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.

Comments

There is a bright side

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:There is a bright side

[plover]

We could go to stay.

Well, you can, anyway. "Batman, off the island!"

Re:There is a bright side

[djtripp]

But what has it told us about the Vogon's and Interstellar Bypasses?

Re:There is a bright side

[bsd4me]

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.

If anyone is interested, I believe this is also known as a soft orbit transfer. IIRC, this technique was inveneted to rescue a mission that had suffered a pretty catastrophic failure.

Re:There is a bright side

[DigitalRaptor]

In conjunction with a Space Elevator this would be a great way to get rid of our radioactive waste.

Fill a large container with radioactive waste, send it up the elevator, tow / launch it to the nearest lagrange point, and send it down the superhighway.

When it gets to it's exit, thrusters fire and it flies directly into the sun. No more radioactive waste.

Re:There is a bright side

[schon]

Now that we know the IPSHwy works, we have the capability to launch cargo ANYWHERE in the solar system.

So now when I travel, instead of the airline sending my luggage to another city, it can end up anywhere in the *solar system*. Yeah, that's just what we need!

Re:There is a bright side

[Martin Blank]

[green]We've polluted the Earth enough, and now you want to pollute the sun?! When will you evil Republicans stop destroying nature?![/green]

Re:There is a bright side

[Catbeller]

Always with the sun. What did the sun ever do to you?

Seriously, a solar or even a high earth orbit is fine for storing waste indefintely. Don't need to waste delta vee directing it into a star. Stuff is heavy.

Re:There is a bright side

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

besides, we might find a use for it someday. Radioisotopes don't grow on trees...

Re:There is a bright side

[AuMatar]

No, bad idea! Have you never seen Superman III? It'll become an evil super-villain.

Re:There is a bright side

[Technonotice_Dom]

So now when I travel, instead of the airline sending my luggage to another city, it can end up anywhere in the *solar system*. Yeah, that's just what we need!

"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." - Mark Russell

Re:There is a bright side

[Gentlewhisper]

[green]We've polluted the Earth enough, and now you want to pollute the sun?! When will you evil Republicans stop destroying nature?![/green]

Hey, look on the bright side! At least the Sun doesn't supernova so soon now, with all the junk we are chucking in!

Re:There is a bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, we worked hard to create all that nuclear waste. Don't just go throwing it away now!

Re:There is a bright side

[Shadow Wrought]

I know you're joking but in college (COLLEGE!) I had arguments with folks along those lines. They thought it was idiocy to destroy the Sun with our nuclear waste since we depended on the Sun for our lives. Explaining things like size, heat, and other such things went completely over their heads

I wonder though if that technique of solidly encasing nuclear waste posted not to long ago might work as a means of jettisoning waste into the Sun?

Re:There is a bright side

[Physics Dude]

Why not use our radioactive waste to generate electricity? Duh.

That would be too obvious of a solution. :) Seriously, it would seem like a pretty big waste to jetison it into the sun. It has such valuable uses for food sterilization (irradiation) or even to prevent cancer (checkout the results of research on the Taiwan radioactive housing incident). Like anything else powerful, it just needs to be used carefully. We really need to abolish LNT before good progress can be made though.

Re:There is a bright side

[red floyd]

Radioisotopes don't grow on trees..

What about Carbon-14?

Re:There is a bright side

[IamGarageGuy 2]

As an anti-enviromentalist (movement not concept), I don't beieve this is the right apporach. I believe that what comes from the earth should return there. The idea of taking stuff from here and transporting it to somewhere off planet is messing with the balance. 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. This flies against all the enviromentalists saying they will stay here forever. What comes from mother nature will be returned there soon enough with or without our help. Nature will find a way and if you think you have control over that that you are sadly mistaken. - Caution - poster has been drinking heavily.

Re:There is a bright side

[AKAImBatman]

There may be an Interplanetary Superhighway some day like in A.C. Clarke's books, but NASA won't be around to make it happen.

Amazing. Did you read my post? The Interplanetary Superhighway is a fact of nature, not a man-made construction.

Re:There is a bright side

[SEWilco]

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.

I'd prefer we get to the interstellar gravitational-thermal equivalence zones and travel via Alderson jump points.

Re:There is a bright side

[uberdave]

Where do you think we got it from in the first place?

Re:There is a bright side

[garroo]

Newer plastics are designed to decompose after a short (relatively) period of time, when exposed to the environment.

The problem of course, rears it's ugly head when the plastics are buried under 75,000 tonnes of refuse and zero air and water get in/on to it. Like so many other things, they sit there and remain intact, future evidence for archaeologists studying our society.

Re:There is a bright side

[caseih]

Yeah it is idiocy. But rather than remove the waste from earth (thereby depleting earth's resources) we should find a way to get it down back into the core where it will be recycled. I mean where do they think we get radioactive minerals from in the first place.

Re:There is a bright side

[NarrMaster]

That was Superman VI. Superman III was the one with the bank scam from Office Space.

Re:There is a bright side

[AuMatar]

I bow to your superior knowledge of crappy 80s movies :)

Re:There is a bright side

[jovlinger]

ok,
do you know how hard it is to fall into the sun?

consider that the earth travels 18*pi lightseconds / year along its orbit, that is HELL of a lot of tangential velocity you need to kill before you can fly directly into the sun.

else you just narrowly miss, and get a wildly eliptic orbit that will be slingshotted by mercury or venus in a few years.

Re:There is a bright side

[DigitalRaptor]

Miss the sun!?!?

Do you realize how massive the sun is, and how powerful it's gravitation pull is?

You'll either miss it by a LONG shot, or get sucked right in. There will be NO narrow misses here.

It's not like these containers would be travelling at the speed of an asteroid or comet. They'd be moving very slowly (comparitively), and if they get even remotely close the sun will pull them right in.

Besides, in case you forgot, the sun isn't a moving target. Yes, the earth is moving. But that can be used to our advantage. And small course corrections early on will set the waste right on track for the sun.

If there is an accident, like a leak, no big loss. Space is full of radiation anyway. Our addition would be far less than the proverbial drop in the bucket.

Re:There is a bright side

[jovlinger]

I dunno. It's not like you can just be hanging out in orbit around the earth and drop a rock: it'd stay in orbit around the earth.

So say you're floating opposite the earth in its orbit. Now if you drop the rock it'll just orbit the sun.

In order for it to actually "fall", you have to give it a negative push of 16pi lightseconds / year ... which is .... 475 m/s.

oh. wait: we're not 8 light seconds away from the sun, but 8.3 light minutes (500 ls)

That gives you an orbital velocity of 30000 m/s. That's not insignificant.

For example, the space shuttle does not have enough fuel to break earth orbit, much less slow down enough to fall into the sun.

Re:There is a bright side

[DigitalRaptor]

We're a creative species. I'm absolutely certain we could come up with something that would work.

It seems ...

[Sonic McTails]

... that human error can happen even in the most expensive projects.

Re:It seems ...

[kfg]

... that human error can happen even in the most expensive projects.

Because no matter how much money you spend you can't buy perfect humans, and to err is human.

To correct error is engineering.

