Godspeed, Spirit

May 25, 2011 By Sharon Feliciano in NASA

NASA announced today that at the end of May it will cease transmissions to Spirit, the Mars rover that has been silent for over a year.

Spirit and it’s sister rover Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 for what was supposed to be a three month mission. Thanks to amazing engineering and some creative problem solving by NASA, Opportunity is still moving around the surface of Mars. And Spirit had logged six years of service before it stopped communicating. Again, these machines were supposed to last three months.

Spirit got stuck in a sand pit in April of 2009. Unable to move it, NASA declared it’s mobile mission over and it became a stationary data collector in 2010. When NASA was unable to maneuver Spirit’s solar panels to best collect the rays of the low winter sun, it’s heaters were unable to operate, it’s internal temperature dropped to negative 69 degrees Fahrenheit and NASA lost contact. They decided this week that continuing to send pings to the rover would cut into the resources they could use for other missions.

Spirit seemed to be the epitome of “never give up”. When Spirit first landed it suffered some damage and transmitted nonsense data back to NASA. NASA engineers were able to nurse it back to health while it was on Mars and it continued it’s mission for six years. It climbed out of the crater it landed in, went on to scale a Martian mountain the size of the Statue of Liberty and it beamed back images of the first recorded dust devils on Mars.

The rovers piqued our collective imagination. People talk about them like they have personalities, with MSNBC calling Opportunity an “over-achiever” and Spirit a “drama queen”. They seemed scrappy and adventurous, good ol’ American heroes living up to their names. We love them, and many of us will mourn the loss of Spirit.

My kids are sad. We’ve seen documentaries and have read books about the rovers. Nate is especially fond of them and loved to relate their amazing story to his friends. The rovers got him interested in robotics and he built a robot for his science fair project this year. Upon learning of Spirit’s fate, he got teary eyed and said that he felt as if he was “losing my robot friend”. I thought I had this grief thing down, but I don’t really know how to counsel a child on the loss of a beloved robot. I guess like anything, time will make it easier.

From xkcd

Godspeed, Spirit.

NASA’s press release: NASA Concludes Attempts to Contact Mars Rover Spirit.

Superhero Costumes Reimagined as “Every Day” Outfits.

May 23, 2011 By Sharon Feliciano in cool stuff

I really like this idea. Of course, I don’t actually dress this trendily, nor does anyone I hang out with, but I could totally see Kit being into this idea.

The images at the link are all DC characters, but the artist (Katrina Navarro) has promised some Marvel inspired outfits as well. I would love to see Phoenix and Emma Frost in “real” clothes, and Jubilee is in desperate need of a wardrobe update.

via: Project Rooftop

Which costume would you like to see reimagined?

What’s in a name?

May 22, 2011 By Sharon Feliciano in advice, kids

A recent Twitter post asking “Did you share your baby’s name before birth or did you keep it a secret?” got me thinking about my kids and their “normal” names.

We were prepared for a bit of backlash when we told our nearest and dearest that Nate’s middle would be Oz. What we were NOT expecting were the passionate arguments against giving our child an unusual name. I mean, we were talking a middle name here. The only people who would ever really have to know what it was were Nate himself (ooooh, Himself would make an AWESOME middle name!) and the DMV. Anyway, from the reaction we got you would have thought that were going to name him Bilbo Baggins Feliciano (If that’s your kid’s name, more power to you).

The pleas of “But he’ll get made fun of” and “Are you sure, he’ll be stuck with it forever” began to affect us and there – in the delivery room – we caved. It was decided that he would have a nice “normal” middle name. We named him after my dad and moved on with our lives.

Then came Kitty, whose given name is Catherine. We knew that someday we’d have a girl named Catherine before we even got married. I had a beloved Aunt named Catherine and we felt it was a good, strong name. We were set on her first name but we agonized over her middle. Valentine, after the sensitive sister in Ender’s Game, had always been the top choice with the one caveat being that we wouldn’t name her that if she was born in February, which is when she was due.So that was out. I wanted Danger, so that she could truthfully tell people that Danger was her middle name. SD said that was a great idea…for someone else’s kid. Phoenix was briefly considered, after my favorite X-Men character. Then SD suggested using one of my names (I’m Catholic so, when including my hyphenated confirmation name, I have a lot of them), but I vetoed that. Then I suggested my mother’s maiden name, but that’s the same a male pop singer’s, so that was out. We were getting closer when I suggested my mom’s first name, which sounded great with Catherine, but that was unfair to SD’s mom. So, we figured we’d make everyone happy and give her ALL the names. Catherine Margaret-Jean Phoenix Valentine Lynn Mary-Helen (My maiden Name) Feliciano. We really, truly considered this until a certain relative was nearly brought to tears begging us not to “ruin the baby’s life!”. We shortened it and kept just the two moms’ names and people still give us grief!

Catherine Margaret-Jean Phoenix Valentine Lynn Mary-Helen (Redacted) and Nathan Oz in an alternate reality where their parents aren’t wusses.

To be fair we did sneak some geekery in there. Nathan is the name of a secondary X-Men character (Cable) and Kitty’s nickname was inspired by Kitty Pryde (and she’s just so a Kitty).

Despite all this anxiety and flip-flopping I am happy with their names. It came down to my belief that my kids’ names weren’t the proper place for me to express myself or show off my interests. Their names didn’t really belong to me. I could always change my name to Phoenix if I wanted to and if they grow up and want to change their names, I will support them. Their names suit them, though most people’s names do. I know that a lot of people disagree with me on this, and that’s fine. It would be a boring world if we all stuck with the same ten names, and I love hearing the stories behind unusual names

Did you give your child an unusual name? Or go with something more traditional? Do you have an unusual name? Share your naming stories in the comments below.