To Boldly Go...

What a cool thing! By now, you've already heard about the ESA's landing of a probe on Comet 67P Rosetta. That's pretty awesome. To be able to safely land something from a moving ship onto a moving comet... To be able to study the comet and its makeup and how it changes as it approaches the sun... To be able to analyze the chemicals and minerals right there in space... (All with equipment designed and built 10 years ago!) This is where the theoretical meets the actual. This is where all science suddenly becomes cool, even to those who didn't think so before.

Well done, European Space Agency. Well done, human race.

And there are many more such missions scheduled by other space agencies, including our own NASA. I believe the NASA project is designed to see if a probe can be designed to alter a comet's course. (Thus putting an end to a whole sub-genre of sci-fi doomsday movies, but possibly creating a whole other action sub-genre. Oh. Wait. Armageddon. Never mind.)