Once upon a time some 'wires' in my brain got crossed and I actually picked up a hot soldering iron from the wrong end. Have you ever had that experience where you realize you're about to do something terribly, terribly wrong, but the impulse has already been sent and you can't stop it?

I hate when that happens.

But I only did that once. Pain is a great teacher. One might almost come to the conclusion that that's what it's there for.

So the next probe will have the sensor absolutely correct and working. They'll have to come up with brand new ways to mess things up.

Just like I do.

KFG

Re:It seems ...

[c_oflynn]

Man, you are wasting your talent here on Slashdot. With such super-sleuthing abilities, no mystery would be too great for you!

Re:It seems ...

[lukewarmfusion]

Have you ever made a mistake that hurt so much you knew you'd never make that mistake again? And when it came around next time, you made so much effort to not make that mistake that you ended up making a completely different mistake?

Mistakes happen, as you say. As is commonly accepted my many software developers, software has bugs.

The parent notes that mistakes happen in even the most expensive projects. I think it's more likely to happen in complex (and therefore expensive) projects.

Re:It seems ...

[xSauronx]

thats not insightful...human error is always going to happen. it just *sucks* more in expensive projects.

I wonder if the sensor-installer guy got fired....maybe it was Homer.

Nasa Guy: Homer, you installed the parachute sensor backwards and the probe crashed!

Homer: D'oh!

Re:It seems ...

[Eric S. Smith]

I wonder if the sensor-installer guy got fired....

I hope not. As the article says, the board was Broken As Designed -- the sensor was installed exactly as specified, but the specification was wrong.

Re:It seems ...

[SnapShot]

"I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit, I always do that, I always mess up some mundane detail."

- Michael Bolton

Re:It seems ...

[Haxwell]

If I had mop points, the parent would be +5 Funny..

Re:It seems ...

[Martin Blank]

Have you ever had that experience where you realize you're about to do something terribly, terribly wrong, but the impulse has already been sent and you can't stop it?

Yeah. Every time I go to Slashdot.

Re:It seems ...

[RangerRick98]

If I had mop points, it would be +5 Squeaky Clean :)

Re:It seems ...

[Izmunuti]

"But, but it was just a sign error!"

Brings back memories of college with me whining to a professor about getting some points back on a test because of a stupid sign error. He wouldn't budge. Wise man, that professor.

This stuff is EXPECTED

[Amsterdam Vallon]

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.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[turbotalon]

Yes, sucess requires failures, but not of this kind!! Imagine if in the early days of cars they had spent millions of dollars researching and designing the latest carburator, then installed it BACKWARD.

We expect failures like "Hmm we didn't know there would be THAT much particulate matter in space, look at all those holes!", not "oops, got that backwards!!" or, "oops, forgot to convert to metric!"

"It's always the little things that get me, I always get a fscking decimal point wrong or something!" --Michael, Office Space

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[pclminion]

Research REQUIRES failure. SUCESS requires failure.

This is very true, but this type of failure should be deemed unacceptable by any reasonable person. This is the NASA equivalent of accidentally filling your car with diesel instead of gasoline. Or doing an 'rm -rf *' in your home directory. It's completely boneheaded and shouldn't be accepted by anyone.

I'm not a mean guy, and I don't hope that anyone at NASA loses their job over this, but I think a little bit of preventive ridicule is in order. I earned myself some nasty comments when I deleted a bunch of important (but thankfully, backed up) data with a braindead command, and I think I'm the better for it now.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[RobertB-DC]

Yes, sucess requires failures, but not of this kind!! Imagine if in the early days of cars they had spent millions of dollars researching and designing the latest carburator, then installed it BACKWARD.

The carburator wouldn't work, it would be removed and replaced, and nobody would think anything untoward had happened.

The problem here is that there's no way to test something like this on, say, a half-dozen demo models before it goes out the door. Every single thing has to work right the first time, without ever going through a full test of all systems. The Mars lander, for example -- we'd have known that the legs bounce hard if we'd landed one before, but guess what? We only got one chance!

Considering this unique design parameter -- make it work without the ability to do a full-scale test -- I think NASA's done a heckuva job.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[hondo77]

This is the NASA equivalent of accidentally filling your car with diesel instead of gasoline.

I did that to a tractor once. Hey, nobody told me it was the one gas-powered tractor on the farm.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[nwbvt]

Failures, not complete fuckups. Failures are when some new technology doesn't work as expected during testing. Complete fuckups are when some drunken idiot designs it wrong and it crashes during the actual mission, costing millions of dollars and years of research. There is a difference between the two.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[jafac]

A failure is a waste, if it's a repeat of a previous failure. . . if we learned nothing from the previous failure.

Bad engineering processes should have been removed from the satellite/space-probe industry back in the 1950's. What we probably learned from this debacle is that in attempting to streamline the engineering processes with the "Better Cheaper Faster" mantra, we handed it all over to accountants and spreadsheet jockeys - and now THEY'RE the ones re-learning the lessons so expensively learned by failures of the 1950's and 1960's.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[Offtopic]

This stuff is expected only from the incompetent. This almost exactly mirrors the origin or Murphy's law. There is no progress in failing to learn the same lesson over and over again!

http://makeashorterlink.com/?T57746A89

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[theCoder]

Not quite 'rm -rf *', but I once tried to delete all the "dot" files in a directory. I learned very quickly that 'rm -rf .*' was NOT the right way to do that.

For the uninitiated, both '.' and '..' match '.*', so I deleted all the files in the current directory and below, and all the files and directories in the parent directory. Fortunately, I stopped it before too much damage was done (it's always bad when an 'rm' command seems to take longer than it should) and there wasn't really important in what was deleted, but that's a mistake I won't do twice :)

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[uberdave]

So... What is the correct way of doing this?

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[tftp]

The problem here is that there's no way to test something like this

It is trivial to do 30G. You don't even have to drop the thing. If you can't rent a centrifuge, build one - it will cost peanuts in a project of this scope. And with that controlled acceleration you can test, non-destructively, all you want.

What was missing there is the will to do things right.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[tftp]

he refused to put any of the mission plans on paper but kept them all in his head

That's a fairy tale. Besides, who could possibly keep "in his head" millions of highly detailed and constantly changing drawings?

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[tftp]

Use Konqueror and delete the files into trash.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[ari_j]

I'm trying to figure out why it's been moderated flamebait and not either funny, overrated, or even troll, any of which would have been more accurate. :P

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[fucksl4shd0t]

That's funny, I've used that exact same command and never had any problems with it. Oh yeah, I don't use that exact same command. I do "rm -f .*", and then delete the directories (if any) with more specific commands, like "rm -rf .a*".

Interestingly, I only do that because I'm a bit concerned anytime I use -Rf, so I make sure the file arguments are explicit enough that it doesn't get anything unintended. Sooner or later I'll screw it up, but I haven't yet.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[raduf]

Most types of errors are manageable in a large project, in the sense that you can design the process around them and try to prevent them. What is much more difficult is to prevent exactly this kind of stupid mistakes, for the very reason that nobody would think thay can be made.

