Rationally, I should be very happy that Spirit made it as long as it did, and say, what a fine piece of engineering. But ever since http://xkcd.com/695/ every time I think of Spirit, I get very sad.
I know this kind of engineering costs serious money, but I find it remarkable the amount of self-monitoring it can do, how much it can be reconfigured through a lousy and intermittent signal, and how deep is its ability to low-level reboot from errors.
That is the most poignant cartoon I've ever read (and that includes Maus), and ought to be a Pulitzer winner if there is any justice in this ol' world.
I hope that one day we go there and build a Smithsonian around it and just leave it in place. Put a little perspex dome over it and make it a central attraction.
The HN headline makes this sound like a permanent failure. Reading the article reveals a much less dire situation (a power-saving hibernation has begun).
It seems that MSNBC has some sort of redirect in place for sites that refer a lot of people. I clicked on the link on their main page and got the exact link posted here, but was able to read it.
