NASA loses contact with Spirit | Hacker News Reader

NASA loses contact with Spirit

msnbc.msn.com

64 pointsgeuis19 comments

Rationally, I should be very happy that Spirit made it as long as it did, and say, what a fine piece of engineering. But ever since http://xkcd.com/695/ every time I think of Spirit, I get very sad.

Totally amazing, something designed to work for three-months is (possibly) still working after six years. Now if only my iPod was just as reliable.

I know this kind of engineering costs serious money, but I find it remarkable the amount of self-monitoring it can do, how much it can be reconfigured through a lousy and intermittent signal, and how deep is its ability to low-level reboot from errors.

If only all of my systems could do that...

Spirit isn't dead yet, it just went into hibernation mode. Its possible that it might wake up and keep on truckin'

That is the most poignant cartoon I've ever read (and that includes Maus), and ought to be a Pulitzer winner if there is any justice in this ol' world.

One day we're going to go back and rescue it and put it in the Smithsonian.

I hope that one day we go there and build a Smithsonian around it and just leave it in place. Put a little perspex dome over it and make it a central attraction.

If we don't, we're the ones who belong in a museum.

The HN headline makes this sound like a permanent failure. Reading the article reveals a much less dire situation (a power-saving hibernation has begun).

Goodbye, dear Mars Rovers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXPoIDuFqao

I find this far more interesting than the Topeka Google thing and yet this only has 14 points to Google's 56 in the same amount of time.

I read this as "NASA loses contract with Sprint"

"Can you hear me now?"

With the intermittent communications they have with Spirit, I fully expected them to be on AT&T.

The article appears to have vanished. I get redirected to the front page. MSNBC links always seem to do this to me.

It seems that MSNBC has some sort of redirect in place for sites that refer a lot of people. I clicked on the link on their main page and got the exact link posted here, but was able to read it.

The friggin' Jawas have made it to Mars and picked it up. http://bit.ly/cERGcp

It's not an April 1st joke is it? This is really sad :-(

I think the rover itself is making an April fools joke. I fully expect it to reconnect tomorrow and say "Gotcha".

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