Comments on: Spirit

By: Kyle Baker

Kyle Baker — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:25:08 +0000

That light pun is hardly the point of the comic. The humour comes from the elementary personification of the rover, who keeps trying to be good enough, but doesn’t realize that he’s been abandoned. They aren’t coming back to save him. The end of the mission means that they’re done with him, not that they embrace him with open arms for having done a good job. Munroe then compares the potential psychological trauma that would have on, say, an animal used for the job, who keeps trying to get that approval that was used to train the animal in the first place, who is now no longer needed.

Simple psychology joke, that’s all. And that’s much more important than a pun about spirit–if that were the point, this would be an exceptionally lame comic.

By: Cris

Cris — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:58:33 +0000

this comic got me all choked up when I read it *sniff* poor little rover…

also that line about how ‘a good rover would keep going, a good rover like they wanted’ sounds quite familiar, source anyone?

By: Leerlaufprozess

Leerlaufprozess — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:19:11 +0000

It’s also important to note that both rovers on the mars surface were expected to last 90 days because of dust building up on the solar pannels but both far exceeded that period (because of marsian sandstorms). Both experienced casualties during that time and one (apparently the one in the comic) got irreversibly stuck.

By: Matt H

Matt H — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:05:51 +0000

I believe technically the Smithsonian now owns the Viking landers from the 1970s, all they have to do is collect them

By: TheBladeRoden

TheBladeRoden — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:17:49 +0000

Maybe in a few hundred years we’ll rescue it

By: H.B.

H.B. — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:10:26 +0000

and it refers to ‘Moon’