musicengin

I'm not one of the ESA folks, but this is a question that is really important to put a general answer onto.

Everything we use, the simple daily tools right on out to the most cutting edge of technology -- all of it, at some point in our history, was technology that was undreamt of.

It's about extending basic scientific knowledge. You don't get ANYTHING in our technological world that didn't come out of someone doing this kind of investigation and exploration without having the remotest idea what "good it was for", what the ultimate use of it would be.

Try this: count up the number of different technologies involved in your phone, and then do a little Wikipedia research into the origins of each one (plastic; glass; wireless/radio; transistors and computer chips; metal; information technologies such as math; electricity; physics; chemistry; manufacturing process). See how far back you can go to find a time when that technology didn't exist, and look for the people who created that technology.

How many of them could have envisioned the phones we stick in our pockets, and which connect to the rest of the world without so much as a wire?

In terms of 80's computer, such as Motorola 6800, or Vax 11 780's, what roughly is the computing power on Rosetta? on Philae?