Congratulations to everyone at NASA and JPL for successfully landing the Opportunity rover on Mars. And it looks like Spirit may also be on the way back to good health after being in critical condition for the last few days. I heard on the NASA channel last night that their website has received over 4 billion hits in the last few weeks. I like to think that this mission might improve the science literacy of Americans. I’m surprised by the number of people who think that driving the rover is a simple matter, like playing a video game. They don’t get the concept of the time lag created by the distance a radio signal has to travel between Earth and Mars. Then again, wouldn’t it be cool if we actually did have something like LeGuin’s ansible at our disposal? I wonder if any serious research has been done in this area.
