The Dumbest Mistakes In Space Exploration
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- čas přidán 17. 09. 2017
- Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes little mistakes can cause big problems, so here's my list of the small mistakes which turned into big problems while exploring space.
Also Sprach Zarathutra Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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"You make a thing foolproof and they invent a better idiot"
- somebody, sometime
Many years ago I worked for an industrial machine design company where the general principle of their designs in terms of safety was of three tiers:
1 - Fool proof.
2 - Idiot proof.
3 - Fucking Twat proof.
Nothing can be made foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Ran across this in a persons email signature:
There is no such thing as fool proof, with a sufficiently talented fool.
More like "you make something foolproof, then along comes an idiot".
Perfect quote.
One of my favorites was when NASA sent up a nice, new, high res digital camera up to the ISS, and forgot to include the memory card to go with it.
Doh!
You mean a GoPro, right?
@@crugleberryandfriends4740 I don't remember what make of camera it was. The important part is that the camera was in orbit and they left the memory card on Earth.
Next time I make this mistake, I'll feel better about myself knowing that NASA screwed up at the same thing.
Facepalm. No, Facedesk. Yeah, that's more fitting.
7:50 Russian scientists: "Venus is composed entirely of lens caps!"
WRITE THAT DOWN
What a discovery!
WE MUST ALERT THE MEDIA!
WE’RE HAVING A CRISIS!
Russian plastic is the best plastic in the world. It will even withstand the 450 degs C of Venus atmosphere.
I was watching the live coverage when Alan Bean destroyed his camera, and you left out the best part of the story. While they were trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the camera, the picture seemed to clear for just an instant, and capcom said something like "what did you do?" Bean was silent for a moment, and then said meekly, "I hit it on the top with my hammer."
Percussive maintenance finds its way into the stars.
Well....if you're going to send Mr Bean to the moon....
lol
@@4thllamaofthealpacolypse712 did you mean the British bean
@@ryanzhao4744 It seems like something he would do. The name co-incidence is amusing.
"It had to launch, flip 180 degrees, and then turn on the engines."
Soo.... they were KSPing in real life. Got it.
Vice Gaming I started cracking up when he said that. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that's a terrible idea!
Wait...
Words that should never be uttered at NASA: "well, it worked in KSP"
Jeb could've done it just fine!!
My XKCD senses are tingling
hmmmm, maybe. What you think about nuclear fireworks?
*Revert Flight > Revert to Vehicle Assembly Building*
except if you have already spent 3 hours building the spacecraft and another 3 launching it only t discover costs more than a simple rocket and is inherently more unsafe (the KSP equivalent of the space shuttle)
just realized that i put on the accelerometer backwards
Don't you just hate it when you tell your rocket to point prograde but it points retrograde
I guess that failure was *perverted.*
(I tried, shame on me)
Now combine that with a rocket that has its lander held to the main body by a too-long tube of fuel tanks, causing it to spin around its facing axis like the leg of a ballerina mid-pirouette. While trying to fly to Jool. :P
*Hold F9*
I think there's one that ought to get a special mention for being a dumb moment that actually turned out really well. When testing out the Apollo launch vehicle abort system (that solid rocket mounted on top of the capsule) they launched a boiler plate with a functional abort system on board a test rocket called Little Joe. However one of the steering fins had been wired up wrong so when the rocket started to roll, instead of correcting the role, the fin that was wired up the wrong way exacerbated it until the rocket broke up.
However, this triggered the abort system to fire. It functioned flawlessly and pulled the boiler plate capsule free of the disintegrating rocket before it could be significantly damaged. What's more it had done so under conditions that were far closer to what an actual in-flight emergency would be like than the simulated emergency ever would have been
Astronauts: "We're finally going to get full-color video from the Moon!"
Sun: "No paparazzi!"
Should have used a lens cap, they cause no issues (07:50)
Sun: "I HAVE TO PROTECT MY IMAGE!!!"
*Murders the camera*
Noo! iT wAs aLiEnZ!
@@mazdamaniac4643 nice TFS Nappa reference.
@@TheCrackedFirebird Cheers, Baymax fist-bump to you mate.
My favorite one that wasn't listed: The Mercury-Redstone 1 mission.
A launch disconnect plug that connected the booster to the pad didn't quite fit the socket on the booster correctly, so a pad technician cut a quarter inch off one of the prongs without telling anyone. When the rocket lifted off the plug came out as designed but one prong disconnected a few milliseconds before the other, which sent an error signal to the booster indicating a launch failure and shutting the engine down.
Meanwhile, the accelerometers in the capsule detected the acceleration as the stack lifted about 2" of the pad then felt the deceleration when the engine shut down and took that to mean it was at the end of powered flight, and it was time to jettison launch escape tower. Then the capsule fired the chaff intended to assist in tracking as it descended and ejected the parachute.
So what you're saying is that the hardware & software all worked perfectly, but the wetware screwed up... LOL
@@nairbvel Never seen or heard the term "wetware" ever. What does it even mean?
@@tankofnova9022 A system is made up of four components:
- Hardware (the part you can touch, bang on, toss thru the window, etc.);
- Software (the part you can't touch or see but that actually manipulates your data);
- Firmware and/or Data (depending on your textbook; firmware is software hard-coded into a chip); and
- Wetware (the part that cusses & bruises when it drops hardware on its foot).
I used to teach an intro to computing class at an all-girls college, and usually by the mid-class break of the 2nd session most would have their minds anywhere but in the classroom... So to end break I would write (one above the other): Hard / Firm/ Soft/ Wet (by the time I was working on the "W" you could usually hear a pin drop, then would put a big "WARE" next to them all and start with that part of the lecture. Of all the things my students forgot during a semester, that was never one of them. >:-)
checked on wiki: it was not a prong that was too short.
They used the wrong control cable.
while its plug was identical to the one intended, it was too long, causing it to separate after the power plug/cable, instead of before it.
nairbvel
Sir you’re a genius
Two incidents that I missed (those would be on my top 10 list):
1. The NOAA-19 satellite
Prior to launch, the satellite tipped over and fell to the ground, because a technician had removed the bolts securing an adapter plate to it, and he forgot to document his action. Repair cost: $135 million. The satellite eventually launched into orbit where it's still operating.
