R.I.P.
November 1, 2008 5:55 pm Musings, Personal, Space, ViralThis has been a sad week. Earlier this week, Andrew Johnston passed away. He was an incredible critic, and a good man. While we both contributed to The House Next Door, I sadly never got much chance to talk with him, but he was a powerful influence on film and criticism, and helped a lot of people get their start. And yesterday, Studs Terkel was lost to us as well. As I wrote at the House,
Studs was a giant amongst men - but he always walked among us, always bent down to take our hands and to listen to the lowest of us from his great height. The world is so much poorer for his passing.
But we lost someone else this week, and I in no way want to demean the memory of these two great men in talking about this…
@MarsPhoenix announced that its time had come. She might flicker on and off a bit in the next few weeks, but winter is here and she’s been powered down - it’s likely for the last time.
I wasn’t sure that I’d even know what to write here. Thankfully, my friend and fellow blogger T.M. Camp found words - very well-chosen words - to pay her proper respect. Go read his own comments, they’re better than whatever I’ll say.
I’ve spoken before on my frustration with people’s apathy for space. As though exploration and discovery are somehow mutually exclusive with domestic reform, or as though science has yet to benefit from what we’ve learned out there. And it’s hard, these days, to put much faith in NASA, I’m first to admit: too many accidents, too many oversights, too many embarrassments. A broken-down astronaut in a diaper with a gun? Goddammit.
But @MarsPhoenix was a reminder just how special, how important, how valuable, how amazing this all is. She was, for lack of better words, a beacon of hope. It’s funny, calling the little robot spacecraft a “she,” but the little lab that could was very much a she, so perfectly anthropomorphized and personified through the voice of the NASA employee who spoke for her.
She could be very funny: “brb, sandstorm.” And she took joy in everything she did. And she found ice, she found salt. How monumental is that?
Thousands of people followed her twitter log, asked her questions about how she worked, what she was discovering, and what it meant. Thousands of people, inspired by space. Look what you did, girl.
Her siblings and cousins are still out there, still discovering and still reporting. But she was the most charming, and she was the first.
NASA and Wired have been running a contest, to provide her with an epitaph. My contribution: “I’ll see you when you get here.” And we will.
