OT: Mars Climate Orbiter Crash(?) Excuse Bogus

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Richard Hoagland analyzes the NASA "Oh, we used Imperial Measurements instead of Metric" excuse for the supposed crash of the orbiter. He finds their story bogus, and assumes they took the satellite "dark" (incommunicado to us peons).

http://www.enterprisemission.com/mco.htm

Your tax money at work for private projects.

-- A (A@AisA.com), October 14, 1999

Answers

I wus pretty much in the dark on that one, anyway!

-- Jay Urban (jurban@berenyi.com), October 14, 1999.

snipped from comp.risks - mitch

Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 11:30:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Erann Gat Subject: ICD's save ISS: *not*!

>From http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/iss_metric_991005.html

Space Station Immune to Metric Mishap, NASA Says By Daniel Sorid, 05 Oct 1999

The International Space Station will not fall victim to the measurement units problems which ruined the Mars Climate Orbiter, according to a NASA spokesman. In the early 90s, engineers put together a so-called interface control document, which identifies the use of metric or English units for every piece in the station, according to NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown.

"This is not a new issue for us," Brown said. "It's so well documented that we don't have that problem." The document also shows where metric and non-metric units interact with each other, and calls for the development of adapters that standardize the units. "Engineers got together and said, 'Here's the piece of hardware. Let's see where they interconnect.' If we've got a metric piece and an English piece, that will show up very clearly in the document." [...]

There's one little problem with this theory: Mars Climate Orbiter had an interface control document too. (JPL is ISO9000 certified! We have documents for everything.) It was obviously not enough to save MCO; why should it be any different for ISS?

Most accounts in the press make the MCO disaster sound like a massive breakdown in communications, with one group of people doing everything in Metric and another doing everything in English units, and no one talking to anyone else for months on end. I was told this morning by a member of the MCO team that this is not true. Everyone knew that everything was supposed to be Metric across the board. The problem was a single number in the software that was accidentally entered incorrectly. The exact same thing has happened on at least one previous mission, but the problem was caught before it became a news story (that is, before we drove the spacecraft into a planet.)

Regular readers of RISKS will no doubt be shocked -- shocked! -- by these revelations.

Erann Gat [Usual disclaimers]

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), October 14, 1999.


I follow Hoagland. he get a little far out on some subjects, but this one is right IMO.

If the teams had been using 2 different types of measurements to navigate the satellite it wouldn't even have made it to mars AT ALL!

stupid. What's that now?..the second modern Mars craft to blink out?

they thing we = stupid.

-- Cory Hill (coryh@strategic-services.net), October 14, 1999.


I agree. Even the government isn't THAT consistently incompetent. Normally, I'm not willing to give Hoagland that much credence, though. It's my perception that "hyperdimensional physics" can mean pretty much whatever he wants it to. But, he may be on to something here. The question is, what? One could conjure up anything from the X-Files to to Alternative 3 to 2010. Maybe it's "Major Ed"'s "something is waking up on Mars" (muuhhahaha)

-- chairborne commando (what-me-worry@armageddon.com), October 14, 1999.

Maybe NASA's putting out a cover story while they're sitting on the letter they got which reads:

"We have your satellite. Send three Billion in Mars money or you will never hear from it again."

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), October 14, 1999.



Look at this from the Establishment's POV. IF the "Face" and pyramidal-like structures on Mars are indeed artficial constructs; alot of the early history of Earth will need to be re-written if these were built by mankind. If these were alien constructs, then the Gov't and their lackeys in the sciences will have to come clean about the existance of aliens and UFOs. Either way, much embarassement all-around.

So, they (The Establishment) will say to themselves "Isn't it easier for us to tell lies, than to tell them the (PEONS) truth?

-- Zzzz (Zzzz@zzzz.com), October 15, 1999.


Zzzz,

Are you saying that the last time around, humans got to Mars and built pyramids and the face before they experienced their Y2K? ;)

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), October 15, 1999.


Wildweasel -- there's no reason that I know of, so far, to assume that those artifacts (if such they be) were built by humans.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), October 16, 1999.

Wildweasel:

I wrote in my last post IF. Who knows if these things on Mars are a natural accident or artifacts of some sort. I just gave a reason that the Establishment might want to keep knowledge of the latter case secret, and ridicule those that believe in it publicly. Not for sinister reasons, but to protect professional reputations.

Who knows if these things are real or not. Show me some valid evidence, and I will decide one way or another.

Tom:

If these "monuments" were built by aliens, there'd also be alot of our white coated high-priests of science at a loss to explain how they got here. Preferable to them to deny and obfuscate, even to the point of sabotaging a space probe to keep evidence from falling in the wrong hands. Again, nothing sinister, just trying to keep their professional reputations up.

-- Zzzz (Zzzz@Zzzz.com), October 16, 1999.


The implications of releasing such information to the public could be huge. I still believe that all the little things we see and hear are merely preparing us for some future event. Something we are not ready to deal with in the current state of the planet.

I sometimes HATE them for repressing information of this type (if they are), and other times I agree with them...its a tough one.

nuff said.

-- Cory Hill (coryh@strategic-services.net), October 16, 1999.



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