Now why they happen so often in space projects and the like? Because the sheer size of the project. When filling 10000 tanks, one or two get filled with diesel instead of gasoline by mistake. Same with these projects, magnified by the fact that you have 10000 completely differen simple/obvious operations to do. And like i said, managers are helpless against them because you can't even guess where bad luck/stupidity is going to strike this time.

The big problem comes from the high cost of putting mass in orbit, which means low redundacy and reliance on smart design, which makes the perfect conditions for a stupid mistake like this to ruin the whole thing. It's not their _fault_, it's just the rules of the game. They weren't good enough this time...

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[lachlan76]

I've done this kind of thing once, but did /* instead of .*. (I'm was a teenager, and at that point had just been rejected for the first time, don't put too much blame on me for a typo).

And guess which two directories got deleted first?

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[kbrannen]

Why do you need a centrifuge to test this, though I thought about that too when I first RTA. A small launching inside a cargo plane would allow them to test hitting the atmosphere, the 30Gs, the deceleration back down, and the finally the landing. I would imagine it would have been close enough to be like the real thing they'd have found this problem. And, yeh, the cost of something like that in the overall program would be trivial.

Simulations are great, but real tests are required when it comes to hardware.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[tftp]

Yes, this is possible. A rocket can get to 30G, and you don't need it to arrive anywhere - simply detach the unit under test after you are done, and it will descend on a parachute.

Still, a centrifuge would be cheaper, and you can rent time on them already. Common centrifuges used for training of military pilots are designed to about 20G (since getting past that point would surely kill the trainee). Centrifuges for experimental work, like this one can do up to 75G.

Added convenience of a centrifuge is that you do your experiments on the ground, surrounded by your test equipment, power sources, and whatever else you need. Compare that to a drop test where you have to build a completely standalone package.

So the designers of that Genesis probe only had to call UC Davis and arrange for some test time. That's what they haven't done, and that's what ultimately caused the failure.

Re:This stuff is EXPECTED

[pclminion]

That's funny, I've used that exact same command and never had any problems with it.

Modern UNIX-type systems like Linux have more up-to-date tools that prevent you from making this mistake :-) The shell pattern .* no longer matches "." and ".." for this exact reason.

Well it turned out to be a win win situation ...

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

The scientists got their samples and the public got a cool crash video

To err is human...

[freeze128]

But it takes a rocket scientist to really screw things up.

Obligatory bugs bunny quote

[TykeClone]

They had the silly thing in reverse.

Re:Obligatory bugs bunny quote

[MrCreosote]

Actually, they had too much gas in it. They should have arranged it so that it ran out of gas just before it hit the ground.

Yeah

[bsd4me]

I read the same story here earlier today, and it also says that it was installed backwards.

Re:wtf

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Nice. But it's all good anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :).

I was trying for comedy

[Anonymous Coward]

...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?"

Re:I was trying for comedy

[AKAImBatman]

...and make some sort of Genesis joke but there just isn't anything funny at all about the damn group.

KHAAAAANNNNN!!!!

Re:I was trying for comedy

[fucksl4shd0t]

...and make some sort of Genesis joke but there just isn't anything funny at all about the damn group.

Not even a "the probe failed because it couldn't dance"? Nothing about "Ronald Reagen pushed the wrong button"?

Oh, you were trying to take a potshot at genesis at the same time. How about "The probe would have worked if Phil collins hadn't built it"?

Better yet, "Obviously the probe's problem was that the drummer stopped drumming and started singing. That's when they should've known it was all going downhill"

Aaaa, you're right, there's nothing funny about the group. But designing a switch backwards is funnier than hell. :)

Re:wtf

[twiddlingbits]

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 ;)

Enough!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't we had enough stories about sensorship today?

Re:Enough!

[theCoder]

Yes, but this is about sensorship that didn't work!

Re:wtf

[yohan1701]

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.

Crappy article really first they said there where installed incorrectly then they said no the where designed backwards

no such thing as...

[OneOver137]

'deceleration' Just acceleration in some direction. If it's opposite of what you define as positive, it's negative.

Re:no such thing as...

[cephyn]

indeed. but its much more elegant to call it a "deceleration sensor" than an "acceleration in the opposite direction of current velocity sensor".

Come on! Practicality people!

Re:no such thing as...

[dartboard]

This isn't a trick question on your high school physics quiz. Just because the term deceleration is not preferred because it is ambiguous does not mean that it doesn't exist. Maybe it's *acceleration* that doesn't exist!

From Dictionary.com:

3 entries found for deceleration.
decelerate Audio pronunciation of "deceleration" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-sl-rt)
v. decelerated, decelerating, decelerates
v. tr.

1. To decrease the velocity of.
2. To slow down the rate of advancement of: measures intended to decelerate the arms buildup.

v. intr.

To decrease in velocity.

Re:no such thing as...

[cdrudge]

Others would disagree.

Re:no such thing as...

[OneOver137]

yes, and it's called an accelerometer. Short and to the point.

Re:no such thing as...

[CmdrTostado]

you probably also suggest that there is...

no such thing as cold, just the absence of heat
no such thing as dark, just the absence of light

guess what?
we english speaking humans have decided to call
and the absence of heat, 'cold'
the absence of light, 'dark'
and negative acceleration, 'deceleration'

You can look up what we call things here
;-)

Re:no such thing as...

[dartboard]

Yep, Dictionary.com agrees that velocity is a vector quantity. So what?

velocity Audio pronunciation of "Velocity" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (v-ls-t)
n. pl. velocities

1. Rapidity or speed of motion; swiftness.
2. Physics. A vector quantity whose magnitude is a body's speed and whose direction is the body's direction of motion.
3.
1. The rate of speed of action or occurrence.
2. The rate at which money changes hands in an economy.

Re:no such thing as...

[arose]

Ungood.

Re:no such thing as...

[pclminion]

The problem with the dictionary definition is that it assumed the existence of absolute velocity. But we know that isn't true. You know, relativity.

I mean, look at the definition:

1. To decrease the velocity of.

This is meaningless. Decreased with respect to what? I can select a reference frame where the velocity has increased, not decreased! This "definition" is bogus. A forgiveable error, seeing as the dictionary authors are not physicists, but still an error.

The real, physical definition of acceleration is a CHANGE in velocity. An increase or a decrease. Change is universal. Change can be measured in any reference frame. In some frames, the change is negative, while in others it is positive. No matter which, it is always called acceleration.

Nobody is disputing the usefulness of the term "decelerate," but the OP was quite correct that there is absolutely no distinction between the two.

Re:no such thing as...

[scribblej]

Impressive... has that ever gotten you out of a speeding ticket?

Re:no such thing as...

[Gil-galad55]

Granted, I'm drunk as a I post this, but I'm pretty sure I'm still a relativist...

In the inertial reference frame of the object, decelerate and accelerate do indeed have separate meanings... one creates a positive delta-V, the other negative... I'm quite sure of the difference between the two in my own reference frame. Just because velocity is not an absolute doesn't mean that is has no meaning.

Re:no such thing as...

[pclminion]

In the inertial reference frame of the object, decelerate and accelerate do indeed have separate meanings...

There is no such thing as the "inertial reference frame" of an accelerating object.

