All of that and they don't mention that Challenger or Columbia?

Crosshair: All of that and they don't mention that Challenger or Columbia?

Or Apollo 1?

Not entirely a goof up, but for a while there no one knew where it was going to fall. Lucky for us it wasn't Moscow.

There was a live Fark thread about the Genesis capsule touchdown coverage. That was fun to read since I couldn't watch the video.

Crosshair: All of that and they don't mention that Challenger or Columbia?

I came in here to say that. It was on mind because I posted a comment about Feynman just a few minutes ago and have read about his account in his book.

They should have a photo of Feynman with that O-Ring. Or at the very least the problems between the engineers and management.

ZAZ: There was a live Fark thread about the Genesis capsule touchdown coverage. That was fun to read since I couldn't watch the video.

Thread in question

The thread gets good at this point:

Theaetetus 2004-09-08 11:56:39 AM
This'll either be really cool, or really funny.

(I tried and failed to get the new IDcomment URL stuff to work right.)

Goof ups, not tragedies.

Good old gov't bureaucracies.
They fail and get more money.

I also wouldn't call wasting billions of tax-victim dollars as "goof ups".

Silly Nasa scientists. Dont worry, you will get more millions to goof up on.

/morans!

brigid_fitch: Crosshair: All of that and they don't mention that Challenger or Columbia?

Or Apollo 1?

Those are not "goof ups". Those are full on, 100%, absolute, dyed-in-the-wool, supersize, too much ain't enough, fark ups. When folks die, it goes beyond the realm of "goof".

Puke: Good old gov't bureaucracies.
They fail and get more money.

And no private company has ever built something and had it fail. Never happens. Every single product or service from the private sector meets or exceeds expectations.

/how many successful corporate launches to Mars have we seen?

Puke: Good old gov't bureaucracies.
They fail and get more money.

I also wouldn't call wasting billions of tax-victim dollars as "goof ups".

Yeah, let's all go live in a goddamn cave and save our money for more videos of Hanna Montana eating strawberries.

Alan Shepard in Freedom 7

Shepard: "Man, I got to pee."
Ground: "You what?"

Now that's a goof up.

Marla Singer's Laundry: Puke: Good old gov't bureaucracies.
They fail and get more money.

I also wouldn't call wasting billions of tax-victim dollars as "goof ups".

Yeah, let's all go live in a goddamn cave and save our money for more videos of Hanna Montana eating strawberries.

Now? no.

When she's 18? perhaps...

shipofthesun: brigid_fitch: Crosshair: All of that and they don't mention that Challenger or Columbia?

Or Apollo 1?

Those are not "goof ups". Those are full on, 100%, absolute, dyed-in-the-wool, supersize, too much ain't enough, fark ups. When folks die, it goes beyond the realm of "goof".

In essence, I completely agree. There's absolutely no comparison between forgetting to convert to metric & tragic deaths. It's just that the article is so light-hearted, it's bothersome that it makes no mention of NASA's true disasters.

Puke: Good old gov't bureaucracies.
They fail and get more money.

I also wouldn't call wasting billions of tax-victim dollars as "goof ups".

Yea, lets just sit here on Earth to save a few bucks that will be squandered elsewhere while ignoring everything outside the atmosphere. Nothing like achievement and progress!

What? No Apollo 1? Grissom, White and Chaffee?

Pure Charlie Foxtrot

MentalMoment: Alan Shepard in Freedom 7

Shepard: "Man, I got to pee."
Ground: "You what?"

Now that's a goof up.

Which shuttle mission was it when the crane arm got stuck? I remember one of the astronauts trying to get it unstuck and said:

"If we can't fix this, does that mean we have to pay for it?"

or something along those lines.

Is it just me or are there like a dozen faces in that nebula pic?

Crosshair: All of that and they don't mention that Challenger or Columbia?


That's a little larger than a goof-up.

FTFA: "With that in mind, let's take a look at some of NASA's most conspicuous, embarrassing (and non-fatal) gaffes."

brigid_fitch:
In essence, I completely agree. There's absolutely no comparison between forgetting to convert to metric & tragic deaths. It's just that the article is so light-hearted, it's bothersome that it makes no mention of NASA's true disasters.

If we were to routinely make a point of bringing up the worst of a subject every time we talked about something in the interest of remembering it or whatever, we'd be talking about tragedy more often than whatever it was we initially meant to talk about.

There's no cause to bring up tragedy simply because something related to it was mentioned.

/a lesson Rudy Giuliani failed to learn about New York and 9/11

Aw, the lightning one was unfair. NASA can't control the weather.

/aliens do.

Dreamer254: Silly Nasa scientists. Dont worry, you will get more millions to goof up on.

/morans!

Lets see your degree in rocket science, idiot. STFU and GBTW. Those burgers don't flip themslves.

MtLebanonBalogna: FTFA: "With that in mind, let's take a look at some of NASA's most conspicuous, embarrassing (and non-fatal) gaffes."

Ah, this was the mention I was looking for & completely missed. Okay, now I feel better that they clarified what they were going for.

