COMMENTARY--On a rocky plateau 300 million miles from here, The Mars Exploration Rover A--known to its friends and PR operatives as Spirit--sits quietly, conserving its strength after a near-fatal computer breakdown. As it was not named the Mars Static Nervous Wreck A, you may assume that things are not going exactly to plan. Much closer to home, gaggles of geeks sit with furrowed brows as they work out exactly why the machine went mad just a third of the way through its mission, when everything was looking spotless. Instead of preparing to drill into a large and tempting rock, the...