Today I Learned (TIL)

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

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (5 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (4 children)

why don't just use metric??????

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Three eights of a teafuck if you ask me

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