this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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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 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It was because multiple people fucked up by not validating data.

The question is, given the meticulousless of an org like that, how is it multiple units didn't perform data validation?

The project plans and validation steps I've seen for relatively simple, multi-million software deployments would've caught something like this.

Yea, I'm suspicious that this is used an an excuse for another failure.