I was on campus yesterday and picked up a copy of the Alligator, which had a story on the cover titled “NASA sends rover to Mars, awes students.” This is good because students don’t know or care much about space flight.
However, the third paragraph of the story gave the U.S. space effort a little more credit than it deserves. The story stated, “A U.S. rover the size of a small car landed safely on Mars at 1:31 a.m. Eastern time Monday before heading back to Earth.”
Wow. A “Mars return” mission. I thought that was years away!
The article goes on to say “Curiosity is the world’s second spacecraft to land on Mars. The first was a 1971 Soviet Union rover that stopped working shortly after landing.”
Actually, 14 spacecraft, out of 40 attempts, have landed on Mars. But it is 14.
It’s kind of mind boggling — not just that an ignorant writer should be given the assignment, but also that no one else who read the story knew enough about space flight to stop her. How many editors and copy editors looked at it?
Ah, well. When Martian overlords show up to enslave us for our ignorance, maybe the writer and editors of the Alligator will be offered supervisory jobs.
