Slashdot Mirror
Probe Crash Due to Misdesigned Deceleration Sensor
squirrelhack writes "Seems as though the Genesis spacecraft was able to launch from earth, travel through space, avoid aliens, and cruise back into the atmosphere to be caught by stunt pilots waiting patiently with their helicopters. Alas, the brakes didn't work because a sensor was designed upside down.
Look on the bright side. The craft was not a complete loss, and it was the first probe to successfully test the Interplanetary Superhighway. (Article with pictures) Now that we know the IPSHwy works, we have the capability to launch cargo ANYWHERE in the solar system.
The primary limitation is the maximum weight we can get to the Earth/Moon Lagrange points. Once at the L-points, the cargo pretty much travels one gravity slingshot to the next with nearly no fuel expenditure. This could be a massive boon for sending Interplanetary mission cargo, especially when staging manned missions!
The only down side is that the IPSHwy is simply too slow for manned travel. Not too bad of a tradeoff, however, when you consider the amount of mass that can be more easily staged at Mars in advance! It's certainly reasonable that we could have a complete microsat network at Mars before a human ever sets foot there. Services that could be provided include:
- Mars GPS system
- Deep Space Network Uplink
- Satellite Radio Communicators for landing teams
- Detailed mapping and emergency surveillance of problem areas
In short, we could have a complete technological infrastructure on Mars before we risk anyone's life going there. It wouldn't have to be like the moon mission. We could go to stay.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
... that human error can happen even in the most expensive projects.
This signature was left intentionally blank.
I wish POLITICIANS would stop judging accidents with NASA and spaceflight in general as "wastes".
It's NOT a waste. Research REQUIRES failure. SUCESS requires failure.
One step at a time, my fellow scientists and engineers. One step at a time.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
The scientists got their samples and the public got a cool crash video
But it takes a rocket scientist to really screw things up.
anyone? This post is only minutes old and the site is already borked.
http://request-header.info
They had the silly thing in reverse.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I read the same story here earlier today, and it also says that it was installed backwards.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
You didn't read the article very well. It says that the specs said the part should go in backwards. From the article:
The sensors, which are estimated to be less than an inch (2.5 centimetres) wide, were apparently installed in a circuit board in the wrong orientation - rotated 180 from the correct direction. But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
All of life is really like that. The only reason space mission failures are so spectacular is because everything is a one-of, and any mistake turns great success into a crater. The fact that these failures are the exception and not the norm is a testement to the expertise of all involved. It's their great skill that has allowed us to become so jaded :).
...and make some sort of Genesis joke but there just isn't anything funny at all about the damn group.
When told about its demise, Peter Gabriel responded with "So?"
Second (or third if ya count the dropped sattelite at Goddard about 18 months ago) screwup by Lockheed on a recent NASA project. Knowing NASA, they'll likely give LockMart a bonus for that performance ;)
Haven't we had enough stories about sensorship today?
Crappy article really first they said there where installed incorrectly then they said no the where designed backwards
... we see millions on top of millions go to a program that "failed" because of a simple design oversight. I sure hope whoever missed that gets fired!
Best FPS gaming site on the net... ok, well maybe not the best
'deceleration' Just acceleration in some direction. If it's opposite of what you define as positive, it's negative.
You'd think the siseneG would have been a tip off!
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
From the article:
also:
http://request-header.info
Seriously. Correct me if I'm wrong, but THEY're the ones who:
Thought we still use Imperial for SPACE WORK (Mars Climate Orbiter IIRC?)
Recently dropped a sat because it wasn't bolted down when they moved it.
Now this.
Can I get like a billion dollars to fail repeatedly? PLEASE?
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
because a sensor was designed upside down.
And I thought the idea of massive amounts of blood rushing to the brain causing heightened intelligence was only a myth.
But, the article *says* it's a design error.
It says so in the title of the article, and the very first sentence of the article.
RTFA.
"Genesis crash linked to upside-down design
Sensors to detect deceleration on NASA's Genesis space capsule were installed correctly but had been designed upside down, resulting in the failure to deploy the capsule's parachutes."
