It brings me no pleasure to announce that Intuitive Machine’s Athena Moon lander has been declared useless. An ex-Moon lander. Ceased to be, bereft of life, and joined the choir invisible. Onboard was a miniature information middle offered by Lonestar, full with a Phison enterprise-grade SSD. And on that SSD, as we have discovered from a submit on Linkedin authored by Lonestar’s CEO, Chris Stott, are the lyrics to a music by Imagine Dragons for Bethesda’s troubled area RPG, Starfield.
Two moon pictures then, one fairly literal and one metaphorical—and each victims, it appears, of a very bumpy touchdown.
The stricken spacecraft made one thing of a profitable landing (learn: didn’t explode on impression), however is now confirmed to be mendacity on its aspect with its photo voltaic panels unable to assemble treasured daylight to energy the remainder of its mission. In a press release, Intuitive Machines introduced the lander’s present state:
“Images downlinked from Athena on the lunar floor confirmed that Athena was on her aspect. After touchdown, mission controllers have been capable of speed up a number of program and payload milestones, together with NASA’s PRIME-1 suite, earlier than the lander’s batteries depleted.
“With the course of the solar, the orientation of the photo voltaic panels, and excessive chilly temperatures within the crater, Intuitive Machines doesn’t count on Athena to recharge. The mission has concluded and groups are persevering with to evaluate the info collected all through the mission.”
It’s in these kinds of moments that we may all do with a while to replicate, and maybe suppose existentially about our hubris as a species and our deep-seated want to succeed in for the good past.
Luckily Imagine Dragons is manner forward of us, because the lyrics to Children of the Sky (A Starfield Song) have now turn out to be poignant in a manner that was maybe in any other case supposed:
“Some days when I’m dreaming, I consider how far I’ve come
All my life’s led to this and now I see what I’ve turn out to be
I at all times had doubted that I may ever be somebody
That mattered, that shattered all these glass ceilings up above
“We’re kids of the sky, flying up so excessive
Let me be that one to seek out the brightest solar
We’re kids of the sky, guided by the sunshine
Let me attain new heights, stars amongst the evening
Children of the sky”
Modern poetry, I feel you will agree. The Athena lander, very similar to Starfield, reached for the heady heights of success however crucially missed the mark. It strived to be one thing greater than the gathering of its elements, however essential missteps prevented it from finishing up its mission.
For Athena it was the pursuit of science, ruined by a rocky touchdown. For Starfield, it was the pursuit of a grand area journey, marred by uninteresting planets, old-school quest design, bugs that stopped being amusing years in the past, and a common sense that we have moved previous the concept an enormous open-world RPG must be a set of somewhat-interesting stuff in amongst huge swathes of nothingness.
That’s my private tackle it, anyway, though our Starfield overview makes lots of the identical critiques. If I could quote as soon as extra from the Imagine Dragons canon, I really feel that one other music might sum up Athena’s destiny much more poignantly, and maybe Starfield’s, too:
“I’m an apostrophe
I’m only a image to remind you that there is extra to see
I’m only a product of the system, a disaster
And but a masterpiece, and but I’m half-diseased
And when I’m deceased
At least I’m going all the way down to the grave and die fortunately
Leave the physique and my soul to be part of thee
I do what it takes”
Rest in peace, Athena. And as for Starfield? Bethesda says it is nonetheless engaged on it, regardless of a current radio silence of its personal. While the moon lander now rests on rocky shores, maybe Starfield nonetheless has a redemption story but to come back. Here’s hoping, on the very least.
