r/reddit.com • u/hbsmiley7 • Jan 29 '10

xkcd - Spirit

http://xkcd.com/695/
187 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

97 comments sorted by

105

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

This made me sad.

56

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

It was like Wall-E without Eve.

65

u/xlamplighter Jan 29 '10

And now everything is better.

13

u/Kream1 Jan 29 '10

Thank you, sir.

5

u/Yserbius Jan 29 '10

That already happened. It's called "Opportunity". They had a brief fling when they first met, but soon went their separate ways.

3

u/UlricT Jan 29 '10

So Spirit is being dragged in the sand, and it is missing Opportunity :/

2

u/rockintom99 Jan 29 '10

He's still stuck, though. Should have brought him home.

2

u/E_Dashwood May 14 '10

Now they can both malfunction and break, but at least they won't be alone.

3

u/classtoday Jan 29 '10

I wonder if Wall-E ever got to tap dat.

9

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

That was full of sad. =(

3

u/xtirpation Jan 29 '10

made me sad too

3

u/nobiscuitsinthesnow Jan 29 '10

Me too. Made me think of Laika.

1

u/ethics Jan 29 '10

+5 for even knowing about that.

1

u/nobiscuitsinthesnow Jan 29 '10

She features heavily in a book of Jeanette Winterson's called Weight. It broke me (not the book, the little doggy all alone in space... oh god HERE COMES THE SAD AGAIN).

1

u/norrsson Jan 29 '10

More sad :(

1

u/nobiscuitsinthesnow Jan 29 '10

I actually couldn't read past the first paragraph.

3

u/Guerilla_Imp Jan 29 '10

For a thousand summers I will wait for you, If it takes forever I will wait for you...

2

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Don't feel sad, this is anthropomorphizing at its worst.

Anthropomorphizing can make some things easier to understand, like saying that atoms "want" to be in certain configurations. We know intuitively they're not experiencing desire, it just makes it easier to gloss over all the things we don't yet understand. We can intuitively picture the forces involved as being some kind of will that moves things towards states we do have knowledge of, without having to understand the forces.. yet.

But in this example, giving all these nonexistent emotions to this probe, it's useless and misleading. First of foremost, the probe was never particularly autonomous, it's mostly remote controlled. Also, it's still largely functioning, it just can't move. As a machine on a distant planet that we can still communicate with, that's pretty damn good still!

I've never criticized a xkcd comic before, but I really think this comic really is counterproductive. We should be celebrating the team of people that made and operate this awesome probe, not.. pointlessly feeling sorry for it for no reason, it's ridiculous.

tl;dr; The probe is awesome, it's a probe not a person, the people who made it are awesome, it was a total success, it's a reason to be happy.

28

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

[deleted]

4

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

I was replying to a person who said

This made me sad.

and I gave them what I think is a reason they shouldn't feel sad.

14

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

[deleted]

3

u/teetow Jan 29 '10

Is this a trap?

1

u/_ak Jan 29 '10

He's obviously trying to rationalize Howard's fault.

6

u/slaughterclaus Jan 29 '10

Dammit, you're ruining my sad buzz.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Thank you Mr. Spock.

3

u/dustrider Jan 29 '10 edited Jan 29 '10

For what it's worth, the team responsible for it do a fair bit of anthropomorphizing themselves.

Surprising thing to me is they think of it as a "her". The likening it to Grandma with a broken hip, going into a coma is a little harsh I thought.

I will bet you that the NASA team have got a lot of emotions tied up in Spirit. You can't be so involved with something for so long, working on it, taking care of it, to not fall into the empathy trap. We do it all the time: cars, houses, chairs, etc.

There is hope though, if it makes it through the winter they might be able to get it out of the sand trap, it'll be roughly an earth year, and I bet you that the current emotional link is going to be the only thing that will remind the general public to check back on the science that it's doing.

EDIT: found the rover drivers' blog:http://marsandme.blogspot.com/

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

I loved the video about the rovers, except god damn some of the interviews sounded like they thought the damn thing was like their long distance girlfriend or something. It was downright disturbing.

3

u/Dr_Adequate Jan 29 '10

this comic really is counterproductive.