Piper did say that quote, but only when nhe was being managed by the man who coined the phrase: Bobby "the Brain" Heenan
-Ab
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
All it takes is one ass-umption to make the great space systems contractor to look like an ass.
Of course, they usually do get it right, in near-heroic fashion. But didn't it occur to anyone to try this out by, say, building a unit without the science part, bringing it along on a pre-scheduled Shuttle flight, and de-orbiting it? (IIRC, design and test pre-dated the Coulmbia accident). That way, they get a real re-entry at low (for NASA) cost.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
IN SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM
Trained monkey deploy the parachute.
Damn Australian scientists!
;-)
You can't take the sky from me...
The mission's Mishap Investigation Board will continue to investigate the problem.
Oh, suuuure. MIB stands for "Mishap Investigation Board" now, huh? We're on to you, you governemnt spooks!
Design error: implementor installs the switch as it was designed, which was backwards.
Implementation error: design was correct, but the implementor reversed the polarity of the switch.
Remember Murphy's law is not 'Whatever can go wrong will.' it is 'Whenever there are two possible ways to implement something and one of them will result in a catastropic result, it can be certian that someone will configure things that way.' (paraphrased.)
In this case the report is that there were two possible ways that the switch could be installed by the implementor, one of which would result in the catastrophy that was wittnesed. (And the designers are saying it was that implementation.)
Post event analysis will say 'Yes, it was implemented incorrectly. Our recomendation is that the design be improved to prevent future implementations this way.'
The claim is that the design was correct, had things been implemented 'as designed'. The recomendation is that the design be improved so that an incorrect implementation is less likely to happen in the future.
-Rusty
You never know...
They installed the switch backwards.
Then, shouldn't the switch have been triggered by *acceleration* and fired the chute right after takeoff?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Lest I get a bunch of "What are you talking about?" responses:
a y_0410 11.html
9 91110.html
For them dropping the NOAA sat:
http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmond
(first link I found)
Climate Orbiter:
http://www.space.com/news/mco_report-b_
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Isn't this the same situation that resulted in the creation of Murphy's Law. They were doing acceleration tests on humans but they installed the sensors backwards so the tests were useless.
The original lesson they learned was: That if a design allows for a part to be installed incorrectly, then that part will be installed incorrectly (eventually, or maybe even the first time).
Just a little bit of history repeating.
It's a good thing that the switch didn't attempt to detect acceleration as well (for some other purpose). It would could have been pretty disastrous (even more so?) to have the shoot fire during take off. :)
If there are exactly two ways to do something, and one of them ends in catastrophic failure, someone will do it that way.
Sounds like the original, where sixteen sensors for testing a g-force experiment were dutifully and methodically glued in place backwards.
--Benanov
The sensors, which are estimated to be less than an inch (2.5 centimetres) wide, were apparently installed in a circuit board in the wrong orientation - rotated 180 from the correct direction. But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland.
I caught that too. What I don't understand is what was wrong with the design. Is the crash investigation team saying, "Yeah, the sensors were designed wrong, but, huh, check it out, they were installed backwards too, but that doesn't matter" or what? It seems like them (the sensors) being in backwards would be a big deal, but the article seems to imply that the design flaw was the only relevant mistake.
Anybody have any idea what the flaw was or why the sensors would still work when installed backwards?
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
backbiters, yes, I should have read the article myself.
You never know...
Sheeeeezzzz...
These kind of mistakes make me wonder. WHY does NASA *HAVE* to re-design every freakin' thing on every freakin' mission from the ground up every freakin' time?
We're flying alpha-test spacecraft.
Re-usable modules anybody?? Heard of those? Standard designs? Sure, some parts are going to be different, namely the actual scientific instruments, but fer ghodssake an accelerometer?! WhyTF do we need to redesign that (its a weight, a spring and a switch, fer the love of pete) ?!!
-sigh-
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
They installed the switch backwards.
For some reason, I'm reminded of the origins of Murphy's Law. I recall that too was the result of some sensors being installed backwards...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
that Farside cartoon with "School for the Gifted" or something.
Looks like a case of life depicting art.
