NASA has settled on “Perseverance” as the name for its new Mars rover. Space.com reports:
NASA didn’t name its next Mars rover Perseverance just because “Percy” is a cute nickname.
The new moniker, which NASA announced on Thursday (March 5), captures the spirit of space exploration remarkably well, said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate.
I’m disappointed. I was pulling for “Rovy McRoverFace”.
I was pulling for Jed.
Rovy McRoverFace is actually pretty funny, since I recall the Boaty McBoatface fiasco when the British government tried to crowdsource a name for a new polar exploration ship and that was the winner. Whereupon the British government, deciding that it was an undignified name for the ship, instead named it after Richard Attenborough. Basically saying to the British public, F you. You vote the way we want, or else.
This was in early 2016. IMO this minor contretemps was the tipping point for the English electorate. This in your face you-eat-what-we-set-before-you-and-like-it-because-we-know-whats-better-for-you attitude is why Brexit happened. A majority of voters rebelled against the artificially-sweetened castor oil regime they’d been fed for decades and said ‘we aren’t going to take it any more. And when Brexit happened, the remnants of the Tea Party movement and other people angry at being pushed around the same way by the same kind of ruling crowd saw ‘hey, we got a shot at this’, rallied behind Trump, and the rest is history.
It’s amazing how relatively small events can turn out to be the pivot point of history. Like the confiscation of a pushcart for failure to pay a bribe that resulted in a self-immolation that ended up toppling a decades-old dictatorship. Or an off-hand remark that a certain country was outside a sphere of influence led to a war that is now seventy years old.