2. The Genesis spacecraft
It collected samples of solar wind, and was to be returned to Earth in a capsule. However, the parachute didn't work because of an accelerometer that was installed backwards (deja vu). Luckily, while the capsule was destroyed at impact, some of the samples remained intact and could be used for science.
Anyone else who is reminded of Murphy's law? It is worth noting that the original story told by Edward A. Murphy Jr. involved an accelerometer installed backwards!
It's incredible that they were able to recover intact samples with the hard landing. They were trying to catch the probe with a helicopter, once the parachute deployed. The reason was "Even landing under parachute might damage the samples."
The sample plates were cleverly designed with different thicknesses such that even shattered one could measure the thickness to see which was which. The science was virtually all recovered, but it was a lot more work and difficulty than had been planned. Also, it is possible that the government shutdown in 1995/6 during the design and construction of Genesis lead to a compressed schedule and might have lead to missing the design flaw. Finally, this was a "faster, better, cheaper" (pick any 2) class mission. So the first things to go are redundancy and cross checks.
That first one, rivals the conversion mess up and the Soviet 180 flip.
Murphy's Law: When I was attached to the Naval Air Wing in the late 60s, Murphy's Law was constantly on our minds. Our version states that "if an aircraft part CAN be installed incorrectly, SOMEONE will install it that way". Great care was made to prevent this possibility in the design of parts and cables in our aircraft. (different connectors, or limited reach etc.) However , invariably a few "Murphys" still would turn up and be discovered by the maintenance crew, but sometimes not, resulting in failures. We were all tasked to discover these and report them.
whatever keeps killing Japanese spacecraft?
"John, this accelerometer on this very sensitive guidance system for a hugely complex apparatus that has to be checked dozens of times to make sure the millions of funds don't go down the drain is a bit tough to mount. Is this the correct way of doing it?"
"Just use the sledgehammer I wanna go home."
This is Russia, so they applied a bit of Vodka to the mechanic and the problems solved themselves.
God, could you imagine actually successfully landing something on another planet, after so many failures, after all that effort, after so much money. And then realize that the lens cap won't come off.
Anyone who's played Kerbal Space Program can most certainly relate.
F9 to quicksave
@@tzatziki9328 Revert to vehicle assembly building (1yr ago)
I can see doing it once. But that many times? That's impressive.
pics or didn't happen
Who knew that despite the appearance of a rocky mineral surface, Venus was in fact made of plastic & rubber
gravytrader Actually, they thought Venus was made of metal, because the lense caps on that probe were made of metal. Plastic would melt very quickly in space.
Likely, i know jack about space. i love how dramatic 'Deploying the lens cap' sounds tho.
I believe the earlier problems with the lens caps was actually because they were made of plastic and they simply melted onto the camera...
As far as I know, all the the lens caps were made of Titanium. In a few of the pictures you can actually see the lens cap on the ground.
I mean in fairness nobody's gotten a probe to work for more than 45 minutes (I think) on Venus...which basically just shows how hostile the place is. Murphy's Law applies several fold there!
Yeah yeah, the LEM used 'metric'. But we all know the computer used wire-wrapped magnetic core memory which stored data in knots.
Well, they did navigate by the stars with a sextant. :) :) :)
Thats why its called spaceSHIP.
Knots are used universally in aviation as well, around the world, because of globe navigation.
Nothing to do with "superior" imperial units.
@@BlackStar250874 yeah also literal knots lol
@@OompaL0ompa Yeah..... because the literal translation for Astronaut is essentially Space/Sky Sailor????? Where do you think the "Naut" comes from?
"The accelerometers could still be put upside down if you brute force it."
This is literally the most Russian thing I've heard in a while.
You dont install accelerator
Accelerator install you
The poor tech who made that mistake probably died in a Siberian gulag 🙁
@@pauldzim a wat
@@pauldzim nvm i goggled
I know a Russian guy who inserted upside down with brute force the power connector from a power supply into his brand new CD-drive. It was back in 1996, when a CD-drive costed about $250, which was almost equal to his monthly salary!
Number 10: Rocket mounted upside down, then turns 360 degrees. Sounds like Kerbal meets Wile E. Coyote.
A real life example of "turn 360 degrees and walk away"
Yeah ... But that was electronics failing... So it's not a stupid mistake, it was just and accident, like the NASA spaceshuttles exploding... Something unpredictable went wrong
@@maxim6088 It wasn't a part failure--in fact the part worked as intended. It was an assembly problem. They installed a part upside down by forcing it. It was a stupid mistake. The shuttle exploded because a part failed due to a bad decision to fly in colder weather than it was designed to fly. Part failure was (correctly) predicted and ignored in that case.
No matter how much you screw up in rocket science... There will always be fireworks to cheer you up =)
nice one
unless there are people inside :(
but you can F5 and F9 if it fails :)
wait..............this is not Kerbin
Unless there's people inside... I don't think those fireworks will be cheering you up then.
Challenger.
Scott I agree entirely that the Space Shuttle was a technical marvel but failed spectacularly in its primary mission in reducing the cost of lofting payloads into orbit. However, NASA’s SLS simply trumps the Shuttle for being the dumbest mistake. The SLS rocket takes all of its components developed for the ‘re-usable’ Space Shuttle (RS-25 engines, hydrogen tank and solid rocket boosters) and intends to use them in an expendable design. The cost of launching the SLS Is so astronomically high that NASA can only afford one or two flights a year. Additionally, NASA is hunting around for missions to fly on this boondoggle. Finally, as if to add insult to injury, the development cost for the rocket is billions over budget and is years behind schedule even though the components are ‘tried, tested and off the shelf’. You could not make this sound more farcical even if you tried.
Yeah, the program cost to 'simplify and make cheaper' the RS-25 has cost more than if they bought all new RS-25s and tossed them after each test and flight!
