695: Spirit
| Spirit |
 Title text: On January 26th, 2274 Mars days into the mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station' expected to stay operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown. |
[edit] Explanation
Anthropomorphism is attribution of distinctly human characteristics to animals or non-living things. We make parallels between ourselves and objects, to the point where some people even jocularly worry about hurting the feelings of, say, an automobile. We call ships "she". We see human faces in objects like the arrangement of lights on the front of a car.
The Mars Spirit Rover, like many high-functioning robots in real-life and fiction, shares many physical similarities with a human being or animal. It has a head, eyes, neck, body, legs, feet, arms and a hand. And it strikingly resembles sentient robots from fiction, such as Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, or WALL-E from the film with the same name.
Thus, this comic explores what the Spirit rover's life would be like if it were sentient like those robots. The rover was never intended to return to Earth, and lasted 5 1/4 active years on the Martian surface, far exceeding its mission duration of 90 Earth days. A sentient robot might assume that after his 90-day mission was over, he'd get to return home. So, heartbreakingly, Spirit keep his hopes alive as he continues analyzing rock after rock for years, hoping, much like Sam from the television series Quantum Leap, that the next one will be the one that sends him home.
It would be cruelty of the absolute worst kind to create an intelligence with such feelings, and then abandon it on an uninhabited planet with no intention of ever bringing it home. So one is rather heartened that the Spirit rover is, in fact, just a programmed machine.
[edit] Transcript
- [The Spirit rover is on the surface of Mars.]
- Spirit (thinking): 89 days to go!
- Day 88 of 90
- Spirit (thinking): Two days until I go home!
- Day 91 of 90
- Spirit (thinking): ?
- Day 103 of 90
- Spirit (thinking): Maybe I didn't do a good enough job.
- Day 127 of 90
- Spirit (thinking): Maybe if I do a good enough job, they'll let me come home.
- Day 857 of 90
- Spirit (thinking): I thought I analyzed that rock really well.
- Spirit (thinking): It's okay, I'll do the next one better.
- Day 1293 of 90
- Spirit (thinking): Sandstorm. Power dying.
- Spirit (thinking): But a good rover would keep going. A good rover like they wanted.
- Day 1944 of 90
- Spirit (thinking): Oh no.
- whirrrr
- Spirit (thinking): I'm stuck.
- whirrrr
- Spirit (thinking): Did I do a good job?
- Spirit (thinking): Do I get to come home?
- Spirit (thinking): Guys?
- [Spirit rests in the middle of a vast Martian landscape.]
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