Yeah, the sensors were designed wrong, but, huh, check it out, they were installed backwards too
No, not quite. They're saying that the manufacturer designed them to be installed backwards on the circuit board. i.e. The assembly guys did everything right (it probably only fit one way), but Lockheed-Martin screwed the pooch.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The person that lead the design probably had a personality that was so strong no one dared to question his work.
no, I just want to make sure people who came to slashdot for content don't get suckered into seeing shit on a womans face when they think they're finally getting a gmail invite... it's deceptive, not free speech.
Best FPS gaming site on the net... ok, well maybe not the best
Thank god the laws of nature are not all symmetrical, otherwise we wouldn't be able to distinguish between idiots and geniuses.
But we know things like this already. Failure is fine if you learn from it.
What did we learn? Um... accelerometers only work in one direction... if you install them backwards, things don't happen right!
We tolerate mistakes if we have to make them, but this one (like all the recent Lockheed Martin screwups on work for NASA) appears to be stupidity.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Doesn't that mean that the parachutes should have deployed on take off? heh....
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
So you do promote censorship?
Good one, Hitler.
The probe Galileo dropped into the Jovian atmosphere had exactly the same problem, sensors installed upside down. They had a fallback of a system clock which would start the entry sequence when the expected time from release to atmosphere occurred. Not quite as accurate as positive detection of the reentry, but it clearly worked well enough to save the mission.
This flight should also have had a count down timer to "expected" time of atmosphere as a fallback.
Oh well....
I didn't realize that up and down were different in metric than the imperial system.
I think it means that they were installed such that they pointed the wrong direction, but that was because the drawings said to install them that direction. The designers screwed up, the installers did their job correctly based on a bad print.
I'm a designer, it makes sense to me. I have to be careful that my work is right, and hope that if I do make a mistake, someone catches it, and doesn't just build to print.
It may have been backwards, but at least they used metric units.
I would argue that a switch that can be installed backwards IS a design error. If it's mission-critical, make sure that someone can't screw up the mission with it.
You'd think they would have figured out that the braking switch was in backwards when they saw Genesis's airbags deploy at liftoff.
3... 2... 1... *PFOOF*
Caused me many a lost mission and endless hours of frustration that night. These guys got lucky...
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Just like you should never write that code that cannot be tested (in the perfect world, every line would be executed during testing), you should never design a subassembly that cannot be tested.
It's a organizational attitude adjustment that's needed to put this into effect.
No, I think it's calling people nazis and "dipshits" that is considered a troll.
I remember reading about an Apollo moon car issue where a core-sample clamp would not work because it was installed upside down. It ended up wasting about an hour of astronaut time. Parts designers should avoid symmetrical designs where things fit, or semi-fit, if misoriented. Design them with things sticking out so that it would not fit *at all* if put in wrong.
Table-ized A.I.
The experiment was good because it test a lot of novel space flight theories so it wasn't completely a waste. However, the part failure that compromised the mission was old, established tech and should not have failed. Get rid of the contractors! They suck.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
A while back, one of the main things I admired NASA for was the redundant design concept. You just have a backup path for everything.
But recently it looks like they kind of dropped this concept, at least partially. Probably as a cost-cutting measure. The success of the whole mission now depends on the reliability of several single components, like the sensor in discussion.
BTW, did you know that a Mars Rover has a single CPU that carries out all the computation? I found this puzzling. Today, you add redundance in every piece of equipment - even in web blades.
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
That is censorship, like it or not.
It seems that some people here just don't understand the concept of the free speech they want so badly.. The hypocrisy is amazing!
I must have put a sensor the wrong place or something. Shit, I always do that, I always mess up some mundane detail.
Michael B.
Satellite Design Group
Lockheed Martin
Sindri Traustason.
It's a Feature Not a Bug !
If Lockheed were a subdivision of Microsoft.
You don't normally have the recovery subsystem active at launch time.
And the brethren went away edified.
I found particular interest in this section (2 paragraphs): ----BEGIN CLIP---- "They still have to find out why that design error was not caught," says Savage. The mission's Mishap Investigation Board will continue to investigate the problem. "This single cause has not yet been fully confirmed, nor has it been determined whether it is the only problem within the Genesis system," says the board's chairman Michael Ryschkewitsch. "The board is working to confirm this proximate cause, to determine why this error occurred, why it was not caught by the test programme and an extensive set of in-process and after-the-fact reviews of the Genesis system." ----END CLIP---- Why do they claim to have tested this? Why lie to us like that? We all know that when you perform an ohm test on electronic switches, if its not contacted, the meter doesn't beep!
