I just though of another example and have to share it. During the Spirit
landing they mention during landing how rockets were fired to keep the craft
out of a crater. I think I recall them mentioning they wouldn't want it to
go in the crater. However with Opportunity it landed in a crater and they
call it a "hole in one" :-D Maybe they programmed the flight computers in
reverse on Opportunity :-) Reminds me of the old joke saying "I planned it
that way"


"Tom Merkle" wrote in message
om...
"ahh" wrote in message
...
NASA should stop over-hyping their success. Granted they are competing
for
funds with other organizations in the government and have to play
politics,
but come on I'm starting to roll my eyes at all their hype. People are
going to stop believeing them. I already have at least when it comes to
them explaining the importance of something.
[snip]
Almost everything that happens that can be hyped does get hyped.

agree 100%. When I hear that NASA scientists are 'astounded' and
'don't know what to think' over current pictures from Opportunity, I
imagine that they must have found an alien artifact or something--only
to discover that the jaw-dropping was from seeing the two different
types of rock, which the same people who are 'astounded' originally
listed as a reason for sending MER B to that location in the first
place! Gee, what a miracle.

That's the same 'amazing!' hype from Apollo (Gee, lunar surface dust
really is grey!) that caused the public to lose interest after Apollo
11 was done, despite the actual impressive finds on later missions.
When they tell you everything is exciting, nothing is, even the really
exciting things.

It's one of two things--either (a) they're trying to make their niche
seem more important to journalists who they figure don't know any
better, or (b) they have extremely limited imaginations and never
thought that if they sent a rover to some place other than a rock
strewn flood plain it might look like something other than a rock
strewn flood plain.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on (a), and for the
moment it's working, mainly because the average journalist really
DOESN'T know any better. But shortly reality will set in and coverage
will sink into disinterest as the rover missions continue--unless they
actually stumble over a) an alien artifact or b) an obvious sign
Martian life, a scenario that seems ever more likely as detailed pics
are returned of a Mars less dry than we thought.

Tom Merkle