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Chinese Moon Rover Says an Early Goodnight

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."

13 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Meanwhile, back in America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ours just keep going and going... like the Energizer bunny.

    1. Re:Meanwhile, back in America by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For perspective's sake, Spirit got stuck in a reboot loop on January 21, 2004, and was down until February 6th when they finished debugging what turned out to be a problem with the flash filesystem.

      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.

    2. Re:Meanwhile, back in America by HouseOfMisterE · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ours just keep going and going... like the Energizer bunny.

      Hopefully, that little guy will get to come home one day.

    3. Re:Meanwhile, back in America by Artifakt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Have too! Several in fact. The first two were named Neil and Buzz. Autonomous as all hell...

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
    4. Re:Meanwhile, back in America by skovnymfe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't that pretty much any developers dream?

  2. Good luck by oldhack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know. Something like this supersede geopolitics, nationalism, etc., at least for now.

    Good luck, Chinese comrades.

    --
    Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    1. Re:Good luck by tippe · · Score: 4, 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.

  3. Enought with the nationalist crap by Art+Challenor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Jade Rabbit is an awesome piece of scientific equipment, and it's on the moon. Let's hope if makes it through the night and continues to send data that will benefit all of humanity.

    1. Re:Enought with the nationalist crap by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What do you even know about China? Did you know that it was home to the largest and most advanced city humanity would ever see until 19th century London?

      --
      I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
  4. I do hope they resolve it by msobkow · · 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.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  5. Good Luck by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, 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!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. I don't because he's a fucking moron by Sycraft-fu · · 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."

  7. Re:Brief translation from Chinese by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is it normal in china to write news about a rover as if the rover was writing it?

    No idea, but probes from other places have a peculiar tendency to write about themselves too.

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    Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?