From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Standards for units Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 01:46:57 EDT Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Said, > In a message dated 4/3/2007 19:29:25 Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > writes: > > An Arianne 5 rocket had to be destroyed with its cargo when it veered > off course because of a faulty conversion from English to metric in the > guidance software. What a bummer! > I hate it when that happens!!! > > > Hi Didier, > > actually unless there was a second explosion I don't know about, the first > Arianne-5 proto-rocket exploded due to a variable parameter overflow > (missing > saturation check) in a calculation. A very spectacular overflow indeed. http://www.around.com/ariane.html > The conversion problem you mentioned happened on a Mars mission. This should shed some light over the manuvering details of that particular mission: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/toles-orbiter.gif (From http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/cartoon.htm) > BTW: I didn't expect my email about our strange US units to start such a > lengthy discussion on the board... OK, thanks for reminding us who's fault it is. :) Cheers, Magnus _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
