Chinese Moon Rover Says an Early Goodnight 284
hackingbear writes "The Chinese moon rover, Jade Rabbit, encountered an abnormality in its control mechanism before its planned sleep during the 14-day-long lunar night. In the form of a diary, the Jade Rabbit said, "The shi-fu ('kung-fu masters,' meaning the scientists and engineers) are working around the clock trying to fix the problem and their eyes look like a rabbit's (red due to fatigue), but I may not be able to survive over this lunar night." (translated, original in Chinese.) The rover landed on the moon on Dec 14 and was designed to operate for three months."
Meanwhile, back in America (Score:4, Insightful)
Ours just keep going and going... [xkcd.com] like the Energizer bunny.
Re:Meanwhile, back in America (Score:5, Insightful)
If their fault turns out to be more serious, or their system lacks the failsafe systems that would allow recovery from a modestly serious bug, then some snarking may be in order; but they are still within the 'scrambling for a fix' window.
Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. Something like this supersede geopolitics, nationalism, etc., at least for now.
Good luck, Chinese comrades.
Enought with the nationalist crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I do hope they resolve it (Score:5, Insightful)
I do hope they resolve the problem and keep going. It would be such an embarassment to China to have it fail on it's first night out.
You can make all the jokes you want about "Cheap Chinese Crap" you want, but you know as well as I do that when it comes to stuff that isn't intended for the dollar store sale bins, China can make as good a piece of hardware as anyone else. They wouldn't have made it to the moon in the first place if their rocket had been built with toy-maker electronics instead of mil-spec.
Re:Meanwhile, back in America (Score:3, Insightful)
Ours just keep going and going... [xkcd.com] like the Energizer bunny.
Hopefully, that little guy will get to come home one day.
Good Luck (Score:5, Insightful)
With the recent successes of the Mars rovers it's hard to remember that conditions in space are a super difficult thing to deal with. It's a huge feat all by itself to land on the moon with a functioning rover at all, as China did... so if this rover falters hopefully they'll learn from it and build another.
Better still it wakes up again and keeps going for them.
Good Luck China!
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I agree with this. If the big picture is having humans become space faring (in a meaningful way; not just doing a handfull of short visits to a nearby lifeless rock), then having the Chinese be successful at their space endeavours should be as important to us as it is to them. In the big picture, we are all human, and if the Chinese are successful of conquering space (in a way that the US, Russia, Europe, etc., haven't been able to do), then we all win. Also, if they fail, then so too do we.
Gook luck, Chinese comrades indeed.
Re:Meanwhile, back in America (Score:5, Insightful)
Have too! Several in fact. The first two were named Neil and Buzz. Autonomous as all hell...
Re:Enought with the nationalist crap (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't because he's a fucking moron (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean let's see what's in the thread right now: An energizer bunny joke about the US mars rovers, someone saying good luck to the Chinese and how this transcends politics, someone saying Jade Rabbit is awesome, someone who hopes they resolve the problem, someone correcting the use of shi-fu, and then this.
So basically, he's making shit up. The higher rated comments are nearly all encouragement, and the one referencing the US rovers is a joke. This moron wants there to be a bunch of US nationalism for him to hate on, but there's not, so he just pretends like there is anyhow. He's making up reasons for US hate/China strong.
Also there's the stupid crap of trying to make the US look bad because "Your country is the biggest melting pot of foreign scientists and researchers in the world." As though the US is so stupid and has to import foreigners to do any work. No, quite the opposite actually: American universities are still some of the very best research institutions in the world, despite all the cuts and problems, and people come from around the world to work at them and do research. The US is a melting pot precisely because of the excellence of its research institutions, and in allowing people from all over to come, it helps to continue that excellence and enrich the world's knowledge.
The grandparent is just a jackass. He really wants this to be some kind of China hate thread so he can hate on that to try and deflect things from the rover's problem. Instead it is a thread largely of people saying "Good luck China, we hope you fix the problem and your rover continues to work."
Re:Brief translation from Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
No idea, but probes from other [twitter.com] places [twitter.com] have a peculiar tendency to write about themselves too.
Re:Meanwhile, back in America (Score:5, Insightful)