Someone needs to write a book on how this much money and time could be wasted on "tried, tested and off the shelf" tech. It boggles the mind. And besides the Space Shuttle hardware, the upper stage, the ICPS, is simply a crew-rated version of the much flown, much manufactured Delta Cryogenic Second Stage. Which uses the absurdly rip-off priced RL-10 engine. Cost, > $25 million each. For an engine who's development price was paid off decades ago. (Bonus insult to the taxpayers: the Vulcan rocket which we are helping with development money, and have already contracted for ISS supply missions, uses *two* of these old engines on a "Clean sheet design of a new U.S. rocket.")
Couldn't agree more
saying it would reduce costs might've been something they just told congress just so they could get a chance to advance technology, which I am personally okay with. Congress lies all the time and wastes money on shit that doesn't benefit our society at all most of the time.. They waste more money in a year than they've ever spent on NASA. If NASA has to blow smoke up their ass just so they can get an opportunity to conduct science and advance our society that's fine with me.
@@donjones4719 Check out my book "Rocket Surgeon"
"people are very very good at finding new ways to do things badly"- those are some wise words
7:32 FFS if it's on Venus, you don't even need to take the cap off, just design it to dissolve faster.
Here I am trying to laugh at these mistakes when I realize, I put my underwear on backwards this morning.
HUinstinct Does that not bother you? I feel it right away
At least you didn't start walking backwards.
My eyes say i'm pointing forwards but my underwear tells me otherwise.
I'd say ignoring that one dude's warning about O-Rings and launching Challenger anyway was pretty dumb.
nlingrel I think we were trying to avoid fatal ones
Political pressure, "a teacher in space". Results: a dead teacher along with six other crew members, and a destroyed orbiter.
Richard Feynman froze one of those O-rings and supposedly threw it on the ground during an official investigation. It broke into pieces once again proving that demonstration physics is stronger than a person's personal assurances..
I don’t believe there was an actual warning about the O-rings. The subsequent investigation revealed the problem.
A hilarious dumb mistake is in the beginning of the book "Ignition" where the head of NARTS(?) wanted to test the ignition time of various hypergolic fuels. He had an elaborate piece of test equipment built that was going to make very precise time measurements and film the shock waves of the exhaust of the miniature rocket motor built into the equipment. The very first time they tried to use it, the oxidizer valve leaked. One of the techs saw it and told the boss it was leaking. The boss, who wanted to see his new toy work for the first time, told him to go ahead and fire the motor. Every one in the lab backed away. Liquid fuel motors don't like excess fuel or excess oxidizer in the combustion chamber, so this one did what any rocket motor would do. It blew up. The author wrote that he clapped his hand over his mouth, ran outside, and fell down laughing in the grass. Afterwards the lab crew disassembled what was left of it and 'lost' the pieces so that it would never be used in their lab again. Not a dumb hardware mistake, just a dumb management mistake.
Well, if you look at NASA's Challenger launch, that's what happened. The engineers raised concerns about the flight due to weather conditions, but the management did not listen.
About 25 years ago I was involved in an engineering project that was, like the Space Shuttle, a triumph of ingenuity over a really dumb idea. The problem was that the marketing men and biochemists had already ploughed so much time and money into the project *before* they involved the engineers that critical and irreversible engineering decisions had already been made by non-engineers who had no conception of the problems they were creating for us. We could have had the project completed years earlier, and at a fraction of the cost, if only we had been involved at the outset.
"We control the funding. Therefore, we are the smart ones." Marketing people exist to impede any useful progress.
Elon Musk recounts how they spent a lot of time and money improving a function (manufacturing, not rocket) then eventually discovered they didn't even need it. So the FIRST question should be: Is this really needed?
I might have chosen Apollo I for first place, but admittedly it would be tough to put in a light-hearted video.
Another would be the "Nedelin catastrophe"
Honorable mention could go to Wernher von Braun: He need to get data on the terminal phase of a V2 test, and figured the safest place to be was the calculated impact point, since the rocket NEVER lands there. On that particular day it very nearly DID, and WvB , along with an assistant, was blown 6 feet or so into the air, and nearly killed.
@tinwoods Where?
Is that what broke WvB's arm (in photos when he was brought to the USA at the end of the war)..
@@dwightmagnuson4298 WvB broke his arm in a car accident on the way to find those Americans to surrender himself to
Fatal is beyond dumb, it is negligent.
On the other side, during WW2, the British were testing Barnes Wallis's 'Tallboy' 'earthquake' bomb. And they wanted to bury a camera to record earth movement. So they stuck it in the middle of the target, which they cynically reckoned was as safe as any other spot...
Project manager to lens cap guy: "You had _ONE_ job!"
"Next time? All the lens caps are getting their own _solid rocket motors._ It's the only way to be sure."
Maybe he DIDN'T have one job. Maybe the lens cap guy was also the janitor, ever think of that? Then he could say "Need I remind you that I had more than one job! And I don't hear you complaining about how squeaky clean the grout is on the tiles in the bathroom."
his one job was make the lens cap come off. he finally gets it and no-one's happy
He's probably STILL doing time in the Gulag.
Look on the bright side boss, we learned a lot about lens caps.
RE: Venera: "Da, Tovarisch. It appears Venus is made of aluminum. No, not ore - the good stuff."
Hi. Your video really brought back related memories! Thanks!
Here’s my story as a bidder in govt space/high tech ...
In the mid-late 80S, 1988, I believe, I went to WDC to a bidders conference. The govt has public bid solicitation and review conferences for EVERYTHING. I was an independent tech consultant, working hard to make a buck anywhere I could. (Still am.)
During the conference, Air Force Colonel Frederick Gregory, a space shuttle commander, came out at one point and gave a talk (to encourage serious participation) for US vendors, talked about so,e of the available RFPS, and begged the consulting USA vendors and manufacturers community to make parts the govt needed. He indicated many Asian companies were the only ones who were bothering to make and supply gasoline tank caps for our military vehicles, that the market was there, and to please jump in and compete.
He also said that the newest space shuttles looked all high-techie, and everyone’s read about all they can do, but they ALL ran on ancient avionics systems that went back even 18+ years.
With the commercial microcomputer boom, NASA still had to follow contract specs that were absurdly old, and contractors and designers weren’t allowed to keep up with commercial developments/upgrades that were exponentially surpassing taking the ancient specifics for spacecraft guidance and avionics control and internal computer systems.
