xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

Three days before this comic was published, NASA successfully landed a new rover, Perseverance, on Mars. This was also the subject of the previous comic 2427: Perseverance Microphones.

This comic was published shortly before a NASA press briefing that showed, as mentioned in the comic, the first ever full-speed video of a Mars landing. This comic is set at that press briefing and was published shortly before NASA, either unaware of Randall's threat or recognizing that it was not serious, went ahead and held the briefing in real life. "Full-speed" here means that the video was captured at a frame rate high enough that it looks continuous when played back, as opposed to low-frame-rate imagery that looks jerky when played back.

This was the first-ever full speed video of a Mars landing, making it technically the worst one (as well as the best one). Randall has apparently been banned from NASA's press briefings, and decided to (literally) crash the conference solely to point this out.

Although this is merely because the video is the only one of its kind, the fact that it is technically true and the way Randall phrases it makes it look embarrassing for NASA. He follows up by asking whether NASA plans to make a worse Mars landing video, which is silly because people generally don't intend to make something worse.^{[citation needed]} The tendency of Randall (the character, not the real-life person) to make rude, embarrassing, and otherwise unwelcome comments is probably why he has been banned from NASA's press briefings, as well as many other conferences. More Mars missions would upset this embarrassing record, thankfully for both NASA's image and its goals.

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. On Earth one might use the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane helicopter, while NASA used a custom-built skycrane delivery system for the Perseverance rover. Randall finds using a skycrane to crash a conference about a skycrane ironic, especially since security was totally unprepared to deal with a technique NASA itself developed.

At the time of the mission, Earth and Mars were 11 light-minutes apart, meaning that if there was some problem with Perseverance or Ingenuity, mission control would find out 11 minutes later, and their response would be received after another 11 minutes. In the title text, Randall twists this into an 11-minute period in which he can ask whatever questions he likes from Earth before NASA can respond on Mars. This plays on the ambiguity of "Mars briefing", taking it to mean a briefing taking place on Mars, rather than a briefing about Mars.