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To: gaijin
Didn’t they once lose an expensive probe upon atmospheric re-entry, owing to a metric/US standards use error?

Typical government bureaucracy.
So busy trying to manipulate people's lives that they neglect the job we pay them to do.

Mars Mission's Metric Mixup

"NASA officials said they believe the problem was probably caused by a miscommunication on measurement between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in Colorado, and the mission navigation team in California.

"The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft," said NASA's Weiler.

NASA officials said that the mix-up caused the craft to draw to within 60 km of the Mars instead of the expected 150 km, ruining the mission.

"Our inability to recognize and correct this simple error has had major implications," said Dr. Edward Stone, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

NASA spent approximately US$94 million to build the Orbiter."

Mars Mission's Metric Mixup

17 posted on 11/16/2008 7:02:30 PM PST by Iron Munro (Will Rogers: Every law Congress makes is a joke and every joke they tell becomes a law.)
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To: Iron Munro
Barrack Hussein Zero should get Sheila Jackson-Lee to
head NASA because of her vast outer space knowledge.
18 posted on 11/16/2008 7:12:56 PM PST by HuntsvilleTxVeteran (Obama, Change America will die for.)
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