Boffins, feeling around in dark for Philae, lit up by bright spot on Comet 67/P The European Space Agency has determined a "good candidate" for the location of its Philae probot, which successfully landed on Comet 67/P in November last year. Since then, the location of the spacecraft's final resting place has remained a mystery for boffins working on the Rosetta mission. However, on Thursday the ESA said …
what you really mean in this case is that a crash is a landing you haven't observed,,,,,,,,but that's wrong: a crash is any landing you haven't controlled
now a V2 "landing" certainly was not controlled.....it was programmed but not controlled, so it was - a crash
now in the case of Philae the landing was controlled, but the controls went wrong so is that a crash?
Just to confuse the issue, don't forget one of the favourite euphemisms of the aircraft accident investigation industry- CFIT: "Controlled Flight Into Terrain". Not a crash because the aircraft was under control all the time. Until it hit the mountain......and crashed
By definition of aviators that I've known.... there's two types of landings. If you walk away from it, it's a "good" landing. If you don't walk away, it's a "bad landing". Based on this, I daresay Philae and the V2's had "bad" landings. My reasoning on Philae, is that there's been no communication with it after it bounced into the shade.
"I have landed on Phobos and am being attacked by a Z-class cruiser. Think I can hold out until you come, but hurry."
(...)
Then K.15's ship stopped blasting. It had obviously exhausted its fuel, and was doing a little better than six kilometers a second away from the sun. K.15 must have landed, for his ship was now speeding helplessly out of the solar system. Commander Smith didn't like the message it was broadcasting, and guessed that it was running into the track of an approaching warship at some indefinite distance, but there was nothing to be done about that. The Doradus began to move toward Phobos, anxious to waste no time.
On the face of it, Commander Smith seemed the master of the situation. His ship was armed with a dozen heavy guided missiles and two turrets of electro-magnetic guns. Against him was one man in a space-suit, trapped on a moon only twenty kilometers across. It was not until Commander Smith had his first good look at Phobos, from a distance of less than a hundred kilometers, that he began to realize that, after all, K. 15 might have a few cards up his sleeve.
Arthur C. Clarke: "Hide and Seek" (1949)
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