Yestersol, all my troubles were such folderol
Mood:
Martian
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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/8015566.htm
Mars mission spawns its own unworldly lingo
ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's ongoing mission to Mars has spawned some extraterrestrial jargon to accompany the out-of-this-world look at the Red Planet that its twin rovers are providing.
The language can be so dense, clipped, technical and sometimes downright goofy that only the most dedicated NASA follower could hope to understand it. It can also be remarkably studied in its details.
Take the following example:
"MER-A ratted Adirondack yestersol while solar groovy, even though it was high tau in Gusev."
Rendered in plain English, the sentence would read:
"Spirit, the first Mars exploration rover, used its rock abrasion tool to grind into a rock nicknamed for an Eastern mountain range one Mars day ago while receiving adequate power from its solar panels, even though there was a large amount of dust suspended in the martian atmosphere above its landing site, named after a 19th century Russian astronomer."
So why use Mars-speak?
The answer's obvious to those who do.
"It's faster," said Ray Arvidson, the deputy principal investigator on the $820 million mission.
NASA, perhaps like no other bureaucracy on Earth, does complex things in complicated ways. That spills over into how it describes things.
"One of the things in the space program is people like to describe things precisely and sometimes that takes four words. And if it's not enough, they add 'system' at the end," said mission science team member Rob Sullivan.
(more at site...)
Mars mission spawns its own unworldly lingo
ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's ongoing mission to Mars has spawned some extraterrestrial jargon to accompany the out-of-this-world look at the Red Planet that its twin rovers are providing.
The language can be so dense, clipped, technical and sometimes downright goofy that only the most dedicated NASA follower could hope to understand it. It can also be remarkably studied in its details.
Take the following example:
"MER-A ratted Adirondack yestersol while solar groovy, even though it was high tau in Gusev."
Rendered in plain English, the sentence would read:
"Spirit, the first Mars exploration rover, used its rock abrasion tool to grind into a rock nicknamed for an Eastern mountain range one Mars day ago while receiving adequate power from its solar panels, even though there was a large amount of dust suspended in the martian atmosphere above its landing site, named after a 19th century Russian astronomer."
So why use Mars-speak?
The answer's obvious to those who do.
"It's faster," said Ray Arvidson, the deputy principal investigator on the $820 million mission.
NASA, perhaps like no other bureaucracy on Earth, does complex things in complicated ways. That spills over into how it describes things.
"One of the things in the space program is people like to describe things precisely and sometimes that takes four words. And if it's not enough, they add 'system' at the end," said mission science team member Rob Sullivan.
(more at site...)
Read/Post Comments (2)
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