Upside Down?

[grunt107]

You'd think the siseneG would have been a tip off!

Re:Mirror?

[ottergoose]

Genesis crash linked to upside-down design
17:18 15 October 04
NewScientist.com news service


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. The design flaw is the prime suspect for why the capsule, carrying precious solar wind ions, crashed in Utah on 8 September, according to a NASA investigation board.

The sensors were a key element in a domino-like series of events designed to release the parachutes. When the capsule - which blazed into the atmosphere at 11 kilometres per second - decelerated by three times the force of gravity (3 Gs), the sensors should have made contact with a spring.

"It's like smashing on the brakes in your car - you feel yourself being pushed forward," says NASA spokesperson Don Savage.

The contact should have continued as the capsule peaked at a deceleration of about 30 Gs. Then, when the capsule's deceleration fell back through 3 Gs, the contact would have been broken, starting a timer that signalled the first parachute to release.

"But it never made the initial contact because it was backwards," Savage told New Scientist.

Wrong orientation

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.

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."

So far, Savage says, the design flaw does not seem to be shared by NASA's Stardust mission, which will use a similar parachute system to deliver samples of a comet to Earth in January 2006.

The $264 million Genesis mission launched in August 2001 to study the composition of the early Solar System, which is thought to be reflected in the solar wind.

Blame game...

[Jonah Hex]

But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin

So what kind of trouble is LM going to get into over this one, like most big money contracts I'm sure there is some kind of penalty for such a screwup. I'm not talking about firing the engineer or some Q&A folks, I'm talking about money returned to NASA.

Jonah Hex

Re:Blame game...

[Ancil]

like most big money contracts I'm sure there is some kind of penalty for such a screwup.

You've never worked for government, have you?

Re:Blame game...

[Tablizer]

So what kind of trouble is LM going to get into over this one,

Sentence somebody to dislexia school.

".ssob ,em ot enif skooL"

Re:Blame game...

[shotfeel]

I believe the punishment is that they have to pad their next bill to NASA so they can pay for more design testing.

Re:Blame game...

[Incoming9000]

This is what you get when you outsource...

Re:Blame game...

[LadyLucky]

Q&A?

Question and Answer folks?

Perhaps QA.

?

read the article first dude.

[Anonymous Luddite]

From the article:

But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland. /SNIP

also:

"They still have to find out why that design error was not caught," says Savage.

Why does Lockheed Martin continue to get NASA work

[handorf]

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?

RTFA

[KingFatty]

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."

OT: your sig

[Abm0raz]

Piper did say that quote, but only when nhe was being managed by the man who coined the phrase: Bobby "the Brain" Heenan

-Ab

Re:OT: your sig

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

I remember Piper saying that on either Piper's Pit or the TNT show. Thanks for the info, I correct it

Re:OT: your sig

[Frizzle Fry]

If you're correcting anyway, you should definitely add some sort of punctuation before "but". I had trouble parsing it this way, and that is where some sort of pause belongs to set up the "punchline".

Ass-umptions

[Mark of THE CITY]

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.

Re:Ass-umptions

[Detritus]

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?

That would be complex and expensive. How are you going to deorbit it? Design, test and install a retro-rocket package? Anything that goes on board the Shuttle as payload has to pass a stringent design and safety review, which would probably require the payload to be redesigned. A deployment mechanism has to be designed, tested and installed. Procedures have to be written for the astronauts, and they have to be trained for them. The deployment has to be added to the mission plan.

Where is the money going to come from to do all this stuff? Contrary to popular belief, money doesn't grow on trees at NASA. Years ago, before the spacecraft was built, someone had to write a proposal, with a detailed budget and schedule, that covered every phase of the program. Engineering is the art of balancing cost and risk. If the total project cost is too high, your proposal gets rejected. If the science return per dollar spent is too low, your proposal gets rejected. Even if your proposal is approved, major cost overruns will probably result in its cancellation. If external circumstances cause your budget to be cut, you either figure out a way to do more with less, accepting more risks, or you cancel the project.

IN SOVIET....

[Scythr0x0rs]

IN SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM
Trained monkey deploy the parachute.

Re:IN SOVIET....

[Kehvarl]

don't you mean:
IN SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM...
parachute deploys trained monkey!

?

sensor was designed upside down

[Scrameustache]

Damn Australian scientists!
;-)

Re:sensor was designed upside down

[Tablizer]

Damn Australian scientists!

Do their shuttle toilets flush in reverse also?

"I keep going in and making a movement, but I feel even more constipated each time. Something's wrong, Houston."

Hmm

[rnelsonee]

From the article:
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!

Re:wtf

[rusty0101]

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

Re:wtf

[Tenebrious1]

They installed the switch backwards.

Then, shouldn't the switch have been triggered by *acceleration* and fired the chute right after takeoff?

References

[handorf]

Lest I get a bunch of "What are you talking about?" responses:

For them dropping the NOAA sat:
http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonda y_0410 11.html
(first link I found)

Climate Orbiter:
http://www.space.com/news/mco_report-b_9 91110.html

Re:References

[RollingThunder]

A great one for the NOAA sat is here:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=102 99

This one has the pictures that are enough to make anyone wince and shake their head sadly.

Re:References

[handorf]

Nice... thanks for the pictures... I hadn't gotten to see how truly beautiful this screw-up was.

Re:References

[hazem]

Clearly, that catipult did not do a very good job of getting the darn thing into orbit. Maybe they should give it a longer arm?

Re:References

[fucksl4shd0t]

If my kids weren't sleeping, I'd be laughing loud enough for them to hear me in San Antone.

I can even see where the bolts were missing. :) I can just picture some long-haired stoner with a ratchet giggling his nuts off while he's taking the bolts out. "They'll never figure this out. Heee heee! They won't even check! Heeee Heeeee! Put snakes in my cup, will they, hahahahahahahahaha"

That one has practical joke written all over it. :) And those two guys in the white suits with the shower caps, they're looking at it like "I told you to check the bolts." "I thought you said you had checked the bolts."

Murphy's Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Murphy's Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the problem this time was that the design didn't allow for the part to be installed correctly. :)

Better than breaks on takeoff?

[matman]

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. :)

Re:Better than breaks on takeoff?

[bleckywelcky]

As with almost all (if not all) satellites, probes, etc - they are turned off during the launch and are not turned on until after the launch has completed.

Murphy's Law, Long Version?

[Benanov]

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

Re:wtf

[Mad Martigan]

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?

Re:wtf

[rusty0101]

backbiters, yes, I should have read the article myself.

Alphaware ...

[dragondm]

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-

Re:Alphaware ...

[Spy Handler]

I've read most of the articles on Jerry Pournelle's website and the picture I get is that NASA exists to increase funding for itself and hire more and more NASA people. All other goals are secondary.

A more efficient, cheaper design that requires less employees runs counter to that goal.

Just look at the comments about NASA said by some of the giants in the aerospace industry. Burt Rutan for starters...

Re:Alphaware ...

[wass]

Re-usable modules anybody?? Heard of those? Standard designs?

