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It's not limited to Soviet missions. My high school physics teacher worked at JPL on the Mars Climate Orbiter in the 90s. His entire NASA career was in development of it, and after 10 months of travel following successful launch, the thing exploded in the atmosphere without ever reaching the surface because the team at JPL used metric while Lockheed Martin used imperial. He was so spiritually broken by the experience that he quit and became a high school physics teacher. Great teacher, but to have your life's work go up in smoke like that is brutal.


And the classic accelerometer installed backward which doomed the Genesis mission sample return, although some bits were successfully recovered, the parachute never deployed.


Elsewhere in this thread someone was asking about the difference between acceleration and deceleration. Well, this is a good example!


The difference is just a minus sign!



Still, NASA does not place the responsibility on Lockheed for the mission loss; instead, various officials at NASA have stated that NASA itself was at fault for failing to make the appropriate checks and tests that would have caught the discrepancy.

The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document their concerns"

Typical bureaucratic BS. Not surprised; what's surprising is that anything works in that sort of environment.


This was during the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" era when staffing was cut and projects were being privatized and had to be done for cut rate costs. This video actually goes a lot into the details on what happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuYDkVRyMkg

The whole videos series of JPL and the Space Age is very enjoyable to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTiv_XWHnOZqFnWQs393R...


Exceptional documentary. Thanks for posting.


The US using Imperial (British) units instead of the modern Metric ones it's a bit silly. We are using powers of ten daily. You just have to shift points in the scale.


If you take a step back the bureaucratic bs is actually that certain countries did and continue to use imperial measurements and nonsensical date formats.


Similar thing happened in Georgia once busy Friday night when tons of bridge railing came smashing down onto the Interstate below. Given the traffic that time of day, it's a miracle no one was hurt, much less killed. Almost immediately the head of the DOT pleaded for the public to not blame the contractor who installed the railing. While it is important to do a root cause analysis, the DOT head should be mostly concerned about the people who could have been killed instead of the contractor. It was an incredibly tone-deaf moment.


Classic sign of regulatory capture and/or corruption.

Did they ever figure out who was sleeping with whom/who was related to whom?


Why do you say that?

Is there some obvious reason to blame that specific contractor?


When the regulator is far more worried about covering the contractors ass than serving the public, it is a clear concern yes?


That would be a concern!

But I didn't see anything in that description that was against serving the public. The only way to serve the public at that point in time was launching an investigation, not making super preliminary statements about what could have gone wrong and who could have been hurt.

I wouldn't say the tone deafness itself is a significant sign of corruption.


It’s simple. ‘We’ll investigate’? No concern.

‘Don’t blame the contractor?’ Concern.


The description above was talking about an investigation.

I think he said both of the things you listed. How do we interpret saying both?

The thing he didn't do was separate, saying much about how dangerous it was.


Because why is the contractor’s health or wellbeing a concern here at all? Especially right at the beginning when no one has even said/done anything?

If you answer that question considering that corruption may indeed be involved, the answer is quite obvious no?


So the reason to think corruption is that there's no other reason to say that?

Well that's not true. Incorrectly blaming a particular company in the heat of the moment could lead to harm or harassment, and it's good to remind people to wait for a real investigation. The last thing the DOT wants at that point is even more avoidable mistakes.

And if it was motivated by corruption that statement seems like a bad idea. It draws a lot of attention to that specific contractor while telling people to wait for the investigation. If they are at fault, that extra attention is bad for them in the long run.


It’s this kind of willful ignorance of the signals put in front of people that leads to Trump.

There is zero legitimate reason for the DOT to try to protect the contractor in this situation.


I think "wait to figure out whose fault it was" is a reasonable level of protection for everyone involved.

It easily could have been a different contractor, or even not a contractor.


> the DOT head should be mostly concerned about the people who could have been killed instead of the contractor

You can't do anything about the past, but you can do something about the future.

The DOT head should be looking at both things. But at that point in time there's nothing they can meaningfully say about what happened except by making a serious promise to investigate. On the other end, the harm from incorrectly blaming the wrong people is something they can try to prevent.

It probably was tone-deaf but when you say their underlying concerns are wrong I disagree.


Should have gone with the “martians shot it down” explanation which was far cooler and less embarrassing


I think turning the whole earth into a total war economy is worth avoiding the engineering embarrassment!


"…the thing exploded in the atmosphere without ever reaching the surface because the team at JPL used metric while Lockheed Martin used imperial."

I've just read the Wiki on the Mars Climate Orbiter and it explains the disastrous implications of that mistake. What's tragic about such errors is that the US keeps repeating them, Hubble was another very expensive Imperial/Metric fuck-up even though it was recoverable.

I've often had debates with Americans about Imperial versus Metric when I was in the US and their retort is usually along the lines "why should we give up God's own units for that nasty French stuff?" or words to that effect.