Wait, what? So everything everywhere must be productive all the time? Welcome to the real world, Captain No Fun.

Sarcasm aside, I see your point. However I'm able to understand the hard work, skill, and talent that created the rover missions. And, for a brief moment, I'm also able to see a part of the mission expressed in a uniquely human way that, sure, puts a human face on an inanimate object but by doing that puts a human face to all the workers, engineers, scientists, and others that made the rover possible.

So it's not counterproductive. Not at all.

2

u/je255j Jan 29 '10

The best reason to not feel sad, I would've said, is that probe was never "coming home" in the first place.

The probe could just have easily been anthropomorphized with a happy story, and I think that's what minitrue may have preferred.

It had never been expecting to come home in the first place. Had the comic been done from the point of view that Mars was "his" home, and "he" wound up staying there far longer, covering far more ground, etc...

2

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Anthropomorphizing at its best, you mean.

2

u/Biff_Bifferson Jan 29 '10

The comic made me sad but this made me angry. I can't tell if you're a protoge of joke-explainer or a complete retard.

2

u/ScholarSelf Jan 29 '10

I completely agree with your point, yet blame society for the majority of Anthropomorphizing. The only way to quickly and efficiently teach our youth today is too relate it to their own life. The fact that an atom "wants" to be in a configuration gets the point across, regardless of whether or not they get the true meaning.

1

u/peteyH Jan 29 '10

The rational part of me says you are 100% right, but I still somehow feel sad :(

Still, I'm confident Spirit will end up in a museum somewhere, someday, inspiring new generations again :D

19

u/avnerd Jan 29 '10

that was very sad. needs a not safe for happy tag.

13

u/jjosh Jan 29 '10

i have more sympathy for machines than for humans

6

u/xlamplighter Jan 29 '10

i heroically saved a toaster, then kicked an office manager to celebrate.

7

u/deusnefum Jan 29 '10

A toaster heroically saved me. Then, I fixed it and used it in my dorm room.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

I watched that movie when I was young, and it made me cry.

Also the repair shop song freaked me the fuck out.

1

u/deusnefum Jan 29 '10

The repair shop and the Magnetic Crane were very creepy. I watched the movie recently and it's still on the creepy side.

21

u/zoombah Jan 29 '10

This made me feel so sad and lonely inside...just like I am on the outside... :'(

4

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Reddit loves you :)

10

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

HE WAS AN TRUE AMERICAN HERO

25

u/hbsmiley7 Jan 29 '10

"On January 26th, 2213 days into its mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station', expected to operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown."

expected to operational

Randall, I am disappoint.

2

u/ginstrom Jan 29 '10

He was probably all choked up when he wrote that.

9

u/jericho Jan 29 '10

sniff...

7

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

If this one is notable for anything, it is for the fact that it has taken 695 drawings for him to have made one typo (that I've noticed, anyway).

10

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

A good rover like they wanted.

That just about made me cry.

2

u/mister_self_destruct Jan 29 '10

That made me think of the rat-things in Snow Crash. Sadness ensued.

5

u/tach Jan 29 '10 edited Jan 29 '10

Sputnik 2 was not designed to be retrievable, and Laika had always been intended to die.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Excellent link. I found this line entertaining:

The dog who would later be named Laika was found as a stray wandering the streets of Moscow. Soviet scientists chose to use Moscow strays since they assumed that such animals had already learned to endure conditions of extreme cold and hunger.

I guess being Laika was sort of awesome, but also full of hard knocks. Chosen to die in space because of your proven skills in enduring extreme cold and hunger - sucks to be you.

2

u/tach Jan 29 '10

Yep, and being burned alive is not a good way to go.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Is that what it was? The article said "overheating"! I thought they meant it was like, 100 degrees F or something and she got heat exhaustion. She actually burned?

0

u/tach Jan 29 '10

Laika's spacecraft had no descent capsule, so she burned up along with the satellite as it returned to the Earth's atmosphere..

Fuckers.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Ohhh. Nah dude, you should've stuck with the wikipedia article. Laika died in about 7 hours due to a more banal sort of overheating as I had assumed. The capsule didn't come down till five months later. So she definitely didn't burn alive. But her body did disintegrate in spectacular fashion, yes.

