"Spirit" and "Opportunity"

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 04:41:16 -0500, Unclaimed Mysteries
wrote:

So, I hear NASA policy is to name spacecraft after motivational posters.
Excellent.

A much-needed symbolic antidote to the liberal Clinton years, when we
had to put up with spacecraft having liberal PC names like "Sojourner."

"Spirit" and "Opportunity" were names chosen in a national school
contest.

So was "Sojourner".

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/status2.html

1421 GMT (10:21 a.m. EDT)

NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rover have been named Spirit and
Opportunity following a contest by schoolchildren. Sofi Collis, a
9-year old third grader from Scottsdale, Arizona, submitted the
winning suggestion among nearly 10,000 contest entries. Born in
Siberia, Sofi was adopted and moved the United States when she was two
years old.

The naming contest was managed for NASA by the LEGO Company.


Brian

Unclaimed Mysteries wrote in message ...
So, I hear NASA policy is to name spacecraft after motivational posters.
Excellent.

They are nice names.

But the problem with these names that, if one of them or both of them
got lost, people would say that it was a "loss of Spirit"/"Spirit
loss" and/or "loss of Opportunity"/"Opportunity loss".

But people tend to get quite witty in labeling something, eventhough
it's insulting. So any name probably doesn't matter.

Anyway. Why not just names them with simple names that true to its
purpose? Like Explorer, Voyager, and so on?

"Pathfinder" was nice, since that it's after all, charting maps.

A much-needed symbolic antidote to the liberal Clinton years, when we
had to put up with spacecraft having liberal PC names like "Sojourner."

Hmmm.... "Sojourner"

intr.v. so·journed, so·journ·ing, so·journs
"To reside temporarily. See Synonyms at stay."

n.
"A temporary stay; a brief period of residence."

"Sojourner" is a nice name though. I like it.

Not to worry. We're back on track now. Can't wait for the launches of
"Lester" and "Strom."

Huh?