the following is pretty funny. no lives were lost or maybe it wouldn't be. what isn't funny is the last sentence. failure, will now make them take a look at their end to end process. lets see...our first end-to-end testing will be dec. 31. we'll fix anything that doesn't pass muster on jan. 1...have we heard this before?

'Measure' of failure for Mars orbiter was human, NASA says ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- By Matthew Fordahl ASSOCIATED PRESS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- LOS ANGELES The $125 million spacecraft destroyed on a mission to Mars was probably doomed by the embarrassing failure to convert English units of measurement to metric ones, NASA said Thursday. The Mars Climate Orbiter flew too close to Mars and is believed to have broken apart or burned up in the atmosphere.

A peer review board established to determine what went wrong announced Thursday that in making a key change to the spacecraft's trajectory, two research teams -- the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena and at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Colorado -- used different measuring systems. JPL said that its preliminary findings showed that Lockheed submitted acceleration data in the English -- or avoirdupois -- system of measuring, which utilizes miles, yards, feet and inches as well as pounds and ounces instead of the the metric system -- kilometers, meters, kilograms and grams. At JPL, the numbers were entered into a computer that assumed metric measurements. "In our previous Mars missions, we have always used metric," said Tom Gavin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"It does not make us feel good that this happened," Mr. Gavin said. "This mix-up has caused us to look at our entire end-to-end process. We will get to

-- corrine l (corrine@iwaynet.net), October 01, 1999

Answers

Green side up.

-- Sam (Gunmkr52@aol.com), October 01, 1999.

It was only just a very little mistake. One with very big consequencies.

Thank God they didn't make the same mistake with the Cassini Probe and end up dumping glow in the dark stuff all over us.

Plutonium is not the breakfast of champions.

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), October 01, 1999.

A short time agoe (years) three crewmembers (pilot -co-pilot, flight engineer) of a large commercial airliner could not properly convert U.S. gallons to Imperial gallons, in the confusion they only put in half the fuel required to go across Canada.

The plane ran out of gas,landed at an abandonded area, (scared RV park campers half to death), busted up the front nose and landing gear. ( brand new plane)

It was a miracle they found a place to land - could have killed all on board.

Personal pride and over-confidence to a level of killing many people that are innocent victims and deserve the honest efforts of those in charge (to go beyond ego and do a proper check that a high schooler could)

(Sound like a familiar pattern in other areas of decision making ?)

Cockpit crews have typically had a problem with Pilot ego and others not wanting to step on toes. aircraft crash many times just to human error.......

-- Living in (the@real.world), October 01, 1999.

ASSOCIATED PRESS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- LOS ANGELES The $14 Trillion global economy destroyed on a mission to the new millennium was probably doomed by the embarrassing failure to convert two digit dates to four digit ones, the IMF and World Bank said Thursday.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), October 02, 1999.

The "explanation" NASA offers for the loss of the MCO vehicle seems utterly inconsistent with the history of the mission. The vehicle was launched successfully, left earth orbit successfully, has experienced numerous successful course corrections, and has followed the mission profile precisely over the past several months. The ratio between the English unit of force (pound force) and the metric unit (newton) is 4.44 and change. If this massive discrepancy between command and execution were genuine, the MCO would never even have gotten near Mars.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), October 03, 1999.