I think the Mars Rover mission is incredible, but the press coverage and the press releases from NASA are just horrible. They spend more time coming up with cute names for the rocks and other features than they do explaining the science. Is the American public just so frigging stupid that we need to placate them with “Snoopy” and “Humphrey” and “Sashimi”?
I can’t help but agree with you on that, but unfortunately not everyone in society is as interested in scientific facts as we are, Soooo, :rolleyes: I guess the media feels that it needs to do something to “make up” for this lack of interest by giving cute names to all the rocks and specimens that they find…
Something like the occasional “Song and Dance” the guys at CNN News throw in to keep everyone interested. Its all about the ratings man…its all about the ratings 
AFAIK it’s the NASA scientists that come up with the cute names. If you’re going to spend three weeks talking about one rock, 24 hours, 39 minutes a day, it helps to give it a name.
You have to ask?
Seriously, the scientists and engineers themselves are naming the objects. They’ve already used up all the really good names on the big objects (Schiaparelli, Lowell, Cassini, Kepler, Huygens, Gusev, plus more obscure names like Medusae Fossae), and they’re doing science in real time as suddenly hundreds of objects are appearing in front of them, so they need the first things that pop to mind.
And besides, Starguard is right: Who among the general public really gives a shit about the difference between olivine and hematite, or what it means for the geologists trying to figure out what happened to the water?
Look, I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart, but it chaps my ass when The Daily Show plays a clip of a Spirit/Opportunity press conference and Stewart makes a joke about how dull and wasteful all this science stuff is. They had a rover engineer as a guest a few weeks ago, and Stewart was awfully patronizing with somebody I would have been honored to buy a beer for. Unfortunately, he really does speak for the average viewer, even as I grit my teeth and wait for him to get back to making fun of Al Sharpton.
And because I didn’t quite use the word “objects” enough in that first paragraph above, here are some more for you: objects objects objects objects. You’re welcome.
We tend to give the instruments in the lab where I work names. It’s not to be “cute” but it just makes it a lot easier to discuss things. Especially since we have multiple copies of the same model. I find that it so much easier to tell Fred and Ethel apart than STKS #1 and STKS #2.
When you spend the whole day dealing with numbers, names are refreshing. Stupidity doesn’t enter into it.
(Well… not mine anyway.)