Imagine a picture of a robot holding up a motherboard, captioned with the words "Alas, poor Yorick..."

In other words, the error correction process is moved up to layer eight.

There is a third option: The boy is a "paper" MCP. He knows the right answer to the questions, but doesn't understand the reasoning behind it.

Canada's new polymer bills would make for a fairly waterproof shelter, if you layered them properly.

It's not escaping from the comet that's the difficult part. It's the slowing down enough to enter Earth's orbit. First, Philae is already travelling well beyond Earth's escape velocity, so you've got to slow down a lot before you get anywhere near to an orbit; and Philae and the comet are only going to get faster as the days and weeks to perihelion tick by. Even at Aphelion the comet is travelling at half of Earth's escape velocity. Second, Philae has no heat shield, so you're not going to be able to knock off any serious amount of speed through aerobraking. Third, Philae has only one thruster, which can be fired once only and only at full strength (and that thruster has already failed). Fourth, even if you could somehow remotely fix the thruster, Philae can only orient itself in one plane. So, you only have one chance at a course correction. Fifth, 67P (and Philae with it) doesn't get close enough to the Earth to do any appreciable gravity assist manoevres (the closest it gets is halfway between Mars and Earth). Finally, and most importantly, Philae has no way of launching itself, so its going to have to rely on a violent outgassing, which only happens near perihelion.

So, Philae would have to be blasted off of 67P by a random yet serendipitous outgassing that throws it clear of the comet, without destroying it, at an attitude that the single reaction wheel can compensate for, on the off chance that the previously malfunctioning thruster can somehow push it on a perfect course of multiple Jupiter/Mars flybys that would cut the lander's speed in half, allowing it to settle into an orbit around Earth. The odds against it are, if you'll pardon the pun, astronomical.

The only way Philae will see Earth again, barring some future trophy hunting space jockey, is as a harbinger of 67P's crash into the planet.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are you talking about a disk sized collector the size of the Moon's orbit?

Philae has the same orbital parameters as the comet. it would take quite a lot of delta-v to convert that orbit to orbitting the Earth. After all, it took ten years and four planetary slingshots in order to get it there in the first place.

Nakedness is an artistic symbol for innocence, and the BBC doesn't protect anyone from anything. It is a broadcasting company, nothing more.

What do you think we're searching the asteroids for? The only thing of value in space: water. Water outside of a gravity well is propellant. Just run it past a hot nuclear pile, and it turns to steam. Voila... cheap delta-V

Exactly. Doctor Who is the "reference plane" against which all other television programming is measured.

Whew! What a relief! I'm not a pilot, but that looks like a bad angle to be approaching a runway, especially at night.

First, You're looking at monthly stats for currently active missions. Second, Over the past several years, Canada's peacekeeping has largely been done through UN sanctioned NATO missions rather than directly through the UN itself. Third, sadly, since the mid 1990s. Canada has been reducing its peacekeeping role - which explains why Canada's numbers are so low.

Cumulatively Canada, has committed the most troops, over 125,000 altogether.

Link.

War doesn't decide who is right. It only decides who is left.

In Canada, Remembrance Day is a solemn day, full of reflection and recognition of the price Canada has paid for peace. It's definitely not a pompous flag waving day because Canada doesn't go to war to crush her enemies. Canada doesn't start wars. It ends them. We have committed more troops to UN peacekeeping efforts than any other country. As such, I think when Canadians do consider the deaths of enemy soldiers it is with sympathy rather than with Schadenfreude.

Thanks! I was beginning to think I was the only person who didn't know. I've seen the acronym before as Pre-Authorized Contribution, but I couldn't make any contextual leap to what a SuperPAC might be.