When it comes to landing Mars rovers, I didn’t think anything could be more awesome than the airbag touch-downs of Spirit and Opportunity several years back. But what NASA/JPL did with the Curiosity rover last Sunday (Aug 5, 2012) is seriously mind-blowing – I mean, the “sky crane maneuver” alone should spark imaginations across our planet for years to come – and it’s simply amazing that they pulled it off! Can’t wait to see what discoveries all the new tech on that rover yields in the coming months/years. Anyway I just had to mention that before getting into today’s strip.

Growing up with movies like The Last Starfighter, WarGames, Tron and novels like Ender’s Game, have always made me somewhat suspicious of what might be happening behind the scenes when playing video games. Not that I’d mind being recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada, stopping a nuclear war from happening or landing a car-sized science lab on the surface of Mars, but I’m just saying beyond the immediate coolness of such events, it’d be a lot of pressure I’m not sure I could handle.


Also, thanks for waiting for the site to come back after being away for a week! I’m always happy to be back working on JEFbot and talking with y’all.