I hate to tell you this, but NASA HAS been using proven parts in spacecraft, there is a strong push for COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) Hardware, it's much cheaper than designing every op-amp from scratch. But this COTS stuff has to be beyond military spec, it has to be rad-hard, withstand severe thermal and vibrational stresses, etc. It's easy to make a reusable op-amp or logic gate in a desktop computer, but for a satellite they have to be MUCH more rugged.

Regarding this accelerometer, not sure why it had to be different, but like I said before, it definitely needed to be rad-hard, endure strong vibrational and thermal extremes, and still function flawlessly upon re-entry. That's not easy to design, and there are 100000000 things to go wrong, one of which is that it's installed backward.

Now as to the reason they don't re-use spacecraft designs is that every craft has different operating parameters. Some are very far from Sun and Earth, and need higher-gain antennas (ie, parabolic dishes that can retract) and RTG's (solar panels become inefficient beyond Jupiter). Some operate close to Earth orbit and use solar panels and smaller antennas. Some will never re-enter earth, some will burn up on re-entry when their use is finished, and some need to survive re-entry intact. Some craft close to the sun (eg SOHO) need special rad-hard thermally-shielding designs. The inclusion or exclusion of each of these items will drastically change the structure of the craft.

So basically, each mission is so different that it's very unfeasible to come up with a reusable 'strawman' design from which to start all NASA craft. And this is just considering operating environment, power, and communications. That's not even including the scientific instruments, all of which need specialized heating or cooling or shielding or vibrational-isolation requirements, etc.

Re:Alphaware ...

[Waffle Iron]

I seriously doubt it's "a weight, a spring and a switch". It's most likely a MEMS device like those used in airbag modules. Not NASA-designed, not even Lockheed-designed; simply purchased but used incorrectly.

They probably tried to save a few bucks by mail ordering the OEM version rather than the retail version. As a result, it's likely that the only documentation they got was a tiny slip of paper with a confusing international icon diagram and no text instructions whatsoever. It's not hard to see how that could result in a screwup.

Re:Alphaware ...

[Grym]

Which makes them bigger, and more expensive. And since you don't have NASA funded well enough to have a conveyor belt of parts running past a large number of experiments, and you're motivated to cut costs and keep each individual mission as small as possible, you get the current situation.

So what's your solution? Throw money on the problem until it goes away? Since when has that ever worked?

I'm sorry but NASA's recent string of screw-ups that have jeopardized safety and scientific goals do little to provide evidence that they should get MORE money to piss away.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the exploration and advancement of mankind into space. I just don't think it should be done or even CAN be done by the bureaucratic mess that is NASA post-1970s.

-Grym

Re:Alphaware ...

[Anonymous Coward]

*applaude*

So many people think things are as simple as changing your oil or replacing memory sticks in your computer. There are a lot of stresses out there that most people don't realize can occur, especially with temperature as you mentioned, even with pressure. Most probes just float around the earth, a few may have even gone back to colder places in the Solar System and never come back. Things are a LOT hotter around the sun: we're getting around 300K or 27C at Earth's orbit. The sun's surface is around 6000K, that's a lot of temperature to cover over 1AU. And the pressure increases very little, the volume may be tens of protons per square centimeter more than at Earth's orbit. You're putting a lot of thermal stress on that vehicle, still under vacuum, regardless what direction you sent it. You've got to design parts for that purpose. You can't go to Advanced Auto Parts and buy them off the shelf. If you could, I'd like to know. It would make building astronomical cameras a heck of a lot cheaper, and make my boss a lot happier.

Re:Alphaware ...

[jafac]

If a machine is broken, you find what's broken, (as an engineer, not as an ideology-driven politician), and you FIX it. If you truly care about the machine's functionality, you FIX it, you don't throw it out.

Turn an ideologue loose on NASA, and the end result will be an organization DESIGNED to fail, so it's dismantlement can be justified.

NASA is not, nor should it be, an expensive PR firm or penis-length enhancer for the USA. No matter how badly the current Administration wants it to be.

Every US Citizen, and most people in the world today, are FAR better served by a NASA with a more scientific goal.

Now - CORPORATIONS, yeah. That's the ticket. Let's blow away NASA, and turn over it's functions to private corporations. We'll have a space program that is like the Internet Explorer of space programs. They'll run a best-of-breed organization. Like Enron. Their operations will be safe. Like Ford Explorers in space. We'll be the envy of the world.

Re:Alphaware ...

[fishbowl]

"As others have said, every mission is different and has different requirements."

With all due respect, the OP has a valid point, and many of the problems start there, in the requirements phase of the project. The management people who do the requirements probably aren't thinking in terms of reuse or standardization as much as they could, and if the problem starts there,
it goes all the way through the project development.

Re:Alphaware ...

[fishbowl]

"That said, I would've thought testing would catch something as straightforward as this."

Apparently, it was tested, but the test was not directional. So this is a lesson to be learned about unit testing. Even if you are doing it, it's not a magic bullet.

Re:Alphaware ...

[Tokerat]

WhyTF do we need to redesign that (its a weight, a spring and a switch, fer the love of pete) ?!!

...well, see, last time we designed one, we accidentally designed it backwards...

;-)

Re:Alphaware ...

[MCZapf]

...the picture I get is that NASA exists to increase funding for itself and hire more and more NASA people. All other goals are secondary.

Is there an organization that is not like this?

Re:wtf

[Ford Prefect]

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...

Re:wtf

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Why?

[mbonig]

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.

Not expected... tolerated

[handorf]

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.

Re:Not expected... tolerated

[jpetts]

What did we learn? Um... accelerometers only work in one direction... if you install them backwards, things don't happen right!

Yes. But the real lesson here is that when you are designing something of this sort, don't design it so that it only works one way round. Make sure that it works in both directions, with the output only enabled for the correct direction...

Re:Not expected... tolerated

[pcmanjon]

The way that type of equipment works, it only works ONE way, the output would be messed up if it worked either way, you'd get conflicting input.

The real lesson learned is maybe it'd be smart to put a "THIS SIDE UP" with a large arrow pointing up.

Hey, kinda like those billion-dollar cardboard boxes!

Re:Not expected... tolerated

[winwar]

"The real lesson learned is maybe it'd be smart to put a "THIS SIDE UP" with a large arrow pointing up."

Better to design the sensor only to install the CORRECT way. But that could be screwed up also....

Hmm, maybe things should be double checked? By persons somewhat unfamiliar with the procedure. So they actually check if things are installed correctly and not just think they are.

Re:Not expected... tolerated

[kesuki]

What I've learned is, rocket scientists just aren't as smart as they used to be! Where are our education standards?!? are these rocket scientists college dropouts? or did they get passed through because the were 'smart enough' to memorize facts for tests? and not even necisarrily more than 65% of the answers?!?! where are our standards anymore?
if we just weren't AFRAID of FAILING paying college students we wouldn't have these pervasive problems... but a flunked out student can't pay tuition, and if the school doesn't get enough students they don't make enough money...

Re:Not expected... tolerated

[fucksl4shd0t]

The way that type of equipment works, it only works ONE way, the output would be messed up if it worked either way, you'd get conflicting input.