Note, the B2 had i386 controlling computers, written into spec as using 386 Intel based processors. When the public learned of these new amazing stealth planes as finally becoming integral to US defense Military defense, home consumers had ALREADY been using home computers 2-3 generations ahead of the systems.
Govt contracts were sending out RFPs for stuff that was old, slow, far more expensive and out of date once again for production of the technological “wonders” PR firms were working overnight to convince the general public they needed to give unlimited budgets to to keep ahead of our enemy for our National Security™.
I always laugh when I think back to that eye opening bidders conference. Side note: Col. Gregory was a most impressive man. I had so much respect for him afterwards. He was very approachable, very open and kind. it an honor to meet him.
Old tech in the latest wizz-bang gizmos and what’s the price difference between keeping contracts to CURRENT tech in basic design may be another subject.
Thank you! Your vids are very interesting! Just found them and I could watch all night. As a matter of fact, I have been. It’s almost 3:30 am. I gotta get up and start working very soon!
TJ
11/12/2019
If you want direct contact, please tell me how.
This is as interesting as Scott's video. thanks for sharing
I love the idea of an engineer smashing away and cursing loudly at this "ill-fitting" accelerometer as they brute force it in place upside down. Sounds like my relationship with IKEA.
Simon Sjöström-grönkvist You now have me laughing out loud at the thought of IKEA rocket kits, with a manual with little pictograms of assembly steps and the confused guy calling his local IKEA shop for help! 😂
Some Soviet space failures could've been in the list, if they were not so tragic:
1) R-16 disaster in 1960. When a cocky general persuaded that the rocket was safe, and set himself near the launch place as a proof. Dozens of engineers and commanders didn't want to risk their reputation, so they followed him. All burnt.
2) Soyuz-11 depressurization. Which happened because of duralumin flax at high attitude, a phenomenon known since WW2.
3) N-1. A flawed idea costed billions of rubles.
Nr1. from Russians is Progress Collision with Mir as they undocked Progress to test if they can dock it manually to save money. Well, it turned out - they can't. Mir depressurized, lost one module, must be evacuated and left behind w.o. electricity supply.
Lies! Russia strong!
Didn't expect to see you here...
@tinwoods No, by friendly commieblock vatnik.
@@CRL_One That's like the Apollo 1 hatch ...
12:33 “the accelerometer was *PUTIN* upside down.”
In the early years my father worked at Cape Canaveral in rocket guidance. I have a vague memory of him telling me of a spectacular failure due to someone programming in the square root of a negative number.
I've had KSP decide to do #2 to me... Sucks when you attempt launch 15 times trying to figure out why it's spinning out of control, only to realize the rocket thinks it's pointed at the ground.
Sucks more in real life, though. 😆
Hate when that happens!
Just set the pod as the root part. Or put a docking port at the top and press *CONTROL HERE* much more complicated in real life though
Eh, just grab the reins and hand fly the sumbitch to orbit.
Blue/brown... who cares.. turn east 5* at about 3k, and if the sky is above you, and the ground is below you and you are hauling copious amounts of ass... its all good.
That's the way Jeb would do it.
Jeb: Hey, bill, make another note here, would ya? Must be something wrong with this ol' Mach meter. Jumped plumb off the scale. Gone kinda screwy on me.
Bill: You go ahead and bust it, we'll fix it. Personally, I think you're seein' things.
Jeb: Yeah, could be. But I'm still goin' upstairs like a bat outta hell.
Personally, I think the biggest accomplishment of the shuttle program was the fact that it fixed Hubble. If it wasn't for a vehicle with the design and idea of the shuttle, we'd never have been able to perform such a fix. It may have been expensive and a waste at times, but every time I see the deep field I'm reminded of the fact that without it, we may have very well given up on looking as deep into space as we are. Without the shuttle fixing it, there'd be no James Webb space telescope in development.
The job didn't need the Space Shuttle. The replacement module, the COSTAR, was no bigger than a telephone booth. A much smaller vehicle, on the scale of the Dreamchaser would have been sufficient to carry it and a repair crew, and any of a number of medium lift launch vehicles could have lifted it into orbit.
People cite satellite retrieval and repair as some kind of magic that justifies the shuttle program, but who cares? No one wants old satellites back. When one fails you just launch a replacement. The shuttle had satellite retrieval capability for exactly one reason: because the Air Force had crazy dreams of tinkering with Soviet satellites on orbit. Not the smartest plan, since the Soviets are known to have built space stations with freaking machine guns installed.
@@jshepard152 this is how you get a cloud of space debris
As wonderful as the Hubble turned out to be, it would have cost far, far less to not have repaired it but send up a replacement instead.
@@jshepard152 The shuttle retrieved the Intelsat VI F-3 satellite which was stranded in low Earth orbit after the upper stage (of the Martin Marietta Titan III it was launched on) failed to reorientate and fire. The satellite was released from the upper stage, and recovered by the shuttle. It was fitted with a new PKM and placed into the correct orbit.
I remember one of the engineers who built Intelsat VI saying at the time that they didn't want to have to build another one.
Seems to me the absolute dumbest thing was the decision to launch Challenger when it was too cold and the lead engineer was saying it wasn't safe.
This is supposed to be a video of lighthearted humor. While that is a dumb mistake in rocket science history, it's not "haha funni" like a misprogrammed/backwards inertial guidance system is.
@@davidkueny2444 i guess that leaves out the Apollo 1 hatch
@@davidkueny2444 Who are you to say what this video is supposed to be?
you missed challenger engineers said, "It's to cold the O ring seals will fail." How many dead?
Big Bird was going to be on that flight and I will never forget that
That was by far the dumbest.
That was a failure indeed. But I think it was more of a bureaucracy than engineering fail. I have seen an interview with one of the engineers and he said something like he warned them but they (including his superior) hushed him. Kond of reminds me of the Chernobyl disaster, where bureaucrats and people trying to climb the ladder overruled the engineers.
That philosophy continues today where armchair musers "know better" than legit peer-reviewed scientists, in the areas of climate science, shape of the earth, vaccines, use of masks during pandemic.
The problem with having politicians fund your program is that they have expectations that you're not spending more money than you're making. For the shuttle program, this meant more frequent launches - making delays their worst enemy.
