If you had to verify, personally, that the ESA actually controlled a spacecraft that orbited a comet, etc., how would you do it?
Good question. Intercepting the data stream sent back from the spacecraft would probably be possible (direct imaging at that range isn’t in the cards), but it would take some rather sensitive equipment. It might be possible to find amateur astronomers who tracked it during its launch or during its flybys of Earth in 2005, 2007, and 2009, though, and derive a trajectory from that; it’s not “personal”, but if you don’t trust that kind of data, you’d be getting far into conspiracy-theory territory.
That’d only get you so far, though. Rosetta’s flight plan was pretty complicated and included both several gravity-assist flybys and maneuvers under its own power, so if you doubt ESA’s ability to do anything other than get mass near the comet, that’d be tricky to verify.
ETA: Googled “amateur spacecraft tracking” and found a response to almost precisely this question. Turns out there are a few amateur groups with the resources to find the carrier signals from deep-space probes. They even have a Yahoo group.
Great response. You’re not fully resolving the potential skepticism I identified, but that’s impossible anyways. What should be ultimately convincing is that good theories generate good predictions, and you should expect good theories to be connected to other good theories.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are firmly in “conspiracy-theory territory” already and aren’t consistently testing their beliefs. I can sympathize because I know I spend a lot of time generating and trusting weak theories about, e.g. other people’s motivations, my likely performance on a particular project.
Good question. Intercepting the data stream sent back from the spacecraft would probably be possible (direct imaging at that range isn’t in the cards), but it would take some rather sensitive equipment. It might be possible to find amateur astronomers who tracked it during its launch or during its flybys of Earth in 2005, 2007, and 2009, though, and derive a trajectory from that; it’s not “personal”, but if you don’t trust that kind of data, you’d be getting far into conspiracy-theory territory.
That’d only get you so far, though. Rosetta’s flight plan was pretty complicated and included both several gravity-assist flybys and maneuvers under its own power, so if you doubt ESA’s ability to do anything other than get mass near the comet, that’d be tricky to verify.
ETA: Googled “amateur spacecraft tracking” and found a response to almost precisely this question. Turns out there are a few amateur groups with the resources to find the carrier signals from deep-space probes. They even have a Yahoo group.
Great response. You’re not fully resolving the potential skepticism I identified, but that’s impossible anyways. What should be ultimately convincing is that good theories generate good predictions, and you should expect good theories to be connected to other good theories.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are firmly in “conspiracy-theory territory” already and aren’t consistently testing their beliefs. I can sympathize because I know I spend a lot of time generating and trusting weak theories about, e.g. other people’s motivations, my likely performance on a particular project.