/That being said, I did chuckle over the "Martian air defense" comment. :)

Apollo 13. The oxygen tank thermostat that wasn't rated to control the voltage it was hooked up to.

Um, #5 on Galileo is wrong. Galileo had no parachutes as it was an orbital probe. Unless they are counting the chutes on the atmospheric probe that dropped into Jupiter's atmosphere. But there was no problem with those, and it all happened several years before the Genesis faceplant. In fact, Galileo was deorbited into Jupiter's atmosphere a year before Genesis...

/Great fact-checking there, Lou...

StarDoc: Um, #5 on Galileo is wrong. Galileo had no parachutes as it was an orbital probe. Unless they are counting the chutes on the atmospheric probe that dropped into Jupiter's atmosphere. But there was no problem with those, and it all happened several years before the Genesis faceplant. In fact, Galileo was deorbited into Jupiter's atmosphere a year before Genesis...

/Great fact-checking there, Lou...

glad someone else caught that

No mention of Fark's favorite diaper-wearing astronaut...

I remember when the first Hubble images came in blurry, and I also remember the first images after the correction. How much did the agency learn from that institutional disaster and subsequent formidable fix?

I also sometimes wonder just how many children have been first inclined to wonder about the universe and other big questions due to a Hubble image.

Millions? Tens of millions?

oh snap! Wired just put together another one of their slide shows! This one proves that all the NASA folks are human! And they even make mistakes!

And then half of you come in here to point out how Wired made a mistake and didn't put people dying in their article! Wired makes goofs too!

shiat, ain't there no one on this rock that is perfect?? That has never made a mistake?

I agree, these nine strikes listed here for NASA are more than enough to prove the space program needs to be shut down.

"Genesis face plant"

I lol'd. Loudly.

Canadian Canuck: ... Or at the very least the problems between the engineers and management.

Those problems still exist. I've got an engineer friend working on NASA projects who tells me of this brand of idiocy. In some cases they want him to sign off on project specifics that haven't been fully tested. You know, just to expidite the process. (He won't.) Management is more concerned with the bottom line (and protecting their phony-baloney jobs) than safety and accuracy.

Excepting fatal loss-of-life errors, it's understandable that sometimes there will be goof-ups. When you're on the cutting edge of technology you've got to expect it. But when problems happen, and they don't learn from the experience and make corrections, that's avoidable and a waste of our money.

Galileo parachutes, wtf? Surely this should have been on the list.

nstutsman
I agree. We should save the money from the space program and put it into the military budget. That's a much more sensible way to spend money.

/and we should also divert more education funds straight into the correctional system.

when subcontractors used an English measurement system and not the favoured American metric system. I believe the word they are looking for there is the imperial measurement system. The English, like every one except 3 countries in the world, use the metric system.

Nothing about Gemini 8 either.

Me thinks this article was written by young-uns born sometime after 1980,

/you know the routine

What about the Mars thing that landed a month or two ago? They are desperately trying to send that one down the memory hole.

My favorite was when NASA convinced all you Hale-Bopp survivors that they found a Martian Meteor full of worms in Antarctica. Most of the general population probably still believes that one. Pull the plug on NASA pronto!

Wasn't the Mars Rover getting stuck behind a rock and being unmovable from Control a bit more of a goof up than the 'spelling error' ?

A Challenger Disappears



I maybe an asshole, but shame on them for not making that #1.

Was NASA in on that whole streetlight fiasco?

No mention of Capricorn One?

Go back to school.

YouPeopleAreCrazy: Puke: Good old gov't bureaucracies.
They fail and get more money.

And no private company has ever built something and had it fail. Never happens. Every single product or service from the private sector meets or exceeds expectations.

/how many successful corporate launches to Mars have we seen?

THIS!

What NASA does is not exactly "easy" and the fact that they have been successful in what they do to making it appear easy or routine to many of the general public is a testament to their achisvements. NASA is responsible for the most technical achievements in human history like the moon landing (yes it did happen). Most of the problems they have can be linked to politics (like launching Challenger when it was too cold) or due to budget cuts of its already minescule (compared to other government spending) budget.

We should have had a moon base for at least 20 years and should be on our way to Mars already but politics and budget cuts grounded that. We are also "wasting" all we learned from the Shuttle program by ending it without using what we learned to build a superior reusable orbital craft in conjunction with the new moon shot. Of course with the new moon shot we are having to reinvent a lot of wheels on that also since Apollo was killed without expanding on it.

NASA is one of the few ways we use our technology that is not to kill people but for the whole purpose of learning things. That is a noble cause in my opinion. The moon is also the only "new" land where human explorers traveled to without weapons.

Ohh and for the people who are wondering why Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia are not on there:
FTA:
With that in mind, let's take a look at some of NASA's most conspicuous, embarrassing (and non-fatal) gaffes.

DiamondDave: No mention of Capricorn One?

That's what my pic is from, dood.....

/glad someone is on my lawn....

Why is it that immediately after reading most of these I envisioned a little pale man in a cubicle with his head down, fist being slammed onto his desk as he screams "Goddamn it! God-DAMN it!!"?