Of course, mix in the fact that NASA had an amazingly high opinion of themselves- due to their track record of successful flights, and you have a recipe for disaster.
The engineers already knew of the flaw, and had a design ready for the manufacturer- but as NASA couldn't bear to wait until the next day or two when the weather warmed up, they sure as hell weren't going to wait for new boosters to be manufacturered.
I think you didn't give enough credit to Schiaparelly. It's story is waaaaaay dumber xDDDD
To be able to land Schiaparelli should know it's own altitude. For measuring it Schiaparelli has Inertial Measurement Unit (which by design cannot work properly when it spins too much) and radar altimeter.
What happened:
Stage 1.
"Simulations did not provide a realistic behaviour of the parachute deployment phase".
That's the tip of the iceberg. Parachute deploys, Schiaparelly dangles on shroud lines, IMU goes "ooh, I don't know what's going on. Where are we?".
But, eventually, schiaparelli stabilizes.
Stage 2.
Schiaparelli starts spinning. Angular velocity exceeds the limits of what IMU can handle. IMU goes "ooh! I don't know what's going on. Don't believe the data I send".
Seems like it has reacted as it should, right? Nope. It sent 'failure' signal waaaay too late (in theory, "the persistence of IMU saturation time" BELIEVED to be 15 ms, but in reality no one checked). So, IMU was sending incorrect data for quite some time.
That incorrect data was taken into calculations, which in turn showed that Schiaparelli is UPSIDE-DOWN. On a parachute. Upside-down. Is that even possible? Ah, nevermind!
Further calculations showed that altitude is NEGATIVE. Which means that Schiaparelli flies somewhere INSIDE the Mars. "Placet is a Crazy Place" by Fredric Brown, anyone?
Stage 3.
Programmers aren't that stupid. If IMU signals 'failure' for more than five seconds, backup navigation system turns on: radar altimeter. But this isn't just radar altimeter, this is radar doppler altimeter, which means that it measures change of altitude, not it's absolute value. So, to work correctly, altimeter needs a starting point. Guess what starting point it got? Yup! "We're under the surface of Mars".
Stage 4.
Since we're under the surface, we don't need parachute, right? Seems logical. "Release the parachute!"
*crazy mode* Since we're under the surface, we NEED landing thrusters! "Switch-on RCS!"
*3 seconds later* The criteria for the landing thrusters to switch off is based on the combination of the altitude and vertical velocity. Again, seems logical. Sooo... "Uhm. My mistake. We don't need landing thrusters. We've landed already. Turn RCS off as soon as possible."
Stage 5.
Yet another man-made crater on Mars.
This is from official report:
Recommendation 05 - Robust and reliable sanity checks shall be implemented in the on-board S/W to increase the robustness of the design, which could be, but not limited to :
- Check on attitude
- Check on altitude sign (altitude cannot be negative).
- Check on vertical acceleration during terminal descent and landing (cannot be higher than gravity).
- Check altitude magnitude change (it cannot change from 3.7 Km to a negative value in one second).
- Check wrt pre-flight timeline (altitude or acceleration profile vs time) to check consistency of measurements
*facepalm*
It seems like it would have been simpler to use impact sensors to tell it when to release the chute. That would make angular velocity irrelevant.
@@MikeDCWeld The parachute is released before touching the surface. In the low pressure of Mars, they are useless after the velocity is under 200-300km/s, so the next stage are the trusters, and you have to release the chute before that in order not to interfere and even burning them.
@@ScientistDog 200/300 m/s (km/s is a bit too high 😅)
I wish it would be possible to bookmark comments on CZcams.
End result schiparelli becomes shrapnelli
My college software engineering class covered the Ariane 5 disaster when we were talking about the major mistakes that have been made in program development. One thing of note that I thought was particularly dumb about the decision was that they gave the backup computer the exact same programming, so that right after the primary computer failed, the backup took over, and then immediately made the same error. IIRC They copied the code because they wanted the backup to solve the case of a hardware failure in the primary computer, not a software failure, which makes sense, but was short-sighted.
Great video Scott!
There is nothing at all short-sighted about using the identical software on both the primary and the secondary computers. Software does not fail like something physical can fail. Ex: a bolt can break due to either being under-sized, or manufactured correctly, or put under more stress than what was expected, or the system may fail because someone forgot to install the bolt.
A program will execute exactly the same way every time, Software does not wear out. Hardware does. Backup computers are present to handle situations in which the primary computer has failed due to a hardware malfunction. Of course the assumption is that the software was written correctly.
However, the situation in which the instructions tell the computer to do something other than what you wanted it to do is another matter. :-)
Yeah, this is quite standard for hardware redundant systems to have identical software; in fact having different software would be very unusual.
What always bugged me about it is that a launch simulation should have caught it.
And I can't imagine not simulating, so what *else* went wrong ?
On the Space Shuttle they were smart and had 4 flight computers with identical software, plus a 5th with different software that would only run if the first four ran out of redundancy.
tbh, the explosion of that proton M was so fabulous that it almost worth the cost.
Damn ! I knew it ! Michael Bay was involved in the russian space program !
it was a lot of ground pollution so be careful lol
My god, converting 64 bits to 16 bits is such a classic mistake just like using two sets of units.
Or two incompatible versions of CAD software to design a plane in different countries
Like imperial and metric?
All they had to do was to change the 16 bit integer to unsigned and it could have counted up twice the value, then no kaboom - at least not on the first launch.
@@greggv8 That wouldn't fix the problem, only make it harder to spot. Better to fail now and find the problem, then later on when more will be on the line.
The early Thor missile test and the turbopump failures are a good SNAFU too. General Schriever would not allow the rocket motors to be removed to be fitted with an improved turbopump, insisting on a change of lubricant instead. The result was six more launch failures. Duh!
- Yeah that was No.-2 on my amended list.
Does the accelerometer mounted upside down mean that the controls are reversed, like putting the probe core upside down in KSP? They should have been suspicious when seeing a brown Navball before launch.
Besides that: It sounds like something that could be checked (or even corrected) by software.
Haha
Stefan Klass that would have to be one fast programmer.
