ESA Rosetta Spacecraft now in orbit around a comet - eventually to land on it!

[Magda Hassan]

Rosetta just shows that technology and science can be used for good, for exploration, for pure knowledge - and not how it is all too often used to make more weapons of war and control.

Yes. Pure research is so important. I was listening to a radio programme just today actually. It was mostly abut funding universities. But the different types of research was discussed. Few want to fund pure research these days. Unless there can be a definite and immediate corporate benefit it is not attractive to private funding. Governments are not funding universities as they did. Students can't all afford fees (not that there should be fees either) to fund unis (most going to CEOs of corporate type unis rather than the uni itself). But there has been amazing out comes for some pure research and who knows what is to come yet?