Off On a Comet

Jules Verne published Off on a Comet in 1877. Its plot is rather silly, but really no sillier than Interstellar and Gravity. Now one of our surrogate droids is going to fulfill Verne's dream of landing on one of those ominous heavenly objects.

This is a really cool photo from the Rosetta probe that's about to send a lander to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko:

More photos are here.

It's really ironic that we can pull off something as complicated putting a man on the moon almost 50 years ago, and this year landing a space probe on a comet 300 million miles away, yet we cannot manage to keep our roads in good repair, or ensure that all Americans have a roof over their heads and access to decent health care.

That's not a knock against the space program: this country -- this planet -- is rich enough to explore space and take care of all our citizens, if only those self-styled masters of the universe who just spent $6 billion dollars buying the last election weren't such selfish wienies.