The Yellow Dart Not on the fly, in advance. Would have been smarter than putting an arrow on the thing.
It wouldn't be that hard if output left makes go right flip all outputs, sounds like something I would put in if I was designing a rocket software system. Cause those things are expensive and it's best not to break them.
Just shows how important tag out procedures are...
You had me at, "they were testing the properties of the lens cap."
One other honorable mention concerning Apollo 12. They left a whole canister of film on the surface of the moon and realized it when it was too late for them to go retrieve it.
The Space Shuttle was like a car that needed to be stripped down to almost all of its individual components and reassembled after every drive.
Simon Coles strip & rebuild ... kinda like a dragster ... but goofier
To be fair: getting a lens cap ejected that's being pressed down on by the *pressure of Venus atmosphere* is actually no trivial feat.
CatSay Find total surface area of the Cap, find the pressure per square inch on Venus. Multiply one by the other. Multiply it by 3 and that's how much pressure you need.
motorize it next time so it just flips out of the way tbh
So why not add a pressure valve to the lens cap?
motorizing it cost extra weight and power.
so to have that extra power more weight needs to be added (battery/solar panels)
which means weight needs to be taken off of another part, just so that lens cap can be taken off with a motor :p lol oh dear lord engineers have it hard tbh lol lol
yeah they sure do.
Hubble: Worlds most perfectly wrong object.
Ha ha ha ha
"I mispronounced jupiter as-"
how do you mispronounce jupiter? Joopiter?
"Saturn"
Oh
The acceleratometer issue is a big enough thing that is t has spawned a corollary to Murphy's Law: "Any component that can be mounted backwards, eventually will".
Another related incident my lecturer on re-entry systems has told about was a lander (can't remember which one) which had an accelerometer that was to be sued to trigger the parachute release, but which was mounted backwards, meaning that the parachute wouldn't be able to trigger, and the whole thing would pancake into the ground.
The thing was though that it didn't. For some reason, the parachute did deploy, and only 1 second later than intended. So apparently someone, somewhere had made another critical mistake in the software, that resulted in everything working after all. "So remember kids, always make sure you've got an even number of idiots on your team. That way, their mistakes will cancel out."
More likely that the programmer set the trigger routine to ignore the sign bit. (perhaps due not receiving any info on whether he was working with decent-rate or (its direct opposite) climb-rate)
That lens cap one.👏
I kinda want to see the data on the properties of that lens cap . . .
Scott: **Makes a mistake**
Also Scott: **Roasts big mistakes to distract from his mistake**
A man after my own heart, Scott.
For me, the number one event was repeatedly ignoring flames coming out the seals on the space shuttle solid rocket boosters! The flames were observed on multiple launches and essentially ignored, that is, until the Challenger explosion.
This sounds inaccurate
The shuttle had a fundamental flaw.
That was the "land like an airplane" feature.
Our politicians somehow connected THAT with re-usability with which it has NO connection!
We needed re-usability that much was true
However the airplane-like shape necessitated that side mounting which preclude any sort of escape system that could have saved the crew.The vehicle would still have been lost.
It also mandated that a huge surface area be exposed as the Heat Zone necessitating the heat tiles and thermal insulation at that level.
By the time the SRBs ignite, all they CAN do is set off any escape system and hopefully if it works save the crew the vehicle was a goner at that point!
I nearly fell over when they first mentioned " O " rings. WTF rubber o rings on a giant tube of but ing explosive. The joints should have been seal welded.
Tip to future rocket makers dont design your accelerator to look the same on the top as the bottom.
Use 8-way symmetry so it can be mounted in 8 different ways. More fireworks!
Awkay
Very good.
I used to be a software engineer for an aerospace company and I often brought up the Ariane V crash. It is a great example of the dangers of software reuse. (Software reuse in safety-critical systems is one of those things that sounds good in theory, but in practice it seldom works out. It is a favorite of young engineers and managers.)
I was ignored, of course, so the company spent millions in an attempt to save thousands.
Or how about the stupidity of using a 16 bit downcasted value in pretty much any software ever? Ariane 4 started development in 1982 so they could definitely have used 64 bit values for everything, especially on the launcher segment where radiation tolerance isn't as big a priority.
gajbooks
No, they almost certainly had to use space-rated parts (they would in America at least) in 1982, 16 bit data busses were about the limit for these parts. (Actually, I'm a bit surprised if they could even get that powerful of a computer.)
They scaled the value in order to improve the performance. That was pretty standard back then.
The problem was that they didn't have a complete set of requirements or didn't test the requirements for the Ariane V. This is the problem with reuse. It's very easy to have a latent bug in the code that only comes out when the environment changes.
According to the one crappy article I could find on the IEEE, apparently it was based on the MC68020 plus a floating point coprocessor. The 68020 being a 32 bit processor and the 68882 FP processor supporting 80 bit operations. The power wasn't really an issue (although I'm sure the space rated versions ran at lower clock speeds). It's horrible practice to reuse mission critical code, of course, but integer overflow bugs are also really bad and are extremely easy to avoid in any hardware from the 80s onward.
If there was some sort of grand unified operating system for spacecraft then reusability wouldn't be a problem because people would find out that some idiot was downcasting an integer, but of course because this software was not written to be reused in addition to being obviously hacked together (yeah, just leave it running for 40 seconds, I'm sure it'll be fine) you get weird bugs like this which explode your rocket.
As time consuming as it is to write, I'm a fan of "can't mess up no matter how weird a value you give it" software even if it's for something trivial, not that this is always doable or necessary within the constraints. I am by no means saying that all code has to be mathematically verifiably perfect, but you can at least make a good faith effort within the processing power available. (Though I wonder how many of the strange design decisions boiled down to unreasonable corporate requirements and not the decisions of the obviously well-funded programmers)
gajbooks
The 68020 was released in 1984 so it is unlikely that it was used if the subsystem really was designed in 1982. Like you, I wasn't able to find definitive proof of what CPU was used. It would've run at something like 12MHz back in those days. Floating point was rarely used because the early FPUs were incredibly slow. (Ah, the good old days when programmers actually had to worry about performance. :) )
Reportedly the software was written in ADA which is ironic since ADA is fully capable of protecting variables to prevent overflows like this.