I disagree completely. They could have put eight switches in there, 4 installed in opposite directions. In that setup, 4 are designed to fail, because they will never work. Then you have a setup that will work in either case, and you're a bit closer to working up a solution that will work in any position.

Let's assume that only one switch working was required and the rest were backups. (I don't know this for a fact, but the discussion is easier on one switch and then extrapolating to the rest) The switch, when open, means no current is flowing. When closed, current flows. To get the desired result, you need current to flow. You're not asking everybody for their opinion, you're just making sure that if you're in gravity, current flows. So it doesn't matter if only one switch closes or both switches close, it only matters that if you're in gravity, current flows.

So having two switches controlling the same circuit is fine. I have a light in my house that can be turned on by one of two switches. I've seen lights that could only be turned on if both switches were on, but that was just shitty wiring. Any low-grade electrician could have wired that circuit to have two switches.

Re:Not expected... tolerated

[amorsen]

In this case the sensor was designed to only install the WRONG way.

Like a spring

[PrvtBurrito]

When the capsule - which blazed into the atmosphere at 11 kilometres per second - decelerated by three times the force of gravity (3 Gs), the sensors should have made contact with a spring."It's like smashing on the brakes in your car - you feel yourself being pushed forward," says NASA spokesperson Don Savage.

Doesn't that mean that the parachutes should have deployed on take off? heh....

Re:Like a spring

[Sebby]

Doesn't that mean that the parachutes should have deployed on take off?

The whole mechanism was probably programmed to activate only prior to reentry...

But that would've been interesting to see! ;)

Hmmm...

[katsiris]

I didn't realize that up and down were different in metric than the imperial system.

Re:Hmmm...

[InfiniteWisdom]

No they were using the Soviet Russian system

Re:Hmmm...

[Skynyrd]

I didn't realize that up and down were different in metric than the imperial system.

Woooo!
Coffee out my nose and onto the monitor!

Thanks - best comment of the day.

Re:wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

They should have known!

[GMFTatsujin]

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*

Re:They should have known!

[ewanrg]

Which of course didn't happen because there are known side vectors at launch and differing attitudes throughout flight, and so the sensors were activated only shortly before the descent was to begin.

But I suspect you may have just been trying to be funny?

Re:They should have known!

[SamBeckett]

But I suspect you may have just been trying to be funny?

Wow, I bet you didn't ride the short bus to school!

Happened to me too....

[GillBates0]

but this was when I playing 'Moonlander' and accidentally mapped Up to the down arrow key and Down to the up arrow key.

Caused me many a lost mission and endless hours of frustration that night. These guys got lucky...

Re:once again...

[foobsr]

I sure hope whoever missed that gets fired!

What about the idea that the system where such a slip is attributed to the individual but not the production environment with all its facets is intrinsically flawed ?

CC.

It just shows that you gotta test

[shoppa]

Testing of the assembly would have shown up this problem immediately.

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.

Re:It just shows that you gotta test

[http101]

It wasn't the engineers' faults. According to Bill Gates, the blame goes either on management or the end-user.

Re:It just shows that you gotta test

[Anonymous Coward]

They did test it. Unfortunately, they tested it on a sine-wave shake table, and since a sine wave shake table accellerates up as well as down, it still tripped the sensor and didn't illuminate the fact that it was upside-down.

Re:Why?

[julesh]

No, I think it's calling people nazis and "dipshits" that is considered a troll.

Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[rabtech]

Indeed; even the ancient serial port manages to not allow the user to plug it in incorrectly.

For that matter, a simple "THIS END UP" arrow might have avoided the entire issue.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[tool462]

This would not have helped in this case though, since it was installed *as designed*. The design itself was backwards.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[Tablizer]

Indeed; even the ancient serial port manages to not allow the user to plug it in incorrectly.

I once saw the handy work of somebody getting really pissed and *forcing* it to fit in wrong. Hmmmm. Perhaps he/she now works for NASA.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[Tablizer]

An AC could easily hit the post limit correcting all the people who didn't even read the TITLE this time. It says "misdesigned." No amount of "things sticking out" is going to help when it's a design flaw in the first place. It might have actually worked right if it had been installed wrong.

Well, "misdesigned" is a bit vague. But, perhaps if you are staring at a design that has an obvious orientation, or has a feature which indicates orientation, you are more likely to think in terms of how it fits into the bigger design. A simple circle boundary is not going to supply a lot of visual orientation cues.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[jafac]

IIRC, there was a similar issue with flap hinges on the Space Shuttle, upon an inspection, they were found to be installed backwards. Even though the part was designed assymetrically, it was still able to be installed backwards. . .

Make something idiot-proof, and someone will design a better idiot.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[uberdave]

True, but it is also true that no matter how correctly you are using a compass, you will get lost if the needle is magnetized backwards.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[Tablizer]

True, but it is also true that no matter how correctly you are using a compass, you will get lost if the needle is magnetized backwards.

If the needle has an end that is clearly shaped like an arrow (triangular tip), it is less likely to be charged wrong than one that is strait and looks almost the same in either direction. Visual cues reduce mistakes in both design and construction.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[Tablizer]

If the part was genuinely symmetrical, it would work no matter which direction it was installed.

True. My implication was that things that are *almost* symmetrical are the big problem. In other words, either go all the way so that it does not matter, or make it lumpy or gumby-like such that there is no mistake. It is the nearbies that cause problems.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[uberdave]

Somehow I knew I wasn't going to get my point across. :-(

When the internal workings of a part are wrong, it doesn't matter one little bit that you've installed the part properly. The whole will fail. It's like the old pentiums that had the floating point problem. They could only be installed in one orientation. They just didn't work the way the documentation said they would.

Now, back to my compass. If I give you a compass and tell you that the red end of the needle is north, and give you all sorts of instruction on how to use the compass, and you follow those instructions, but it is in fact the black end of the needle that is north, is it your fault, or mine, that you end up in a swamp instead of the entrance of the siver mine marked on your great-granddaddy's map?

As far as the accelerometer is concerned, the article says that the part was installed 180 degrees from the proper orientation, but that this did not matter because the sensor was designed upside-down. If the sensor is designed to detect "up" when mounted horizontally, it doesn't matter if sensor is rotated in the horizontal plane, because up is still up, and down is still down. If they installed a sensor marked "up" but with the internal workings of a "down" sensor (say by a mixup at the sensor manufacturer, or maybe a typo on a parts list somewhere) then you wind up with a multimillion dollar hole in the ground instead of a spectacular mid-air capture.

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[slashdot.org]

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.

How are things, Mr. Murphy?

Re:Symmetrical parts baaaaad

[Tablizer]

I give you a compass and tell you that the red end of the needle is north, and give you all sorts of instruction on how to use the compass, and you follow those instructions, but it is in fact the black end of the needle that is north, is it your fault, or mine, that you end up in a swamp instead of the entrance of the siver mine marked on your great-granddaddy's map?

That was not my example. My example was making it shaped like an arrow so that it is self-explanitory. I don't know if such a thing would help in this case because we don't have the details (thus we are arguing over speculative issues at this point). For my own head, if a design has visual orientation cues in it, I am less likely to screw up the documentation, etc. That is all I am trying to say WRT "design".

