
NASA video of Perseverance landing on Mars.
( , Mon 22 Feb 2021, 22:44, Reply)

but I guess it'd be a pain and lose a lot of the drama to use the past tense
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 2:19, Reply)

I understand why they are commenting this way, as it adds to the drama and immediacy and makes it look like the events are something they can react to, which of course they can't as they're 10 minutes behind. But they could just have easily have used a neutral passive-voice like they did on the apollo mission control. Instead of "our current velocity is" like a BA pilot telling you the duty free is coming round, they could just say "velocity is x" "Parachute deployed" etc
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 9:52, Reply)

"the eagle has landed" sounds better than "hey, we are touching down now"
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 11:26, Reply)

It was the way she repeatedly said “we’re x kilometres from the surface of Mars”
As if we needed constant reminders of what planet they were aiming for.
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 12:28, Reply)

I would say that everything we see or hear is time delayed, so life would get way too complicated
But I don't wish to be argumentative so I won't say that
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 3:11, Reply)

That would be like suggesting our choices are often unconscious and we rationalise our reasons afterwards.
Or even worse, our entire experience of external reality is a set of complex hallucinations.
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 4:57, Reply)

So the use of “our” as in “our current velocity” is a bit misleading.
But the English language hasn’t got any more succinct way to express the concept of a group distributed across time and space, so I’ll let that pass.
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 8:01, Reply)

so it's only misleading to those who aren't smart enough to realise those in the control room are the owners of the rover.
( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 9:58, Reply)

( , Tue 23 Feb 2021, 21:40, Reply)