here's the change I want: I want people not getting mobbed for what are, at the absolute worst, trivial infractions that should be taken care of in the context of their own workplace. A lot of other folks who might be sympathetic to your goals feel the same way. Maybe if you want your activism to be more successful in changing minds, as opposed to just temporarily cowing opponents into resentful silence, you should put some thought into how it's coming across.
Sorry, you don't get to judge what's trivial. But keep acting otherwise if it makes you feel better.
But you aren't getting my point. As somebody who is not actually working to solve the problem, your peanut-gallery "you're doing it wrong" is basically irrelevant. E.g.: "Hey firefighters! Do you really have to use axes on that front door? You should just ring the doorbell and maybe leave a note. That's the polite thing to do." A firefighter might take tips on techniques from other firefighters, but will (and should) have very little interest in the shouted suggestions of random passers-by, and even less in what arsonists think they should do.
People unhappy with social progress are forever telling the people making that progress that they are doing it wrong. Here's a famous example:
If you compare it with the death rate, it suggests that progress was made on this issue not because most people change their minds, but because most of the people opposed to interracial marriage died off.
This is hardly unique to social change; Max Planck, one of the inventors of quantum theory, wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
So although I would like to change minds, I will settle for some amount of resentful silence. Because a) it reduces the direct impact of oppression, and b) it means that Planck's "new generation" will pick up the new truths. If I have to choose between civil rights and civil dialog, I'm generally going to pick civil rights.
"[If] anyone in his workplace was bothered by his shirt, they should have talked to his manager, and those actually affected could have resolved the issue like adults."
You're implying that only people within ESA could have been affected by his choice of clothing. But he wore that shirt in public; worse, on broadcast media, which means that those potentially affected includes the media-consuming population of the whole world. And anyone who is concerned about access to and diversity in science and technology has a right to be "bothered" by the message it sent out.
"those potentially affected includes the media-consuming population of the whole world"
I really don't know what to say. Here we have people insisting one moment that I'm blowing this way out of proportion, and then the very next moment insisting that billions of people were harmed because an obscure space scientist wore a shirt.
I mean, what’s this non-sensical hyperbole disconnected from reality? What’s wrong with criticizing someone and saying that what he was doing is not ok?! I mean, what are you even talking about?! The hell.
He was representing this mission to the world and he was in that position as an obvious role model and, in that moment, in a public facing role. If we cannot criticize someone like that, who are we allowed to criticize?
Also, how disconnected from any resemblance of reality can one comment be. I’m just astonished at you complete hyperbole.
Once again, let's be clear what he did that required criticism -- or, more accurately, furious accusations of sexism from dozens of news outlets, mass public shaming from an angry worldwide mob, and an tearful apology on international television.
He wore a shirt.
That's what you're energetically defending. Worldwide mobbing, targeting by the media, and a forced public apology reminiscent of misbehaving Party officials. For wearing a shirt. Let's be absolutely clear about this, please.
Also, this is not some defenseless guy, caught by some camera on accident. Position of power, public role in that instance – and consequently also the responsibility that comes with that. You act like this is some little defenseless kid, unable to handle one little criticism … and you are constantly blowing the actual response and the actual criticism completely out of proportion, pretending it to be bullying or mobbing or some such bullshit. This was a tiny, tiny, tiny story. (The wailing misogynists made it big, you know.)
I think he just might be able to handle a bit of harsh criticism. Because that’s what this was. The horror. (Also, he had hordes of misogynists defending him within seconds, though I doubt he liked that.)
I’m absolutely clear about being absolutely in love with free speech and consequently criticizing someone for wearing a dumb shirt. Sure.
Thousands of people on social media, reacting to dozens of instances of journalistic incitement by launching ill-informed attacks and accusations of the worst possible social sin in the Western world, to the extent that he had to deliver a tearful apology on worldwide television? Sounds like a mob to me.
"Position of power, public role in that instance – and consequently also the responsibility that comes with that."
You're describing a politician, not a scientist. This guy was not "famous" except among the microscopic sliver of people who follow space science. He was not "powerful" except in a tiny group of ten people or so. He was briefly in the public spotlight and the response was a ginned-up mob. Let's say you briefly become famous for something you do in your day job. Is it fair for a mob to come after _you_?
"I’m absolutely clear about being absolutely in love with free speech and consequently criticizing someone for wearing a dumb shirt. Sure."
Nobody's saying you don't have the free speech to criticize a scientist for wearing a shirt. You certainly do! And similarly, everyone else has the free speech to tell you how overwrought and disproportionate your criticism is.
Anyway, since you've stated clearly that you're fine with what happened to him for wearing a shirt, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.
For those who didn't see the original coverage, you can see some brilliant photos of the bounce the lander made during it's landing on the comet here: http://www.space.com/27788-philae-comet-landing-bounce-photo...
Also a hat tip to the earlier missions (such as the Beagle probe that was lost on Mars) which emphasized the importance of retaining radio contact for as long as possible during landing and being able to send and receive commands with the minimum amount of hardware reconfiguration once landed.
What a fantastic start to Sunday!