It is a great cautionary tale of the dangers of reuse without thorough retesting.
Which aerospace company do you work for?
Hmm yes, the floor here is made out of lens caps.
15:50, That Sir, is the true definition of Murphy's Law: "No matter how many good ways there are to do something, there will always be someone who does it the wrong way"
Yep, but that's because there is usually even more ways to do it wrong.
Callahan's corollary: Murphy was an optimist
0:21 "So uh, to distract from it, I figured I would highlight some other peoples' dumb moments in space and rocketry"
FTFY :P
marvellous
lol
"FTFY"? This does not compute. Elaborate.
Fixed that for you
8:12 "...to go into orbit around the Mars..." Hmmm... I'm glad I'm not the only one to do this #KSPInducedBadGrammar
I worked on commercial space communication satellites in the period shortly after the Ariane 5 flight 1 disaster. Customers were reluctant, to say the least, to put their satellite on Ariane 5 flight 2.
I liked the announcement on the Ariane website immediately after that failure: "Ariane 5 has not yet achieved flight qualification status."
Such a complicated way of saying, "It didn't work this time."
@@firstLast-jw7bm What do you have to say about programmers who use signed integers for values that absolutely never ever will go negative? Make it unsigned and the value that can be stored doubles. If your problem is rollover at 32K then switch to unsigned and it can go up to 64K. But unsigned is treated as always being positive. To use an unsigned integer value as an always negative number you have to ensure that everywhere in the rest of the code that references that variable it's written to treat it as negative. I dunno of any program that has done that. Easier to use up another whole word to hold a larger value and set it as a signed integer.
11:40 ill admit ive tried this in KSP thinking it would keep pulling on top of the rocket to keep it straight.
I learned very quick.
I tried it once and didn't understand. Later, I realised it was because the rocket engines were on pylons, and the pylons were acting as top fins, causing serious aerodynamic problems. The irony is it was a modular rocket system; several modules joined by docking ports to be reconfigured in space, and the rocket itself was one of these modules. I could just have easily attached the other modules to the top, leaving the rocket with its pylons at the bottom.
One of my favorite space mistakes happened during the development of the Apollo Command Module. They were testing the launch escape system. One of the gyros in the rocket was hooked up backwards. It began to spin and broke apart. The failure caused the LES to automatically fire before they could manually do it. Lost the vehicle but the test was a success.
"Testing the properties of the lens cap" :D
i would have loved to see the look on the scientist face the moment he realised that..
🤣🤣🤣
"..testing the properties of the lense cap instead of testing the properties of venus!" LOL xD
".. Sir.. this is weird... This whole planet seems to be made entirely out of ... a sort of hardend bisphenol and phosgene! ..... Polycarbonate?!?!?!?!?!"
At least they may have gotten some data about how the lense cap changed (melted and boiled) upon being on venus.
Organics on Venus! Organics on Venus!
GengarTV ugly thumbnail u have on ur channel
Looking back three years after this posting, I can still hear the final summary evaluation: "It seemed like a good idea at the time".
The only thing more descriptive might be: "Oops".
Speaking of space mistakes, I saw your Saturn V and had to poke a little fun. I just built the Revell 1/144 Apollo Saturn V and after I showed it off I was told that no Apollo/Saturn V ever has the red USA marking on the S-IV-B third stage. It was only on Apollo 7 which was sent up on a Saturn 1B. I looked up images of each Apollo Satyrn V and sure enough, I had to remove the USA from the 3rd stage. I windered why CultTVman did not include them in the decal sheet I bought from him. Great channel. Cheers. 😁
"Every time a moon landing denier opens their mouth, that's pretty dumb". Absolute. Savage.
Also, makes no sense. "I am right because I am right". Lol, what? It's still too hard to send people to the moon! It's just not plausible.
So your proof of a multi billion dollar global conspiracy involving ever major superpower on the planet is that it seems like it'd be a bit tricky?
1. It's not scientific question because we have no raw data. It's more a matter of faith really.
2. So, if you are believing strongly in one point of view or another - you are using religious type of thinking (which is normal, most people do that all the time instead of thinking).
3. 2 superpowers and USSR had no evidence it's fake, and they would never fake such thing, so they thought it's probably real.
4. ...because what's *probably* happened is unmanned expedition went to the moon and back, after The Movie was filmed.
Maybe in 15-20 years or so real flight will be made, probably when Chinese invent new tech which will make it safe.
It'd still be a massive conspiracy involving most if not all of NASA, surely someone would speak out?
1. There is raw data, you just choose to not trust the scientists behind the work out of some strange skepticism with not much of a ground but, "Seems difficult, so probably didn't happen."
2. You can still think about religion by questioning some of the ideals held in various form, plus many religions have their own sets of 'proof' that is difficult to pinpoint as accurate or not, but this is all off topic anyway.
3. Your standpoint seems to suggest that nobody had proof of the Moon landing, at the same time you say the USSR had no proof it was fake either, so you immediately come to the conclusion that they thought it was real? Surely the USSR would be more likely to think the landing was fake than admit that America beat them to the first person on the Moon.
4. There were unmanned expeditions to the Moon by several countries. The thing is, 'the movie' would be completely impossible given technology back in the 1960's. Special lasers would be needed to simulate the Sun and they would have to be at such an insane angle to produce the shadows shown in the Moon landing videos that it would be impractical in every sense, as in it would literally be easier to mount a manned expedition than do that.
5. I sincerely hope that you're just trolling. Good day.
The Venera lens cap testing made me spew my soup. Dammit.
If you're spewing soup, you might wanna get that checked by a doctor...
Or an exorcist.
Well, at least you had no problems with ejection!
Love your videos ! My #1 choice in this discussion is the entirely boneheaded decision to leave Skylab in such a low orbit instead of sending a crew and strap on mini booster to nudge it up to maybe a 600 mile parking orbit for future use. (One delicious rumor is that the Russians considered doing this. What a PR masterstroke THAT would have been!)
8:11 where is it going Scott?
