"Spectrum quickly learned that far more had gone wrong than just a units conversion error. A critical flaw was a program management grown too confident and too

"Spectrum quickly learned that far more had gone wrong than just a units conversion error. A critical flaw was a program management grown too confident and too careless, even to the point of missing opportunities to avoid the disaster. "As reconstructed by Spectrum, ground controllers ignored a string of indications that something was seriously wrong with the craft's trajectory, over a period of weeks if not months. But managers demanded that worriers and doubters "prove something was wrong," even though classic and fundamental principles of mission safety should have demanded that they themselves, in the presence of significant doubts, properly "prove all is right" with the flight. Quoting https://web.archive.org/web/20210730150049/https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course https://web.archive.org/web/20210730150049/https://spectrum.... linked to from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter . Plus, navigators, had concerns about the trajectory,which were dismissed because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the incident surprise and analysis procedure] form to document their concerns" - from a trajectory team which was understaffed and overworked.