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Comments on ‘Ariane 5 and the Denver luggage handling system’

And other unheroic failures

Published Friday 21st March 2008 07:02 GMT

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Getting maths right 

By William Glover
Posted Monday 24th March 2008 07:16 GMT
Coat

Well my favorite blunder is the Mar Climate orbiter where on set of instructions programed were in English and the other in Metric causing the loss of the spacecraft. With the money quote "People sometimes make errors," said Dr. Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, there in no patch for stupid.

Sabina SEIFERT's Project .. 

By Doug
Posted Monday 24th March 2008 14:23 GMT

"This report traces the history of some major software projects and identifies the flaws that led to their failure. Could things have been done differently...?"

http://www.scism.lsbu.ac.uk/inmandw//past/9697/projects/prj127.html

@Getting maths right 

By Daniel B.
Posted Tuesday 25th March 2008 18:10 GMT
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True. I really wonder why any scientist worth its salt would use anything other than the metric system, though...

a fine list of failures.. 

By martin atherton
Posted Tuesday 25th March 2008 18:19 GMT

I did a quick search and found this which I used to colour the above article..some good stuff in here: http://infotech.fanshawec.ca/gsantor/Computing/FamousBugs.htm

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