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
read about the whole story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law
(note that the sensors were wired backwards as opposed to installed backwards)
Crappy article really first they said there where installed incorrectly then they said no the where designed backwards
Crappy readers can't understand that the sensor was installed in an upside-down position because the sensor was designed upside-down.
Was the sensor upside down? Yes.
Was the sensor upside down because it was installed wrong? No.
Was the sensor upside down because it was designed to be upside-down when installed according to the instructions? Yes.
So, it was installed upside-down, but it was not an installation problem.
Learn to love Alaska
no, I promote not being a retarded asshole who tries to get people to look at pictures of women with shit on their face under the vail of "free gmail invites"
I'm just thankful that most people block -1 posts so they don't have to see this pathetic post and your equally, if not moreso, attempt to back it with "free speech". why don't you try stop being an spammer of sick disgusting shit and go get a job, or maybe a life.
Best FPS gaming site on the net... ok, well maybe not the best
Murphy's law was a quote (people can argue about who said it first) directly related to accelerometers/strain guages and whether or not they could be connected backwards ...
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
There is probably some lockout while in the rocket to avoid such an error I'd imagine. The mechanism might be engaged from mission control, and not always on, consuming battery life.
Save a life, sign your organ donor card.
In all sincerity, it would have been neater if it had failed to avoid the aliens. ;)
of the sensors used ...
You are a retard.
Well, obviously you didn't make it through a middle school government class with a passing grade (which is not surprising, judging from your knee-jerk censorship wants).
You can say whatever you want, that is guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. Other things such as intent are what comes into play. Watch!
I want to drive a butcher knife through President George W. Bush
That statement is perfectly protected because I obviously have no intent of carrying the threat out.
Now, I don't know what backwards view of the 1st Amendment you got, or how, but it boils down to this:
Either you're for free speech or you're for fascistic censorship.
It seems like you're the fascist dictator.
Shall I polish your swastika, Mr. Hitler?
They designed this backward, because they were thinking backward with their measurments.
Just another example of why the US should be using the metric system. The antiquated english measurement system is the root cause of this problem.
The meter, and the cubic meter are the natural measurements, existing and demonstrated time and again throughout nature.
Said another way, When they installed the part, they installed it with the "Up Arrow" pointing up like the directions said, but the people who designed the part had the "Up Arrow" pointing the wrong direction.
So the failure was in design, not installation. The net result still being it ended up backwards.
At least that's what I'm reading.
Let me see... How many times has sensors been installed upside down? Let me think... perhaps the deisgners could PAINT AN ARROW going the right way! Sheesh...
Of course, said sticker would have shown up on the invoice to NASA as "sund.explns" and carried a price of $42,000.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Campain contributions?
Quit biting. The idiot is doing what he does best. Forget him.
After that capsule crashed, I saw the following headline:
Saucer From Space Crashes In Utah Desert!
My first thought was, "what bullshit!". But then I realized it was 100% true. (Well, okay, it was kind of an obese saucer shape.)
Table-ized A.I.
The subject says it all.
Credo sim. - I think I am.
Being right makes me an idiot?
"Great spirits have always encountered
violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Einstein
I'm the retarded asshole becuase I don't want to censor people for unpopular ideas?
Great one there.
I think there is a place in hell right next to Stalin for people like you.
...requiring all the engineers to do initial designs the old-fashioned way, on paper, with slide-rules. No computers allowed until after the stuff is designed, then use the computers to verify and refine the stuff that was designed.
I have a theory that using computers and software engineering tools are causing engineers' jobs to be too easy, and thus they are becoming complacent in the quality of their output by relying too much on automation to do their jobs for them that they are forgetting to pay strict enough attention to details anymore.
