January 19, 2004

Amazing animation of the trip from Earth to Mars of the NASA explorer doowotsit. Includes "aww" factor as the explorer watches its first Martian sunset. via my homey Kottke
posted by Blaise Bailey Finnegan 20 years ago
  • schweet! And yeah, the sunset moment got me a little misty . . . *snif* hang in there li'l buddy! anthropomorphization, anyone?
  • The mars rover wants to be anthropomorphized.
  • Pretty danged sweet. Great link Blaise.
  • I too felt sorry for the little guy being left there in the barren Mars landscape. It looked like the robot in that cheesy movie they used to show on Comedy Central every ten minutes. Now I know why Bush wants to go to Mars: to go pick it up.
  • What's up with the music? Do people at NASA like Catscratch Fever and the theme music to 'Pay It Forward'?
  • There was also some Road to Perdition in there, and maybe even American Beauty. It's hard to tell them apart, since they're the same director/composer combo.
  • It looks kind of like a robot dodo. I think that sad sunset music is used pretty frequently on Six Feet Under (again, it's the same guys).
  • Number 5 is alive!
  • The mars rover wants to be anthropomorphized. And it probably wants a banana too.
  • The mars rover wants to know why it's been dutifully sending pictures home for 2 years now, well beyond its expected lifespan, and yet nobody outside of Mission Control seems to care any more. Perhaps we should send it a "thinking of you" card?
  • Perhaps we should send it a "thinking of you" card? If so, it needs to travel faster than the "Dear John" letter already en route to the red planet.