IT'S ALIVE! China's Jade Rabbit rover RETURNS from the DEAD It appears that China's Jade Rabbit lunar explorer is not as dead as it looked, as Chinese officials say that the moon rover has managed to awaken from its slumber. China initially reported that the country's first lunar rover, Yutu, or the Jade Rabbit, couldn't be restored after it experienced a "mechanical abnormality" right …
It may have had a dust up with the rogue cooker that patrols the moon…
There was an Australian blogger that mused on this problem. He advised that it was likely the folding solar panels that didn't retract before the 14-day deep-freeze. China's space program folks are trying to find out what-kind-if-any damage was caused by this deep-freeze. These 14-day cold-waves have been problems for ALL landers/rovers on the Moon. The Russians put Polonium inside their rovers and folded-down the solar panel to create a warm-area on the Lunokhods.
It became a dead rabbit? This assumes it was alive to start with ... Was it artificial life or really alive? That's a silly question, they wouldn't send real bunnies as they taste too nice so it must have been artificial life ... THE CHINESE HAVE DEVELOPED ARTIFICIAL LIFEFORMS - RUN FOR THE HILLS!
But why are the Chinese then sending lagomorphic lifeforms to the moon? Is it that they've run rampant over their fields and are sucking their rivers dry, immune to all that the Chinese artificial-lagomorph exterminator squad could throw at them? Perhaps the cunning Chinese sought to kill the pesky hares by sending them to the moon!
Aha! Dead as the proverbial (but tasty) roast dinner.
But no!
Even now they survive the ravages of the lunar surface ... they're out to get us ... it's only a matter of time before the chino-bunny finds a lunar lander and, to the theme of the A-Team, builds a rocket ship to return himself to the Earth... Beware The War of the Wabbits and narration by Richard Burton! Pom pom pom ... ta de dah, ta de dah ...
I realize that learning a new system of weights and measures is difficult. It wasn't that long ago when I was at ORNL and it was still ~50/50 Standard v Metric. Even machines in an ordered process would go back and forth between machines in the same process. It was difficult. A lot of errors were made.
But the fucking aliens ought to have a better handle on that shit. I mean, Come on guys. Christ. It shouldn't take an alien intelligence to know the (mostly) Standard tools left by the Apollo missions aren't fitting the Metric fasteners the Chinese use. This is grammar school shit kids. If the socket slips when you apply pressure you've got the wrong fucking size. Stop. If you don.... God damnit. Look what you've done now slackass. You've rounded off that bolt and you're screwed (ha!) now aren't ya?
Do you know how hard it is to remove a broken bolt from Chinese equipment? On a good day they've managed to bend physics and get a 15mm bolt through a 3mm hole that's 90 degrees out from the face plane. That's on their skillets and this is a 'space thing', it'll be even worse.
That's right little grey smarty pants. You get in there with your bolt extractor. Oh, that broke too? Do you know what's harder than a bolt extractor that's broken off inside a hole? That's right, nothing. There's not a god damn thing in the universe harder than a broken bolt extractor. So good fucking luck.
Hey! Is this why you've never invaded us? You broke your spaceships didn't you? Man, that's got to suck. I'm glad you're not dead and all, but being suck up here for a few more years will be good for you. I'm a huge fan of letting people (and aliens) work themselves out of the jams they get it it they aren't in any danger. You look healthy enough to me, so fuck off. Maybe this will teach you not to outsource your techs in the future. I'm going home now. Everything I own is British standard, to prevent tampering, so I really can't do much anyway. But remember for next time. I'll have billing send you an invoice for 1.5 hrs customer education time. Cash only.
If the socket slips when you apply pressure you've got the wrong fucking size. Stop. If you don.... God damnit. Look what you've done now slackass. You've rounded off that bolt and you're screwed (ha!) now aren't ya?
I certainly enjoyed that li'l tidbit more that my keyboard did...
Yes, only hours before this unworthy team was to have been taken to a nearby organ depatriation facility in order to atone for our incompetence it seems our glorious moonrover is alive.
Unfortunately it can't send back any pictures but you can clearly hear its telemetry beep, which just happens to sound like a Kasio digital watch alarm coming from inside that unit with a "Heathcit" label on it.
Not that El Reg is gullible in any way, but it's SOP for the Chinese Government to cover up any perceived "failing" with a blanket of obfuscation. The Rabbit's dead, of course it is, but the big mistake was to tell people about it -- same with Bird Flu, lethal, of course, but the big mistake was ever to let on that it was on the loose in China.
Reality is, China is run by a Communist elite which never does anything wrong and oversees a country where nothing ever goes wrong. That's especially true of its moon program. So-oo. . . The Rabbit is dead but to save face, is said now to be alive again. Then it'll be dead again. Then alive again (if anyone asks). Then dead again -- and so on and so forth until nobody asks any questions anymore, and China can announce that its moon missioin has ended on schedule and been a complete success.
The original report I saw came from SAST and said that they would not be able to return the rabbit to 100% functionality. I assumed that this meant that they still couldn't open/close the solar panels properly, maybe something suffered from the cold, and maybe there was less power available.
When I saw lots of headlines reporting it dead, I wondered if it was pessimism or exageration (my own body doesn't work 100% but that doesn't class me as dead!). In the end, I think that each site picked up the story from another site, changing the words a bit along the way, and it went from <100% eventually to =0%. Could you call it Chinese whispers? (ok, I'll get me coat.)
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