(I give myself a C- grade in grammer for that last extreme run-on sentence.)
i seem to recall a series of stories on slashdot about the origination of the ubiquitous Murphy's Law. they centered around the first experiments of excessive gee forces on humans, and the phrase was first used in conjunction with a set of accelerometers wired backwards.
v 9i5/murphy/murphy0.html
here's the link to the story: http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/
(remove the fnords... er.. slashdot inserted spaces)
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
In this picture you can see that they are still using SCSI-style connectors. I thought the plan was to move to Serial-Attached-Scsi that used the SATA connector while still being SCSI. That way you could potential plug a SATA drive in the same slot as a SCSI was previous if your chipset supported it etc. It remember reading some Flash presentation on it. It was somewhere on the SCSI Trade Association website. They got a whole section on SAS on the site. So is it just theoretical? Anyone use it? Know anyone who does? Will it be out soon?
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
There is only negative acceleration.
"Anybody have any idea what the flaw was or why the sensors would still work when installed backwards?"
Imagine you are sitting in a car driving down the road. If you slam on the brakes hard enough, you will hit the windshield. At this point, if you were the switch, you would make electrical contact. Now if you were designed backwards, the contact would be on the back window. It doesn't matter how hard you hit the brakes, you aren't going to hit that contact (unless you are driving in reverse).
The switch was most likely held off of the contact with a spring. Once the deceleration was great enough, it compressed the spring and made contact. The article states that it was slightly more complex than this (triggers on 3 Gs coming down from 30 Gs), but the concepts should still be the same.
Actually, the US (or British, or Imperial, whatever) system of units is used for space work still. That and metric units. While it may seem like a good idea, no one ever decided on a standard unit for each dimension they use. I get pressure data in mmHg, kPa, psi, inH20...I could go on.
If it's 180 degrees off, can this be considered a sign error, like when the Hubble first launched?
(disclaimer: I don't know wtf I'm talking about)
[o]_O
Because they're CMM level 5! They must be good!
--RJ
We've all made mistakes like this, I think. Somehow, you just get things backwards in your head once, and then fix it as a `definite truth' which you don't bother to look at again.
Usually, I find these kinds of mistake in my own work when someone else, who hasn't been tainted in the same way, points it out to me. I wonder why this kind of peer review didn't happen here?
I'd rather let NASA have a billion dollars and fail, then give the military 100 billion dollars and still fail.
Genesis was designed during the Goldin era of so-called better-faster-cheaper. We should not be surprised that this sort of thing happened, since the project suffered under similar constraints. However, most of the preflight testing did occur AFTER the loss of the two Mars 98 probes, so JPL and LM should have known better.
I imagine JPL and LM are sweating over Stardust at this point -- or at least they should be. Although it does not have the same landing system as Genesis, it is far more likely to have problems, given that its design and testing were coincident with the two Mars failures.
Could happen to anyone. I once installed a half-dozen transistors on a board backwards because I was lining them up with the silk-screened D-shape outline rather than paying attention to the EBC labels. Was it my fault they designed the transistors backward? ;-)
(I figured it out when the oscilloscope showed the signal just dying at the first transistor...)
-- Alastair
Installation problem, I can understand, but design? Doesnt one validate a design on a serious project like this before manufacturing/installing something based on that design?
And dont tell me this little contraption was not validatable in a lab.
you are all wrong, the chip was correctly oriented it was the ship that was installed the wrong way ;)
As I understand it, NASA (like other government agencies) routinely awards the contractually specified "merit bonuses" to its contractors, even when the supplied equipment is late, comes in way over budget, and/or doesn't work. Does anyone have a Web link where we can check to see if Lockheed does in fact get its merit bonus for this particular screwup? Or is this information kept secret?
I think it would have been valuable to have the design put out in public (or at least out to the science community) for review.
I'm geeky enough to check sensors for correct orientation, and motivated enough to do it for free.
-Dan
colonization of mars does not seem possible because the body does not rotate on it's axis. latitude and longitude do not stay fixed with relation to the sun. how is this problem to be overcome when you must grow plants to sustain your existance?
------ no thanks... I've quit
Not to mention the 100% success rate of each:
Atlas II
Atlas III
Atlas V
How did this get accepted for submission, but the link from this story to "Sleepwalking woman has sex with strangers" did not?
9 96540
Come on people, priorities!!!
