[R-390] TUBES

[mikea]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 09:19:25PM -0800, Ed Zeranski wrote:

>      Remember the required 1/2 unit slide rule class for all
> math/science/engineering students??   As far as "Kaboom" goes
> ;^(....remember the Hubble mis calq?  How about a couple of for sh#t  whiz
> kid run Mars shots, and sadly Chalenger?? Yep,  new tools are out there but
> ya' gotta know why as well as how to use 'em. And yep we are in the
> info_mation age, but when has anyone ever faxed you a sandwhich??

The Hubble bobble had nothing to do with miscalculation, though:
it was caused by a tech at (IIRC) Perkin-Elmer putting a gauge
stick in bass-ackwards, so that the mirror's focal length was
off.

Challenger was a management fsckup, pure and simple. Read the
book _Challenger: A Major Malfunction_ for details. It had a lot
to do with stupidity, and with "taking off your engineer hat and
putting on your management hat", but not one thing to do with
bad computation. 

The failure of the NASA Mars shot that had to do with a failure
to communicate that two groups were using different sets of units
was a computation fsckup, yes.

But only one of those three was a real computation fsckup. The
other two were different kinds of fsckups. 

It appears that fsckup-type is normally-distributed.

-- 
Mike Andrews
mikea@mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin since 1964