You had me with you up until you said "grown wiser". Yes, we learned that lesson, but I fear that rather than truly growing wiser, man has just found different and new expressions for folly.
Read "Cycle of Fire" by Hal Clement, and weep for America.
I'll take a moment to answer several responses to this.
To call Creationism a theory is to miss the correct definition of the word theory. Many people seem to think of theory as a neat idea to explain nature, but that falls far short.
In this case, the key differentiator is that a theory is testable, typically by experimentation. When you claim to have a theory, you'd also better define some sort of experiment or other set of measurements that can prove, disprove, or modify that theory.
From what I've read, Creationism is at the (stoner voice) "Wow Man!" (/stoner voice) stage.
Of course the downside is that there may be no such thing as "string theory", because there seems to be no way to prove or disprove it. To be fair, from what I can see, those who call themselves string theorists are quite upset about that, and would love nothing more than a real experiment.
..."loud enough to hear in space" - that's silly, with near-vacuum.
The setup is for simulating the "sound" of liftoff and early atmospheric flight. There was serious concern about the sound level of the engines shaking the rocket apart at liftoff, which is part of why there's the flood of water. Even though the water is loud, it helps dampen the sound of the rocket exhaust. Then there's the "sound" of flying through the air, to the point that they have to throttle the engines back for a portion of the flight - because of "dynamic pressure." The Challenger disaster happened right after this inteval - the last normall communication was, "go for throttle-up", meaning that they were high enough for the dynamic pressure to have dropped enough that they could put the pedal to the metal, again.
Oh wow! Shades of:
Also proof that a program that does absolutely nothing can indeed have bugs. Look up the history some time. (It's on Wikipedia.)
I don't think you can really know where to start start before the Kalens of July.
There's a "Robinette Broadhead" joke in here somewhere, and I just can't make it come out. Where's Gelle-Klara when we need her?
Get back to work, you lazy bum. No pay for YOU!
(Especially true in the food service industry, where it does the most damage??)
Speed is relative, so is velocity. Rosetta is going to rendesvous with the comet, and go into orbit around it. At that point the speed and velocity will both be quite slow. I'm guessing that the biggest problem for the lander will be not bouncing off or floating away - there's next to no gravity.
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight. -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