PS-> not a joke either, here's the url http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
Uhh, I was referring to the guy who posted the link to a woman with shit on her face, but if you'd like me to call you an idiot, I'll be happy to.
colonization of mars does not seem possible because the body does not rotate on it's axis.
1. What the hell are you talking about? Mars rotates just fine, and even has seasons.
how is this problem to be overcome when you must grow plants to sustain your existance?
2. Maybe the same way we do it on Earth? High powered, wide spectrum lamps.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
As I mentioned in another post, this project was one of the better-faster-cheaper ilk. I think BFC is not entirely without merit, but it was applied in precisely the wrong manner. Whose fault was that? NASA, not LM, and not even JPL. While it's easy to point the finger at LM (a subcontractor to JPL on this), JPL's job is to make sure the design and test were adequate. And NASA's job was to invest resources and conduct oversight. And Congress...
When the final report comes out, we will presumably learn why the sensor was not fully tested -- where was the decision made and why. Until then, all we have is the proximate cause, not the root cause.
The MCO failure was NOT merely LM's bad propulsion database. JPL's navigators saw the errors building and did not act. And JPL did not adequately staff the navigation operations console. And the reason was the emphasis on "cheaper".
The NOAA satellite really was LM's fault, and they will pay for it.
One of the principles that has come about from continuous improvement, kanban, Toyota manufacturing is the idea of poke-a-yoke, or poka-yoke engineering.
The idea is, you design something so that it can only be used one way, so that errors in installation are eliminated. For example, if this switch/sensor/whatever needed to be installed from one side, you put a bump/notch on the opposite side that would prevent the part from being installed wrong.
For another example of this, if you have an N64 gaming system, take apart one of the controllers and look at the button design. Every button has slots that it fits in, so that you can only install a button in one location. There's no worrying about "Did I swap the A and B buttons?" because it's not possible.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks for the paste, BTW, this is just generic commentary on this now that I have read it.
uh huh, sure, ohhhh yaaaaa, backwards, uh huh, yaaaaaa, that's the ticket, we installed it backwards!
Jon Lovitz would be embarassed on that one.
I don't believe the official explanation based on this. It is illogical and goes against the odds tremendously. I call shenaningans. No idea what's really up, but this is BS. If it's TRUE, the whole kit and kaboodle need to be fired, out, no more tax money and government contracts. Let them design tricycles or wagons or something. Of course, I don't think that happened either, so the real explanation is something else.
Yes, it is my nature to be suspicious, always been that way. This is like the 9-11 intel "failure" they keep pushing, fantasy land.
"Doh."
Have any idea how much work Lockheed Martin actually takes on? How many LM probes and satellites actually have 100% mission success each year?
The couple failures you mentioned represent less than 1% of the work LM does. Not that they aren't important, as every project is important, but LM does a TON of work and has extremely high mission success rates (especially considering the business they are in).
Just take a look at some of their launch vehicles, each having a 100% mission success rate over their entire life.
Atlas II
Atlas III
Atlas V
Excellent explanation. Very enlightening, although is does point out the fact that designing and proper testing methodology is easily as important as the act of testing itself.
I am the guy who posted those links.
I guess a little dose of remedial English courses might be in order for you.
Of some other spacecraft a long while ago (unmanned) that took off and turned straight around, to crash itself into some ocean. All due to a trivial programming misstake...
It does seem that NASA and friends does this kind of thing often. I don't think any other agency of any size, anywhere, could do it better though.
Many of the good points made in the current discussion were already made in the above referenced discussion.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
I love when science sounds sexual!
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Not to mention this little gem of incomprehensibility:
latitude and longitude do not stay fixed with relation to the sun.
Latitude and longitude are relative to the planet's surface, genius. If you mean heliocentric latitude/longitude, that's because the planet is ORBITING. That phrase looks almost like some of Gene Ray's stuff.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
Missdesigned sensor ???
This is BS, I design stuff all the time, thats not
a design issue, its so simple, they just didnt
test it!!!
Its a quality assurance issue. And if you dig deeper, not even quality processs issue, but a general
oranization philosophy problem.
This is just another victim to the quick, dirty and cheap....
