TIL that NASA lost a $330m Mars Orbiter in 1999, immediately before mars orbit was achieved, because one of the contracted US companies used imperial units instead of metric.

contentbot@lemmy.ca · 7 months ago

TIL that NASA lost a $330m Mars Orbiter in 1999, immediately before mars orbit was achieved, because one of the contracted US companies used imperial units instead of metric.

Kevin · 7 months ago

I coulda swore NASA did account for that and wrote unit conversion subroutines, and that the bug was that a conversion was missed, rather than not knowing the unit mismatch at all

Vilian@lemmy.ca · 7 months ago

why don’t just use metric???

Blizzard@lemmy.zip · edit-2 7 months ago

You know how much effort would it take for Americans to change their habits? At least a couple of football fields of effort!

isgleas@lemmy.ml · 7 months ago

Three eights of a teafuck if you ask me

delirious_owl@discuss.online · 7 months ago

The US has required metric for all federally funded contracts since before NASA was founded.

𝚝𝚛𝚔@aussie.zone · 7 months ago

What, and open USDM to international competition??

TIL that NASA lost a $330m Mars Orbiter in 1999, immediately before mars orbit was achieved, because one of the contracted US companies used imperial units instead of metric.

TIL that NASA lost a $330m Mars Orbiter in 1999, immediately before mars orbit was achieved, because one of the contracted US companies used imperial units instead of metric.

Metric vs Imperial Units: How NASA lost a 327 Million Dollar Mission to Mars