Isn't the whole problem that they assumed a softer (ice) surface?
Look, unless you're a friggin' rocket scientist, or believe they had additional information they didn't use ... summarizing anything as "the whole problem" is kind of childish.
Based on your vast experience of landing on comets after a 10 year journey, do you think you have a better sense of what the assumptions about the hardness of the ice should have been? Maybe you should have shared that with them.
Lots of smart people worked on this, took all they knew and could surmise, and made choices with the best available information, and using the technology and money available to them.
I'm sure as heck not going to say "well, if only they'd done this it would have worked". I know I'm not qualified to do that, and I'm quite certain most of us on Slashdot aren't either. In fact, I'm betting the people who are qualified are all thinking this was a monumentally difficult task. NASA isn't sitting around going "Ha ha!"
To me, even what they did is some pretty mind-boggling engineering. But in interviews I heard over the last few weeks, they still knew there were risks and uncertainties.
It sucks, but unless you're more qualified than the entire team who did this, you have to realize this is still an incredible feat.
I won't even claim this to be an accurate analogy: But this is kind of like hitting a target in China from New York, using a home made gun, in the dark, and while both you and the target are moving.
Me, I'll applaud the ESA and everyone involved. Success for this kind of engineering includes all of the stuff that got you there. Getting far enough to have a failed landing is still a huge undertaking.
Well, I think the whole problem was that they did not have a wizard on staff to solve every problem with magic.
Also, far as I know, their graviton phasor array had decohered somewhere along the journey.