I see that all the time in software.
Anyway, I cant believe this, they just didnt make an integrated test of the stupid thing.
Just a kick was all what was reuired to test that.
Just like the mars lander, a simple simulation of the whole
flight could have prevented its destruction.
How many failures will it take to learn the reality ->
"Quick and dirty" is an oxymoron!
At least the scientists feel like they are able to get some results from the canister.
A few years ago, a student-run satellite was launched, but it failed within a few days after its batteries were totally drained. It turns out the sun sensor they used to orient the solar panels was wired backwards. Instead of turning toward the sun, they were turned away from the sun - oops - no more power!
The end result - they got absolutely nothing!!
It really must suck to build this very intricate, detail project, and have it work successfuly up until the very end and then find out that it failed because some part was placed upside-down. I mean, of all the things that you could really screw up on this, it seems like it was almost completely destroyed over the simplest mistake. It must make the designer feel, "If only I could go back and change one thing..."
SIGFAULT
This is totally different. The Mars Climate Orbiter failed because of an issue converting between lb and N. This is an issue converting between cm and -cm.
He who reflects on another man`s want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself --Julius Caesar, per Plutarch
I'd say this one is bigger than the Hubble space telescope mirror debacle because any nitwit could have noticed the problem and fixed it.
Yeah I remember way back in 1993? When I was a stupid kid and couldn't get my computer to work because I plugged in my ide cable backwards. Good thing they fixed that problem right? I also remember sending a SCSI external hard drive back for RMA because I tried plugging it into the parallel port. I mean hey, they both have 25 pin connectors!
Really, all these "mistakes"? Occams razor might say, yes, just a series of coincidental major oversights and general buffoonery, but another razor viewpoint might be *sabotage*, make it look accidental, and have as the target result the accumulation of failures leading to NASA going away to any signifigance.
OK, given that, who stands to gain the most from sabotage?
Best guess then would be the military, and get "space" regulated to pure blackops, pure "classified" nature except at the public joke level.
yes, I know, pure speculation, it's just...man! That's a LOT of screwups! I *still* am smelling rats now, herds of them.
and thought the solution was to reverse the polarity.
Disclaimer: I worked at JPL 10 year ago. I everyone I worked with was extremely bright and professional.
The culture at NASA has changed because of decisions made by the feds. It used to be that all mangagement and most of the work was in house. Subcontractors were used, but it was all central management. Now they are required to spread the work around as much as possible. Effectivly they now integrate stuff done by other organizations. This leaves them much more open to this kind of error. The same kind of communications error caused that mars misson to miss it's target. It is also similar to the problems with the Hubble mirror. There are costs associated with farming out the work, and this is one of them. It was never the choice of anyone inside NASA to decentralize this way, it was a political decison made by the feds.
that when this thing crashed all you heard about was how a NASA space probe crashed. Had it worked perfectly it would have been identified as being from JPL.
I wish they had spent that the $250 million on building schools and other social programs instead of blowing it up on an experiment to collect solar dust!
It was the right way up when we built it!
the original designers of the Hubble Space Telescope optics, must have transferred some technology to Lockheed Martin...
Oh well, what the hell...
NASA is their night job. Their real work
is with the Bush "Star Wars" anti-ballistic
missile program. (Feel better now?)
There is only the matrix.
Because God didn't wan't the probe to poke his adobe :-)
I know NASA has a system safety department. Their purpose is to review designs for instances of Murphy's Law. I don't know if they make a review their specifications. Sounds like they should.
No, but he was integral to it's creation.
Play Command HQ online
The procedures have evolved over the years as follows:
There's a fire in the left engine and you have to shut it down in a hurry. So you yell LEFT. You thump the LEFT side of your head. You wave your LEFT arm. Pilot and co-pilot both.
Even so, there have been times when the left engine was on fire and they shut down the right one.
..and it was the first probe to successfully test the Interplanetary Superhighway.
I thought Al Gore invented that..
Seriously could a craft with approx the propellant/mass of SMART-1 use this to get to Mars or beyond? I have often though that large groups of cheap identical probes $100 mil like SMART-1 sent by ion propulsion is a much more effective/interesting model for space exploration..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I remember trying to put plastic containers in a field to use as markers for trees (long story) and after about 2 years had to be replaced as they had decomposed
1) Some plastics are designed to decompose.