Learning

[darkmeridian]

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.

Redundant logic

[Scorillo47]

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.

Re:Redundant logic

[http101]

Hell, I have 2 layers of underwear just in case I shit myself stupid from laughing so hard at NASA.

Re:Redundant logic

[jnik]

The success of the whole mission now depends on the reliability of several single components, like the sensor in discussion.

That's what faster, cheaper, better is all about. Higher-risk, lower-cost missions. They're also considered a way to give younger people experience in running a mission (since not everybody can run, say, Cassini, and you'd like to have a way for them to build experience first), which means careers are getting torpedoed by not having the funding to do something completely redundant.

My advisor maintains that the best way to eliminate the cost of redundancy is to just plain build two spacecraft and expect one to fail. Of course then something fun happens, like an Ariane 5 and CLUSTER...

Re:Redundant logic

[PlaysByEar]

I doubt redundancy would have helped here. I think they would've installed sensors assuming the failure would've been a spring jamming or something similar.

Resulting in a spacecraft with multiple upside-down sensors.

Re:Redundant logic

[janos77]

first of all, there was redundancy; they had two sensors in backwards.

secondly, the rovers were completely redundant; it was icing on the cake that both of them worked while on mars.

Re:Redundant logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Building redundant systems into spacecraft not only increases the cost but it also increases the mass. Engineers of planetary spacecraft have to choose between having no redundant systems or throwing away science intruments. Getting a bigger rocket to launch the spacedcraft is generally not an option.

Re:Redundant logic

[Tablizer]

A while back, one of the main things I admired NASA for was the redundant design concept.....recently it looks like they kind of dropped this concept

The problem is that if you have 2 firing switches, then the chances of at least one going off accidently doubles. Redundancy is perhaps best where at worse failure simply means a loss of an single instrument rather than catastrophic side-effects, such as a premature chute opening.

did you know that a Mars Rover has a single CPU

I remember reading about this. They actually calculated the cost of the risk based on past failures of similar CPU's from the same company. For example, it may only have a 1-in-10 chance of failure, but would increase costs by 20% if they redundicated it (is there such a word?)

Re:Redundant logic

[gnuman99]

BTW, did you know that a Mars Rover has a single CPU that carries out all the computation?

That is one of the reasons we have 2 rovers and not one.

mundane detail

[Wakkow]

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

Murphy's law

[Sindri]

This is exactly what Murphy's law predicts:

"The sensors provided a zero reading, however; it became apparent that they had been installed incorrectly, with each sensor wired backwards. It was at this point that Murphy made his pronouncement."

from the wikipedia article about Murphys law.

Re:wtf

[CaptainCarrot]

You don't normally have the recovery subsystem active at launch time.

Beep, damn you!

[http101]

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!

Very much like the origins of Murphy's Law!

[seibed]

The Origins of Murphy's Law had a similar start:

"it became apparent that they had been installed incorrectly, with each sensor wired backwards. It was at this point that Murphy made his pronouncement."

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)

Re:wtf

[AK Marc]

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.

If Murphy were alive, he'd be laughing ...

[Spectre]

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 ...

Re:wtf

[snwcrash]

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.

Re:wtf

[shotfeel]

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.

You Forgot

[Greyfox]

Freaking "This side up" sticker. It could have been a great alpha test if they'd just had a freaking "this side up" sticker.

Of course, said sticker would have shown up on the invoice to NASA as "sund.explns" and carried a price of $42,000.

Re:once again...

[foobsr]

Sounds much like a fence-post error at a hard to detect spot with checking taking place at sleepless overtime hours with an average of n input channels open while acting on at least least m scenarios.

CC.

Re:Why does Lockheed Martin continue to get NASA w

[Anonymous Coward]

Campain contributions?

Re:Why?

[pclminion]

Quit biting. The idiot is doing what he does best. Forget him.

odd headlines

[Tablizer]

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.)

Metric up vs. English down :-)

[erichill]

The subject says it all.

the ultimate Murphy

[option8]

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.

here's the link to the story: http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v 9i5/murphy/murphy0.html
(remove the fnords... er.. slashdot inserted spaces)

There is no "deceleration"

[AvantLegion]

There is only negative acceleration.

Re:There is no "deceleration"

[jridley]

...and that depends on your frame of reference. Going from 1000kph to zero is speeding up in as many frames of reference as it is slowing down, just not in ours.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

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)

Re:Why does Lockheed Martin continue to get NASA w

[Skater]

Because they're CMM level 5! They must be good!

--RJ

Mistakes like this are easy to make...

[monoi]

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?

Better-Faster-Cheaper hangover

[code_rage]

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.

Re:wtf

[AJWM]

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...)

Huh?

[Cassanova]

"But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland"

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.

Re:Huh?

[tigerknight]

Outside of a rocket sled.. I don't think we have something that can test a 3-30g switch. More than likely I think the designer had the head/tail of the probe backwards in their head when they designed the part.

But yeah - stupid mistake. Very expensive stupid mistake.

it's the ship...

[Dtyst]

you are all wrong, the chip was correctly oriented it was the ship that was installed the wrong way ;)

Re:it's the ship...

[yowi]

No no no no......everything was installed correctly, they just forgot to allow for the rotation of the earth while it was in space, it re-entered the atmosphere on the wrong side of the planet.

Merit bonus?

[Allen Varney]

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?

Re:Merit bonus?

[shockbeton]

Speaking of secrets (or lack of), I'm absolutely amazed that this error has been described with such specificity. I think it says something positive about the investigation (and the investigators) into the failure that this information has been made public. If only other govenment agencies (and electronic voting machine makers) had the balls to expose this sort of mistake.

Massive peer review?

[Netdoctor]

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

Re:Why?

[pclminion]

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.

Re:not yet.

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Congress, NASA, JPL also to blame

[code_rage]

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.

Poke-a-yoke or poka-yoke engineering anybody?

[mhesseltine]

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.

Re:Poke-a-yoke or poka-yoke engineering anybody?

[tigerknight]

That's the problem. It wasn't installed wrong, it was designed wrong. The installation was exactly as it should have been.

My guess is that whoever designed that part had the head and tail of the probe itself backwards in their head.

I smell a rat

[zogger]

Thanks for the paste, BTW, this is just generic commentary on this now that I have read it. ..something about this doesn't add up. You can get 3gs in a cheap-ass centrifuge, and you would think that testing it that way might have occurred to someone there, I thought about the description for 2 seconds max before that occurred, and 1.9 of those seconds was wasted on "WTF, what were they smoking????" I mean, the rentry brakes main sensor? No real world testing, zillion buck budget, PhDs hanging around the place, bosses up the wazoo, press release guys, interns, students, various hangers on and about with various degrees and varied IQs and a lot of butts on the line and NO ONE thought of this?

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.

Obligatory Homer Simpson Quote

[yabbo]

"Doh."

Mod parent up!

[Abcd1234]

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.

Re:A simple put of paint....

[johannesg]

You are not the first smart ass to demonstrate your incredible intellectual superiority by pointing out this simple solution. So let us have a small thought experiment here.

