White Simulacra Paperspaces

MER: From Landing to Six Wheels on Mars…Twice

MER: From Landing to Six Wheels on Mars…Twice. Krajewski et al.

Often reading a technical document, particularly one detailing a sophisticated, experimental mission, my first reaction is to marvel at the accomplishment of success. To do only this would obscure the technical facts, engineering, science; the unknowns hedged, the decisions or choices of the people involved, and the unnatural natural environment hosting the landing of robotics on the planet Mars. In a way, that early awe is the signature of the first, barely penetrable naivete. I never seem to tire of stories of accomplished scientists who marvel at themselves for knowing nearly nothing when they first encountered a fascinating problem; popular culture knows well that those mysteries drive the scientists’ popular culture mystique. When the excitement comes from doing, and especially from having had done, that might be the greatest disconnect from the experts and the new novice, or the new recruit, or the new student. One might conclude that those are the areas that the Internet, at least the internet of clean white simulacra paperspaces, provides the least growth, the least motivation, the least connection to knowledge. It might be an expertise that only truly becomes real standing in the room while the images and telemetry stream across the mission central computers. How do we teach that to the children and ourselves?