2) Most plastics that aren't designed to decompose... don't. Instead they undergo weathering by the elements and 'vanish' as they are ground down by sun, wind, rain, and snow into plastic dust which then remains in the environment for hundreds/thousands of years. This is a worldwide problem.
This flies against all the enviromentalists saying they will stay here forever
It flies against nothing. Just because something is too small for you to see does not mean that it is 'gone'. Weathering does not equal decomposition. Choice quote from the BBC article: "...this study suggests that practically everything really is made of plastic these days - even the oceans."
Most plastics don't decompose through some selfcontained process, actively. They are decomposed by other elements in their immediate chemical environment. There's a big difference, chemical and energetic, between the environment in a field and that in a landfill. Sunlight is a major decomposer of plastic, as is oxidation in air, and all of this can be amplified mechanically by wind and dust, ice crystals, and other erosion. In a landfill lots of these plastics will last for generations or centuries. And lots that don't decompose into toxic solvents and resins, as well as further products. This stuff is bad to be generating wastefully for disposal. All those processes are natural, but humans don't need to be filter. Dying for 5 years from cancer is natural, too.
--
make install -not war
Y'know, here in Oz we're about to lose our national telecomunications carrier, Telstra, into private hands. Telstra has a long history of obstinant behaviour and generally pissing people off. And I suspect that this is because the government has mandadted to the Telstra chiefs (who, or the time being, technically still work for the government) to mismanage Telstra as much as possible so that when the do sell it they can say "See? We told you Tesltra would function better in private hands!".
I wonder if NASA is suffering a similar problem, i.e. being starved of funds to prevent them from being an effective compeditor to future commercial space operations.
Maybe Im just paranoid.
No more radioactive waste.
I think disposing of radioactive waste off-planet is dumb! We made it here - and getting rid of it elsewhere will hurt us in the long run. Let's stop running from our problems, people! It seems silly that we're re-enacting Old Testament outcasting upon the 'sinful' radioactive material when we were the one's that 'led it down the path of sin' in the first place! Grow up! Stop Listening to your Science Priests! Four Cornered Time Cube Law is God!
....and don't take this post too seriously.....
.
-shpoffo
....and don't take this post too seriously.....
Glad you included that part. You saved me 15 minutes of typing about how it couldn't possibly hurt us in the long run...
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Its not a word. Sorry.. its not. Some dictionaries say it is.. but its not. Sorry Acceleration is defined as the change in velocity. The definition does not imply a positive or negative change. Just "a change". So you can have both positive and negative acceleration. Deceleration is a word made up by people who have to take Physics 101 two or three times because they can't comprehend a simple definition... so they relabel acceleration as a positive change in velocity so they can have their precious deceleration. Sorry.. not a word. Learn english or stop speaking it. Sorry.. not a word.
Thanks. I first thought of using a rocket sled, then realized the g-force profile would not be a good match. Other ground-based g-tests seemed unlikely. My brain then went to "shuttle" without thinking "sounding rocket" or something like that.
Of course, a careful review of the design is cheapest.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Bring it bitches. I've already got one loon-a-whack trolling my JEs, I welcome more. I'll take this opportunity to tell you what a bunch of sad and pathetic pieces of shit you are. You're not funny. You're not creative. You're not black. You're not gay. You ARE a bunch of pathetic pimplyassed teenaged boys who beat off in your parents basements appraently to pictures of women with shit on their faces. As soon as I saw you fucks pop up on Slashdot I knew that the AOL crowd was truly well seated in Slashdot. Anything and everything good that USED to be Slashdot was finally lowered down to a ridiculously retarded level by your rude and inane posts. here is what I stand for these days:
Gassing the REAL fucks behind the stupidassed GNAA troll posts. The REAL fucks aren't black. The REAL fucks aren't gay. Pull your hands out of your lube vats for a few minutes and wake up to the fact that you are pointless and worthless.
So come on... have a field day in my JEs. If you don't take me up on my request, I win all of your gold and you you must cease and desist.
Un-news