you’ve heard of: getting emotionally attached to your roomba
now get ready for: genuinely mourning the mars rover like a deceased loved one
SHE SERVED MANKIND FOR SO MANY YEARS AND NOW SHE’S JUST LAYING UP THERE COLD AND ALONE UNDER A COVER OF DUST TAKEN FROM US BY A SPACE STORM AND SHE WILL NOT BE GIVEN A PROPER RESTING PLACE UNTIL HUMANS REACH MARS AND RETRIEVE HER
This was Opportunity. Let me tell you about her sister, Spirit. And their stories are how you can tell their names apart, because they were so appropriately named.
They were twins, identically built in every way. They sent Spirit to the north, and Opportunity to the south. They sent Spirit to what they thought was a dried sea bed, that unfortunately turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was plains, covered in millions of slightly too large, unremarkable, and extremely inconveniently placed rocks. You see pictures of thousandands of rocks? More than likely it came from Spirit.
The nearest interesting feature were mountains that were miles away. And the rovers? They only travel dozens of feet every Sol (One Sol is a martian day, which is 25 hours long). She was only designed to last for ninety days. So they had a hard choice to make. Keep her in her designated area and look at rocks they probably wouldn’t learn much new from, or set course to those mountains, which she likely wouldn’t live long enough. They chose the mountains.
Opportunity was set to land in (or near, can’t remember) a large crater, which they thought was interesting but didn’t expect much. But almost immediately, they found signs of mars having been wet.
Spirit, along her way, got stuck on a rock that they didn’t see. And their efforts to get her off, ended up bogging her down. Winter was approaching, and she spent months stuck. They thought that would be the end of he. Howerver, there, but for the grace of god, she managed to get free before winter.
Meanwhile, Opportunity kept find lots of cool new things.
Spirit along the way somewhere, her front wheel broke down. They thought that might be the end of her. Until someone thought to do the inconcievable- they turned her around, and drove her backwards. She backed herself everywhere she went from there on, dragging her dead front wheel in the sand. She slowed down conciderably, but somehow she kept going.
Opportunity still kept finding neat things that massively advances our knowledge of Mars.
Somewhere aling the way, dust so badly covered Spirit’s solar panels, she was losing power. She was dying. Again, they thought it would be the end of her. But a powerful dust devil happened along and hit her, which ended up blowing most of the dust off her. She started getting good power again.
Spirit made it to the mountain, several years after she landed. The mountain was more rugged than though thought. It was a gamble if she could make it up before winter. If she didn’t, that would be the end of her. It sounds like I’m overusing that, but no. She nearly died several times.
So they decided to go for it. They sent her up, and she barely made it. She took the first photo from a mountain view on another planet. I tried to find it, but the searches are all overrun with Opportunity photos right now.
I am unsure of what happened to Spirit after that, but she wasn’t around much longer. Opportunity had a relatively easy time. She had ample opportunities to find new things. But Spirit fought tooth and nail for every achievement she had.
That’s how you tell them apart. Opportunity had plent of them. And Spirit was full of fight.
And this was the last set of images she ever sent back to us-
i’m fairly confident the reason everyone assumes Curiosity is about the size of a dog is because informal NASA press (and by extension, the general culture of people who care abt what NASA’s up to) talks about Curiosity like it is, in fact, an unusually smart and self-aware pet, and i think that’s beautiful.
Detroit: Become Human: In the future, humans will treat robots as subhuman objects despite robots looking and acting incredibly humanlike with personalities and independent thoughts of their own.
The entire world when a robot in space died: *making fanart and crying R.I.P. Oppy you beautiful little space explorer*
lol
Same thing happened with a Japanese satellite a few years ago. Just before it finally died, they turned it around to face earth for the first time so it could see the place it was helping and people were bawling their eyes out.
Wtf you can’t do that to my heart
Humans will form emotional attachments to literally anything
We will, it’s true! In this case, though, the attachment is already built-in because we MADE these space explorers to do what we, as humans, cannot.
They spend their entire lives in the cold, airless expanse of space, sending us back pictures and stories the same way our friends do on WhatsApp.
The Mars rovers are the first generation of astronauts to carve a little human mark on another planet. Sending them there and keeping them going took years and years of hard work down here on Earth. They’re pretty special.
white people will cry over the death of a robot but will totally ignore the murder of an African American man who got shot by the police while he was sleeping.
His name was Willie McCoy and he was only 20.
I could say the same thing about trans people killed but you don’t see me doing that. Race isn’t the problem here. People cared about the rover because of the images it sent us and the personality it seemed to have.
What happened to the young man was a tragedy, really. But I didn’t even know about it. I hardly watch the news and haven’t seen any articles about it here or on Facebook so…
I don’t usually say stuff like this so I’m not made out to be a racist. I don’t care what someone’s race is, honestly.
What happens to people of color and queer people in this world really is fucked up, but comparing it to the rover isn’t going to change anything or make it better.
Making fun of people who were sad about the rover is stupid, they aren’t comparable. One is a life, one is a machine, they just don’t go together.
What would be comparable is when a white person’s death goes viral but a black person’s death does not, that’s a real injustice.
This post is everywhere and it’s pissing me off because making people feel bad because of their race and what their passions are and what affects them is complete bullshit. It’s not just white people who are sad about the rover. Just like it’s not just black people who are sad about the deaths of other people of color.
So just stop with this, it doesn’t make sense and isn’t even comparable.
@bentonthefoxkin As an LGBT person of color, I totally agree. I don’t think the post solves the issue of racial disparities and injustices and only creates more division between us. Like you said, the Rover meant so much to other individuals, but that shouldn’t be invalidated because of the death of Willie McCoy. It is not at all okay that McCoy was killed in his sleep, but it doesn’t help to take someone’s interests and adoration for something and reject it because of an assumption.
ifesbob 