Imagine this: you are working at Lockheed Martin, and you are the Chief Sensor Installer for this spacecraft. You have received a sensor that must be installed, and it has a convenient arrow on it. You are about to install the sensor. Should you:

[ ] Install the sensor with the arrow pointing up towards the heat shield?

[ ] Install the sensor with the arrow pointing down towards the ground?

Frankly, neither direction is obviously the right way to me.

Reminds me

[MC68040]

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...

Re:Reminds me

[BCW2]

Or the Mars lander that crashed due to someone forgetting to convert between standard and metric.

, and the shuttle rudder actuator issue.

[chadjg]

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.

Probe Crash Due to Misdesigned Deceleration Senso

[vettemph]

Probe Crash Due to Misdesigned Deceleration Sensor

I love when science sounds sexual!

Re:not yet.

[sploo22]

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.

Design issue, I dont think so..

[vmaxxxed]

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!

Re:A simple put of paint....

[fishbowl]

It wasn't unit tested.

That should be a flogging offense in a shop like Lockheed.

Really has to suck...

[dfj225]

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..."

Re:Why does Lockheed Martin continue to get NASA w

[cwspain]

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.

Just like IDE cables!

[catch23]

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!

Is this sabotage?

[zogger]

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.

Re:Is this sabotage?

[fucksl4shd0t]

Who stands to gain the most from sabotage?

Lockheed-Martin.

Why?

Because NASA screwing up in the fact of many billions of dollars worth of money that people want spent, but with NASA screwing up it won't get spent. So where does it benefit LM?

Private space industry! Someone needs to build all the spaceship components. LM gets to keep building for NASA, screwing up 2 out of 3 missions, making it look like NASA's fault, and then when some private guy with a lot of money looks around and says "I've got a spaceship design, but I need someone to build it," there's LM just in time to say "We've got lots of experience, the tools, and the people."

Instead of a series of high-dollar custom jobs for NASA, LM can start turning out low-dollar mass-produced spacecraft that'll be worth a lot more money on their bottom line than they're getting right now from NASA. LM's hurting. I saw Bowling for Columbine. They need a new market, and turning space over to privateers gives LM a new market, and a market that'll be worth a whole shitload of money.

Of course, this theory breaks down when you consider that LM failed to get the blame pushed onto NASA, and it's actually likely that privateers will just get someone else to build their spaceships.

Not that any of it matters. I don't think it's BS, it makes perfect sense to me that it would be screwed up like this. It's a custom job. If they didn't have to custom-build every single probe they made, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Design flaws show up all the time, and they get worked out with prototypes, limited runs, and so forth before the floodgates are opened on the assembly line. But with a custom job, there's no testing procedure that can even come close to the testing procedures used to catch design flaws in a mass-produced product, so they have to settle with what they can. If they used the same testing procedures, they'd push the costs so far through the roof that NASA would never be able to do anything, it would cost too much.

The NASA platform for space travel is too screwy. Too many opportunities for people to fuck it up. It's obvious, it's been obvious, it's still obvious, it'll always be obvious. Government research needs to piggy-back on private operations. That's the only way they can be cutting-edge and do it successfully. With NASA managing the entire infrastructure to support their space exploration portion of the mission, they've got too much to deal with. Private rockets should be launching private probes, all mass-produced. Then NASA can piggy-back their special sensors and sample collectors onto known good, proven designs. NASA knows it, too!

The writing has been on the walls for years, and luckily for us people have been pursuing the solutions for years. Knocking NASA at this point is similar to beating the dead horse. When we have private space travel, finally, we can cut NASA's funding so low they won't even be a light on the federal budget, and they'll still be multiples more productive than they are now.

Can't wait.

Or the poor designer watched too much Star Trek

[Mandrel]

and thought the solution was to reverse the polarity.

Re:Another item on the NASA goof list.

[musawilliams]

We seem to forget that it was congress that cut NASA's budget by $1.1 billion dollars for FY 2005. So, although they may still have $15.1 billion, that's enough for the Mars Rover and the Shuttle program and that's probably it. The funds it would require to QA to the level of an upside down sensor may have been in that $1.1 bill that our friends on Capitol Hill so conveinetly directed towards other things, probably even the Reagan/Bush desire for the "Star Wars Ballistic Missile Defense System".

Yes, the human factor was there but without suffiencent funds to pay for the time it would require such in depth Q&A, can the failure be totally blamed on NASA?

If any nitwit could have seen the error, then instead of bashing them on their failures, apply for a job there. You seem to know what you're doing

Ever Notice

[snurv]

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.

What a waste!

[Indian_H-1B]

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!

Perkin-Elmer Corporation

[HermanAB]

the original designers of the Hubble Space Telescope optics, must have transferred some technology to Lockheed Martin...

Re:A simple put of paint....

[Duelmaster2001]

You design an arrow on the plug as well. Point arrow in same direction. Poof, problem solved.

There is no "spoon"

[Vicsun]

There is only the matrix.

Re:It seems ... System Safety

[lightwaveman]

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.

Even for aircraft pilots.

[Cardbox]

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.

SMART-1

[adeyadey]

..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..

Re:SMART-1

[AKAImBatman]

Seriously could a craft with approx the propellant/mass of SMART-1 use this to get to Mars or beyond?

Farther. The Interplanetary Highway weaves throughout the ENTIRE solar system, making it cheaper and easier to get places that even Ion Drives cannot easily reach.

Think of the IPSHwy like square dancing. When there are only two people, you simply swing around and around. (Just like an orbit.) But when the whole crowd starts switching off, you'll find yourself being swung from person to person to person. This is, in effect, exactly how the superhighway works. Each slingshot swings you around and passes you to the next planet. Then you swing your partner doe-see-doe, and swing from Mars to Jupiter, to Saturn, swing around and catch Jupiter again, back to Mars, Earth, then Venus, etc.

Two Things...

[RedCard]

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."

dark underside

[Doc Ruby]

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.

It makes you wonder...

[kjots]

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.

Re:There is a bright side to embracing our 'waste'

[shpoffo]

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

Re:There is a bright side to embracing our 'waste'

[DigitalRaptor]

....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...

Re:A simple put of paint....

[Duelmaster2001]

Hmmm, is it even possible to be overrated when I haven't even been rated before? I don't *think* so, but I could be wrong...

how to test

[Mark of THE CITY]

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.

To the GNAA Fuckers

[Trolling4Dollars]

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.

Re:To the GNAA Fuckers

[rrrrrroar]

Here's a good place to start. That'll give you an idea of how popular and personable Mr. Lockwood is. Most of Scott Lockwood's tomfoolery is lost in the long-deleted past of Trolltalk or other Slashdot discussions, or buried in archives of Geekizoid's previous incarnations that Emadinator is afraid to release to the public because he openly advocates and practices illegal activities in them, but you can dig out some of the old stuff with web.archive.org. For example, here. Or here (hacking story at the very top, but not one of the worst). Or here (Kuro5hin modbombing, and racism at the very top). Or here. Read the hacking / racist / goatsex / penisbird posts. Would you trust this man with your credit card number?