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I struggle to believe some space agency ever used the imperial system (or the US spinoff) for anything mission critical.
by mkl95 3y ago
I struggle to believe some space agency ever used the imperial system (or the US spinoff) for anything mission critical.
- eternauta3k 3y agoMaybe not NASA, but what about its contractors? https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/ https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metr...
- xxs 3y ago...well NASA (or its supplier) did try - the infamous Mars Orbiter crash[0]: The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit, contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...
- mkl95 3y ago> According to NASA, the cost of the mission was $327.6 million It probably makes the top 10 most expensive software defects of all time.
- throwaway154 3y agoMicrosoft Windows was likely #1.
- dabluecaboose 3y agoThe gauges in the Apollo modules were all in US customary for the benefit of the pilots. AFAIK the underlying systems used metric internally, though.