Putting Spirit and Opportunity to sleep?!?

[Cynette]

Whew! I'm glad that the current report is that Spirit and Opportunity will continue their adventures!

The reporter this morning likened the news to astronaut Dave Bowman trying to disconnect HAL in 2001 Space Odyssey.

[Schnabel]

And on CNN also. I was about to have a cow! GO SPIRIT! GO OPPORTUNITY! LIVE STRONG!

[Graham Donaldson]

Thank the Lord- my heart sank when I read that on the AP yesterday.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by robotcanuck1676

...when I read that on the AP...

[RANT]
I have learned to avoid giving the AP too much credibility.

I've been part of, or have had inside knowledge of, several "newsworthy" events that got mangled to the point of unrecognizability by the Associated Press. Don't try to defend them by saying that they just pick up stories from other sources -- I've seen how they edit those stories, leave out important context, juxtapose things to make people seem to say the thing which is not, and occasionally add a word or two of invented detail just to make it more attention-getting.

On top of many primary sources failing to get the details perfectly correct, this makes a lot of what goes through AP unreliable enough that I can't trust any of it.
[/RANT]

[JesseK]

Well, I usually give slashdot minor credibility. Then again, www.physorg.com also had this story and I really like that site since it's all about sci/tech and is usually accurate. I guess we'll have to see.

I wish the "controls" for the rovers could go up on eBay. Too bad they're all just transmitted lines of presimulated code...

[Travis Hoffman]

Here's a wild thought -

As a fundraiser, NASA creates a web portal through which the highest bidders on eBay can issue supervisory commands to the rovers and watch via the Web as they are executed.

"I wanna write my name in the Martian landscape with a rover's wheels." OK, $10,000,000 and we'll make that happen.