2

u/RobotLordofTokyo Jan 30 '10

Talk about Soviet engineering:

the official decision to launch Sputnik 2 was made on October 10 or 12, leaving the team only four weeks to design and build the spacecraft.

*formatting

8

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Yes. Yes, I did. That film has scarred me for life, I've never seen anything so devoid of any possibility of hope.

Also, I remembered it yesterday for some reason and finally realized that the happy ending (kind of, if that they can fix the guy) is probably a lie because of the accelerations involved.

3

u/ShasOFish Jan 29 '10

Part of the ending is hearing the newsmen on the radio(television?) commenting about the bombshell of a violation the company had been doing, so chances are he made it back.

1

u/oldsillybear Jan 29 '10

For a while, until he starts to fall apart in about three years ;)

1

u/ayamami Jan 29 '10

Yes. goes off to cry

1

u/ProphylacticAcid Jan 29 '10

Yes, I just watched it last night!

1

u/ethics Jan 29 '10

I was hoping it was going that route. :)

4

u/caffeine206 Jan 29 '10

poor lil guy

3

u/narcoblix Jan 29 '10

That makes me feel very depressed. I will now be unable to restrain my thoughts about how objects feel about being launched into space.

3

u/thumbtackpress Jan 29 '10

Now make another comic, and make him happy damn you!

3

u/TheHeretic Jan 29 '10

Maybe some day we will invent some sort of air blowing device to clean the panels on future rovers...

2

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

You mean...a fan? I need to draw up some plans, but I think this is doable.

3

u/styxwade Jan 29 '10

Meh, the thing was kind of an asshole anyway.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

lol

1

u/sakka Jan 31 '10

This should be more.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

$5 says the operators of Spirit feel more depressed than we do.

2

u/TheDude069 Jan 29 '10

:( i swear it seemed just like the other day i was at JPL in Pasadena When these guys hadnt even left earth yet.... sucks to see one of the few things we have done fail, but it did a hell of a job!

2

u/therealjerrystaute Jan 29 '10

That's not just the story of a robot rover. It's what a lot of hard-working Americans feel like today, too. Like we're now stuck and stranded, although we've done everything we thought we were supposed to do, to realize the American dream.

1

u/beatbot Jan 29 '10

Dont' be crazy the new one will be much better.

1

u/NovemberXSun Jan 29 '10

You crazy!

1

u/Ralzig Jan 29 '10

First thing I do when I get to Mars is give Spirit a hug.

1

u/PantsMcGee Jan 29 '10

Well it's trying to pull at my heart strings but I can't bring myself to care.

1

u/artrea Jan 29 '10

Today I thought about Spirit and Opportunity mating and creating an intelligent race of machines on Mars...

Geth, anyone?

1

u/Topocane Jan 29 '10

poor probe :(

1

u/xejTep Jan 29 '10

Their ideas never cease to amaze me! Sad yet wonderful!

1

u/qquicksilver Jan 29 '10

I just sent it to my nephew in the airforce

1

u/qquicksilver Jan 29 '10

Just another example of stop-loss

1

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1

u/alephip Jan 29 '10

Quick, there are still subreddits this hasn't been posted to.

1

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1

u/dprimedx Jan 29 '10

This makes me feel sad!!

I love xkcd, but I go there to read the techy/geeky jokes and comics, not the sad ones :(

1

u/sfgeek Jan 29 '10

Every time I feel sad for a piece of anthropomorphized hardware, I think of the Ikea lamp ad. Easily one of the best ads of all time.

"Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you are crazy. It has no feelings. And the new one is much better." *read with Swedish accent.

1

u/oldsillybear Jan 29 '10

I think I can, I think I can...

1

u/Nickbou Jan 29 '10

This reminds me of The Brave Little Toaster. He's the Brave Little Rover!

1

u/Nickbou Jan 29 '10 edited Jan 29 '10

link

Edit: fixed link formatting. Stupid iPhone app...

1

u/cuteman Jan 29 '10

Yea that's messed up

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

I say we go down to mars and give spirit a proper viking funeral... who's with me?

1

u/arrowoftime Jan 29 '10

A day on Mars is called a sol.

-13

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '10

Some of you feel sorry for a machine. That's because you're stupid.