They gave other specious arguments too, such as cost of new tooling would be prohibitive. That's rubbish† of course (certainly in the grand schema of things as the long-term benefits far outweigh initial costs).

Well, anyway, by the looks of it God is on the side of the French!

What many of us outside the US find odd and can't figure out is that in its early days the American Republic was hand-in-glove with the French against that horrible Imperial island, so why did it reject the French system?

Yes, I know of the early attempt at metricization and the loss of weights and measures at sea whilst in transit from France to the US but given its impact that's pretty paltry excuse.

It really is time you guys caught up with the rest of the world. Surely, it's getting a bit too expensive to continue to lose spacecraft to whims of measurement.

__

† Check how well Australia's metric conversion went some 50 years ago. It's a textbook example of how to go about it correctly. I know, I live there—we fuck things up more often than not but this one we got AOK right. If you ask kids at school today what various Imperial units are they'd likely say they've never heard of them.


I'm American, and I fully support moving to the metric system. But it's a tough sell for most people.

If someone is an adult, it's a bunch of new information to learn, and unless they work in a field that involves measurements and math, it probably won't be an obvious net positive for them.

The biggest benefit IMO is for future generations, who wouldn't grow up having to memorize conversion factors for a bunch of ancient legacy units (feet per mile, teaspoons per cup, etc.) as well as having to do the conversions when working with people from outside the US.

I'd greatly appreciate it as someone who does a lot of hobby work in various fields, because metric measurements are something I can use across all of them. But the impression I've gotten is that professionals in a single field are so used to working with whichever specific imperial units are relevant to them that it would be a wash. And since they'd have to redevelop all of that intuitive knowledge for the metric equivalent, they see it as a net negative.


OK, let's start here:

"If someone is an adult, it's a bunch of new information to learn, and unless they work in a field that involves measurements and math, it probably won't be an obvious net positive for them."

Absolutely true! So what does a country do to overcome the problems of familiarity and habit? First thing is not to scare the population and the best way to do that is with a friendly and sophisticated advertising campaign.

Before I go further I must point out that Australia, the UK and New Zealand had a much more difficult task than the US if or when it converts to Metric. Reason: our currency followed the LSD system—Pounds, Shillings and Pence—so we had the double-sized problem of converting both the currency and weights and measures. Right, the US has had decimal currency almost from its beginning. You've already a head start! :-)

Pre decimal currency people in Australia, the UK and NZ had a mad system inherited from history where 12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shilling = 1 pound (£). And there was an even madder unit called the guinea (gn) which is 21 shillings—that's 1 shilling more than the pound or 252 pence/pennies (that's madness but there are good historical reasons for it that go back centuries).

It used to be commonplace to see ads, store sales etc. like 14gn & 3/- (shillings)—that's 297 shillings or 3,528 pennies (if I haven't screwed the math up).

And that was only part of it, there's a florin, a crown, half crown etc and a halfpenny. Everyone had to know all this stuff (if you didn't you'd likely be robbed). A couple of examples in your parlance:

penny (1d) — 1¢, penny

sixpence (6d) — 5¢, nickel

shilling (12d) — 10¢, dime

10 shillings (10/-) — $1, dollar

Every country that converted from LSD to decimal adopted the preferred 1-2-5 number series to minimize the number of coins, i..e.: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20,…. Same with the Euro. The US has somewhat screwed its coinage up with its beloved Quarter. When those of us who come from 1-2-5 series countries go to the US one of the first things we notice is how much loose change we accumulate in our pockets. The difference is amazing!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number#1-2-5_serie... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_problem

It's worth noting that Australia's main currency unit is the dollar (same basic structure as the US dollar) which is half the old pound. That was too much for the UK, tradition held them back, the old 20 shilling pound became the new 10 shilling pound sans name change. That meant a coarser granularity, the smallest unit (the new pence) is over twice that of the old. Of course, that led to price hikes. The UK then went on screw up its weights and measures conversion for the same reason. I'll discuss why in a moment.

As mentioned, everything counts on getting the population on side, here's one of Australia's decimal currency ads (even now it's pretty good):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm_Vtl2u1Hc

A similar campaign was waged a little later with the weights and measures conversion. This is where Australia shined and it suggests your worry about conversion being a tough sell—which is true—has to be accepted and tackled head on. And that's how it was done here.

What Australia's Metric Conversion Board did was to cold-turkey the whole country from the outset just as happened with decimal currency—old coins and notes disappeared almost overnight, as soon as 'old' cash was banked new coins and notes were issued.

Almost immediately, grocery items changed from pounds and ounces to kilograms/grams, pints/fluid ounces to litres, feet and inches to metres/cms. Suddenly, kids going back to school after holidays could only buy 30cm rules sans inches—both sides were only metric.

