Cutesy language of modern space discovery...is it needed?

Time to tell it like it is says Russ Sawn as his goat is firmly got by the cutesy language of modern space discovery in the media

Truly we live in a golden age of scientific discovery, especially in space exploration. We have a lander on a comet, an orbiter around an asteroid, and at the time of writing have just completed a fly-by of Pluto. We've mapped Mercury, landed on Titan, and have a fleet of landers, wheelers, and orbiters at Mars. With a return to Jupiter's icy moons and other fantastic missions in the pipeline, this ought to be the most inspiring time imaginable for coming generations of scientists and engineers.

Why then are we doing our damnedest to patronise that next generation and turn them away from any meaningful involvement in this age of wonder?

The achievements being rolled out as a matter of routine on our TV screens and smartphones are among the greatest things that humankind has ever done. They involve hundreds or even thousands of highly trained professionals to design, build, launch, guide, and interpret the results from some of the most incredibly sophisticated machines that have ever been imagined. And then we go and spoil it all by giving those boxes of electronics and gears a 'personality'.

There has been a disturbing trend of late in dumbing-down the great breakthroughs of the modern age to be little more than cartoon characters acting out some sub-Looney Tunes plot. It's not a new thing, but it has been getting worse – much worse – over recent months. And it has to stop.

It's about seven years since the Phoenix lander settled on Mars, heralding both a renewed interest in planetary exploration and, unhappily, this new age of pseudo machine communication. NASA devotes many pages of its various websites to the project, a disturbing number of which are apparently written 'by' Phoenix in the first person. These include such cringe-inducing diary entries as "One of the most common questions I’m asked, and one of the most difficult to explain, is whether I knew going in that this mission would cost me my life. The answer to that is yes, of course…"

Excuse me? Not only are we expected to swallow the notion that this lump of machinery is sentient, but also that it can ruminate on its own heroism? Pass the sick bucket. It gets even worse when the device starts reflecting on its co-robots: "I’ve outlived my warranty and lasted five months, but those plucky rovers have lasted nearly five years (with no end in sight)".

Plucky rovers. It's a tabloid journalistic cliché come real, but we can hardly blame the 'bloids if even the space agencies are committing these sins.

It's not just NASA, and if anything the Europeans are taking the habit to new depths. The world has been enthralled this year by the drama being played out on and around the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, with a high-speed chase through the heavens and a tricky landing on this bizarre tumbling object.

You might think there is enough excitement in the simple facts of the mission, the loss and re-establishment of contact, and the mysteries that are being revealed by the scientific payloads in orbit and somewhere on the surface.

But apparently not. In order to make this incredible story palatable, the European Space Agency deemed that the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander must be cartoonified. This dubious practice reached its nadir with the re-awakening of the lander, which was played out on Twitter in the first person. "How long have I been asleep?" tweeted the lander, expressing surprise at the orbiter's answer and resolving to get back to work straight away after its nap. The exchange of news between them was excruciating enough, but any last vestige of credibility was lost when the lander allegedly tweeted that it was having trouble talking to the orbiter. But having no trouble accessing Twitter, it seems.

The habit seems to be becoming universal, with the Dawn spacecraft at Ceres also blogging or micro-blogging in the first person, although so far without the more extreme philosophical and metaphysical ruminations of its celestial cohort. I find these appalling acts of unnecessary anthropomorphism utterly nauseating, and can't help thinking that the mission controllers in Darmstadt, Houston, or wherever, who are inflicting these atrocities on us, must be hanging their heads in shame.

These projects are amazing and the science they produce is incredible. They are not embellished, and the public understanding of their significance is not enhanced, by the unscientific and patronising creation of machine philosophy.

We must stamp it out now, or I fear the next great scientific discover may be something like: "Gee, it looks like I've found life on Europa. I wonder if it will be my friend?"