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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.
For what it's worth, sometimes failure requires failure... At a lecture in Space Studies on the Russian moon program, I learned that one reason we beat them was that their best test pilot was in an early Soyuz capsule and it wouldn't stop rotating, so he spent his entire flight cursing the engineers. But they got their revenge - the parachutes were installed upside down and did a cigarette roll right into the ground.
Of course, another reason we beat them is that the guy in charge of the moon program over there had been in the gulags and was therefore quite paranoid - he refused to put any of the mission plans on paper but kept them all in his head. They died with him during what would have been a routine hemorrhoid surgery by their equivalent of the surgeon general. He realized he was in trouble and called in a better surgeon, who took one look and walked out, saying "I don't operate on dead men."