What's more the government made it unlawful to sell new goods with Imperial measurements on them. Right, supermarket goods didn't have both pounds/ounces and kilograms—only kilograms (of course manufacturers had time to tool up).

What happened? Well, a lot of whingeing for a few weeks and it was essentially all over. People adapted remarkably quickly. Teachers got rid of all those Imperial tables, and so on. Lumber changed, a 4x2" (OK, 2x4" in your lingo) became 100x50mm, and so on.

Oh, and I must say I lived though all that, I was a teenager when decimal currency came in. Even I bitched about not being able to buy a rule with both inches and centimeters on it. In fact, I had a friend who worked for the Metric Conversion Board and I used to whinge to him about it. It also worked both ways, I always had the latest lowdown on how the conversion was proceeding.

What happened after that? The country adjusted remarkably well and it now thinks metric by default (and that's absolutely the key point). Both the US and the UK are largely metric in areas but neither think in metric by default. It's not a cultural meme in either.

After everybody in Australia had become fully metrified the government reversed the ban on things marked with Imperial measurements (you'd never see groceries marked in Imperial units but you would see dual units on a 30cm rule nowadays. It was a great success with little pain.

Now look how the UK stuffed it up—or what not to do! The UK started its metrication program in 1965 which is earlier than Australia yet it's still a mess. Officially it's a metric country and yet a huge amount of Imperial activity is still taking place. I recall around the time of Brexit some of Boris Johnson's cohorts were even calling for the reintroduction of Imperial units. Moreover, you see the Imperial mindset everywhere even in the BBC, for example, doctors on medical programs frequently discuss patients weigh in stones—for heaven's sake very few people in Australia would know what a 'stone' is let alone that it's 14lb.

What the British did was do precious little, they didn't ban goods marked with Imperial measurements and so on, 60 years later it's still largely an Imperial country.

__

Edit, Ha, I've not seen that clip for many years but looking at it now I realize that it was produced by Artransa Park TV which was a subsidiary of the television network I worked for. I'd probably would never have made that connection if it were not for this post. Small world eh?


> Before I go further I must point out that Australia, the UK and New Zealand had a much more difficult task than the US if or when it converts to Metric. Reason: our currency followed the LSD system—Pounds, Shillings and Pence—so we had the double-sized problem of converting both the currency and weights and measures.

I don’t agree with how you seem to be treating currency decimalisation as part of metrication, when to me it is a completely separate topic: the metric system is a system of units for measuring physical quantities; currencies and units of account are not physical quantities, and as such do not form any part of the metric system.

Also, some other countries who had weird-sized currency subdivisions got rid of them in a very different way: hyperinflation can quickly render currency subdivisions practically irrelevant-if a loaf of bread is a thousand pounds, nobody cares about shillings or pence any more. Of course, if you have the choice, an ordinary currency switchover is much better than hyperinflation.


Fine, people often disagree with me.

All I can add is that I lived through both conversions and witnessed them from day-to-day.

They were planned by greater minds than mine to follow one another with the metric building on the momentum of the first. Outcomes are what ultimately matter, both conversions along with those in NZ have been recognized as some of the most successful of all time.

Decimalisation is different to metrication but they were not perceived that way, instead they were a political matter and that required a political solution involving Parliament, and that's an altogether different matter.

BTW, well before the French Revolution when the Franc was set in stone the French currency followed the same divisions as the UK pound, the livre was divided into 20 then 12. Similarly length, the French inch if I recall is marginally longer than the Imperial one. Again, it's politics at work here, both currency and measures are often closely aligned.


> He was so spiritually broken by the experience that he quit and became a high school physics teacher.

> Great teacher, but to have your life's work go up in smoke like that is brutal.

No doubt. I hope everyone's doing alright.


Teaching high school physics will do more good for more people than landing a spacecraft on Mars.


My highschool physics teacher had a similar story, he was one of best teachers I ever had. I went from disliking physics to becoming a EE major in college. Doubt I would be where I am today without him coming in at the right moment in my life.

So, yes, a good teacher could inspire 10+ others to make spacecraft, tech startups, etc. Maybe the ROI for humanity is greater if that teacher stayed as an IC in their field.


that's debatable


I think the implication is that a good teacher can inspire more students to take up science and contribute broadly to the field than just one person on a specific field.


Pretty much. Having a working understanding of Newtonian physics, electricity, and other High School physics topics has real-world benefits. Landing a spacecraft on Mars is a remarkable technical achievement, but makes almost no difference in the life of 99.999% of people.

Either could inspire someone to pursue a career in science, I was more thinking of just practical benefits.


One brilliant scientist can inspire millions of children, that is much more than a teacher.


What reality are you living in? Zero ambition?


The ultimate "fuck this shit- I'm out."




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