LOL, personally, I'd never say that. Dress is a triviality to me. But the comment made me laugh and I just throw it in for the levity. :-)
If I understand the reports correctly the lander’s engines are inoperative. They couldn’t be primed and will not fire to push it into onto the surface. It will have to rely on the “harpoons” to penetrate the surface then it will be “winched” down.
That does NOT sound like a plan with a high chance of success.
It may very well bounce off.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This news doesn’t sound good at all.
I closed out the web site because I didn’t expect any more news for a bit and it’s about time to head to bed. Now I’ll have to pull it back up to find out what’s going on. So much for sleep. LOL!
LOL, personally, I'd never say that. Dress is a triviality to me. But the comment made me laugh and I just throw it in for the levity. :-)
The lander has no engines. It was designed for a ballistic trajectory to the comet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(spacecraft)
“The lander is designed to deploy from the main spacecraft body and descend from an orbit of 22.5 kilometres (14 mi) along a ballistic trajectory.[15] It will touch down on the comet’s surface at a velocity of around 1 metre per second (3.6 km/h; 2.2 mph).[16] The legs are designed to dampen the initial impact to avoid bouncing as the comet’s escape velocity is only around 0.5 m/s (1.8 km/h; 1.1 mph),[17] and the impact energy drives ice screws into the surface.[18] Philae will then fire two harpoons into the surface at 70 m/s (250 km/h; 160 mph) to anchor itself.[19][20]”
But it does have a cold gas thruster system to keep it from bouncing off the comet.