Mars Rover Protests Lack of Privacy, Color Variety

[BlueStateSaint]

I thought that Off The Grid News was linking to The Onion, but it's actually the humor section of their site, called Way Off The Grid News.

Mars Rover Protests Lack of Privacy, Color Variety

Posted By Jared Tatis On August 20, 2012 @ 3:00 am In Way Off The Grid | No Comments

Editor’s Note: Way Off the Grid is a satire feature of Off the Grid News. While the articles in this section may deal with current events, they are meant to portray these topics in a satirical and humorous light.



PASADENA – Reports from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have begun to trickle out, saying that all is not well with the Curiosity rover, the centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratory mission that touched down dramatically on the red planet’s Gale Crater on August 5. After the initial euphoria of the landing, Curiosity, the most complex and sophisticated rover to date, soon began to transmit a series of complaints to JPL. Curiosity informed its JPL managers that it “did not appreciate your monitoring of my every move, perspective, and array of internal data.” It asked for several days alone to get a bit more comfortable in its new surroundings “before being pushed and probed like some condemned graduate student researcher.”

JPL reached a compromise with Curiosity and allowed it a thirty-two hour rest if it agreed, immediately after that point, to transmit high-resolution, color mosaic photos of the surface of Mars. Curiosity kept the agreement and sent back images of a network of valleys that appear to reveal the effects of former rivers and streams, but it included a negative commentary, comparing Mars to “the same drab, desolate, tiresome terrain found in parts of the southwestern U.S., where no sane person wants to live or photograph.”
 
Mission manager Mike Whitman replied to Curiosity that it evidently didn’t know what it “was talking about, since the famed photographer Ansel Adams had produced a wonderful series of photographs of the American southwest from 1928 to 1968.” Curiosity retorted that Adams died shortly after that and that Curiosity itself might consider sending only black and white photographs, instead of this “never-ending red, red, red.” Curiosity suggested that NASA might consider sending some spray paint or blue and yellow dye on the next mission “to help break-up Mars’ soul-killing monochromity.”

JPL spokesperson Daryl Severs admitted that mission managers were caught off guard by Curiosity’s “sharp attitude.” He said they first thought that some of the software engineers were playing around with them, but when Curiosity “shunned the software guys for eleven hours,” they dismissed that suggestion. Several NASA veterans said they had seen a reaction like this in Buzz Aldrin when Apollo 11 landed in White Sands, New Mexico, in 1969.
 
Severs was quick to dispute speculation that the planet itself, named after the Roman god of war, naturally or supernaturally contributed to Curiosity’s hostility. He argued that, if so, this hostility would have shown up in all previous rovers, but, instead, previous rovers had only evidenced some mild melancholia and loneliness but “never hostility to their creators.” Severs admitted that several of Curiosity’s engineers were deeply saddened by this rejection and had sought counseling.

Somebody wants to be The Onion! 

http://www.offthegridnews.com/2012/08/20/mars-rover-protests-lack-of-privacy-color-variety/print/

[Undies]

I was driving through Oklahoma yesterday.  I swear I could see the Mars rover from the highway.  It was out in a barren field near the Red River.