Editing 2428: Mars Landing Video

Three days before this comic was published, NASA successfully landed a new rover, {{w|Perseverance (rover)|''Perseverance''}}, on Mars, this was also the subject of the previous comic [[2427: Perseverance Microphones]].

This comic is set at the press briefing where a video of the landing (a first ever) is presented, and was published shortly before this happened in real life.

This comic plays on the fact that if there is only one of something in a set, that one thing is the most/least in that set by lack of comparison. As there is only one full speed video of a Mars landing, that makes the video the best one as well as the worst one. [[Randall]], who has often been [[:Category:Banned from conferences|banned from conferences]], has also been banned from NASA's press briefings. So he decided to crash the conference (literally, see below) solely to ask the question, "is this then not also the worst video ever", flouting his ban and embarrassing NASA (the latter of which is probably why NASA banned him).  

He follows up with the question if NASA is planning to make a worse Mars landing video, which is silly because people generally don't intend to make something worse. However, because this video is the worst full-speed video of a Martian landing by virtue of being the only full-speed video of a Martian landing, it is likely that if enough full-speed videos of Martian landings are made in the future, this video will not be the worst forever. Although this is merely a consequence of the fact that it is the only full-speed video of a Martian landing so far, the fact that it is technically true and the way that Randall phrases it makes it look embarrassing for NASA. Randall (the character, not the real-life person)'s tendency to make rude, embarrassing, and otherwise bad comments is probably why he has been banned from NASA's press briefings (as well as all of those conferences).

Judging by the sound effects, Randall has chosen to literally crash his way through the roof, using a "skycrane" — a general term for aerial vehicles that can lower or raise objects similarly to standard cranes. Specifically one of these was used to land the Perseverance rover three days before.

 

The title text refers to the 11-minute (one-way; 23 minutes round-trip) communications delay between Mars and Earth, due to the speed of light and the distance between the planets at the time of the rover's landing. Perseverance mission control must wait this long before they can even begin to respond to anything that happens to the rover, which Randall here twists into an 11-minute delay before they can begin to answer his questions allowing him to ask questions for 11 minutes before they can intervene. This would of course only make sense if he was crashing the conference at Mars, and they were waiting for his questions here on Earth.

 

Randall copying the use of the skycrane that was used to drop the Mars rover, is similar to how different groups express similar behaviors in parallel research, so as to have similar footing in the world, as if they are almost in nonverbal communication about the merits of their ways.

:Randall (off-panel):Do you expect that record to stand forever, or is NASA working on a worse one?

[[Category:Comics featuring Randall]]