"... into orbit around the Mars"
Ah yes
The Schiaparelli story is even funnier than he said. The spacecraft was tilted more than 90 degrees which made a pseudo sinus function (that always worked for everything tilting less than 90°) to have a sudden sign flip. So instead of being 800 meters above ground, the spacecraft suddenly thought it was 800 meters BELOW ground.
One of my dumbest mistakes (in KSP): forgetting to turn off gravity hack (for testing munar rover) and spending a half hour trying to figure out why I couldn't control my rocket properly.
Re: Mars and messed up conversions: Even though I'm from the USA and I'm so used to Imperial, I do dabble in metric, and I see the wisdom in just going with metric everywhere and throwing Imperial away.
The US is slowly move towards metric/SI. It is the industries especially Aerospace still refuse to change. But I found it amusing that the US is a founding memeber of the SI system.
@@user-jh6vt8vx4v: Even then, "[a]erospace" isn't a brand. Oh, and there's really no such thing as "SI system." There is just "the SI."
Even in football?
FYI: NASA used and still uses metric. The error was made by an independent contractor.
@@iasimov5960 like...which football
How about the fact that the Proton rocket did not come with a self-destruct mechanism meaning that when the rocket went off track we got the maximum degree of damage (credit to Tim Dodd for including this tidbit in his excellent video on big booms).
Most air and spacecrafts don't have a self-destruct mechanisms
I love how the Manly Scot says "Mirror"
Scott : middor
Me : damn
Here's a few I'd add as honorable mentions:
1) The Second N1 Test: Basically, the USSR attempted to develop their own answer to the Saturn series of rockets in an attempt to beat the Americans to the moon (as much as the Russians love to deny that they ever wanted to land on the moon to save face), and their answer was the N1, which is still the most powerful launch vehicle ever built...or it would be if it actually worked right. In all honesty, all of the tests of of this launcher were failures, but the second one in particular stands out the most. Basically, it had a pretty severe design flaw in its fuel system, which could cause its engines to cut out due to oscillations. During the second test, that's exactly what happened, causing the rocket to fall back to the launchpad shortly after liftoff and explode in the largest man-made, non-nuclear explosion in history.
2) The Progress M-34 Incident: Rather than a launch vehicle, this incident involved two spacecraft: an unmanned supply ship and the Mir space station. Following the collapse of the USSR, the Russian space program was having problems regarding expenses, and one of the major costs that they felt was worth cutting was the 'Kurs' guidance system for their unmanned Progress supply craft for provisioning the Mir space station, as these guidance systems were made in Ukraine and they were being charged through the nose for it. The Russians decided to try using the manual TORU docking system instead, sending up two Progress supply craft, M-33 and M-34, to conduct a test. M-33 missed the station entirely, while M-34 crashed into the 'Spektr' module, causing the station to depressurize and forcing the crew to seal off the module permanently. Unfortunately, the station received a lot of its power from the solar panels attached to Spektr, and the loss of this power caused further problems down the line.
3) Apollo 1: This one can be summed up pretty simply: faulty wiring + pure oxygen atmosphere + a hatch that takes a really long time to open = three dead astronauts whose deaths were preventable.
4) Destruction of the Challenger: Another preventable accident seeing as an engineer identified the problem that eventually resulted in the destruction of the aforementioned space shuttle ahead of time, but the guys in charge chose to ignore him. Seven astronauts died because of their hubris.
5) MPL: Mars Polar Lander was a US lander that was to land on Mars' south pole in 1999. This was only two months after the MCO fiasco as well, just noting that. Begins it's descent. The landing legs open and the shock of them opening triggers the pressure sensors. This trips the Indicator State (the variable that tells the spacecraft if it's on the ground) to 1. The lander then reaches 40 meters at which point the radar is ineffective. Computer starts checking the Indicator State to see if the pressure sensors have been tripped. It's already at 1. Cuts the lander loose from 40 meters. No more lander.
6) Phobos 1: This was another Soviet mission. Launches perfectly fine on it's way to Phobos (the moon of Mars). Then 2 months in. It's nowhere close to Mars, a technician, while sending regular commands leaves out a single hyphen. Computer receives a faulty command and shuts down. Phobos 1 is dead.
In regards to Apollo 1, it was actually a hatch that opened inwards, which made it extremely hard to open if the inside of the capsule was at a higher pressure than the outside
The largest non nuclear explosion was the destruction of the defences in Heligoland, a German island and naval base in the North sea after WW2. The Royal Navy loaded several thousand tonnes of excess munitions and explosives to blow up the fortifications, radically reshaping the island.
There were also quite a few explosions caused by munitions ships being torpedoed or attacked by Japanese Kamikazes. There is film on youtube of a ship carrying 2000 tons of explosive being hit by a Kamikaze off Okinawa and I have read of a 10,000 ton load ship being torpedoed and the explosion destroying the attacking U boat.
Then there is the detonation of about 4000 tons of bombs at the RAF Fould underground storage dump near Burton on Trent.
@@SvenTviking - Minor Scale test in 1985 was equivalent to 4 kilotons of TNT
#10 as Tim Dodd would say: " flamy end up, pointy end down". Yep.
If this bit points to space you are having a bad time and will not go to space today
12:54 and that's why they failed. It was difficult, but not impossible. As someone who makes fixtures, you need to make it ABSOLUTELY idiot proof, and have NO possible way to put stuff in the wrong way.
So Scott, when are you going to try to get to the Mun in KSP using a pendulum rocket? Should make for an interesting challenge.
Put enough fins at the bottom and anything will fly in KSP
The magic of gyroscopes will make this possible.
Won't work in KSP. It will detect exhaust from the engine obstructed by another part of same vessel (regardless of distance to that part) and it will produce no thrust. You can only make something like П-shaped, with engine in the middle at the top and tanks on the sides. But you can't make them converge back in the middle at the bottom.
Or you can just offset the radial-mounted engines (like Mk-55 "Thud" or 24-77 "Twitch) at the top around 10 degrees outwards.
Proton one reminds me of putting a probe core backward in ksp
Pretty much what happened in reality. Put equipment upside down, rocket thinks space is at the center of the earth.
Yep..........
Proton reminds me of when I stuck a pod on a pod to do a rescue mission
NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN
what the hell is ksp (I`m 84 years old).
How can you "accidently" tape over footage from the biggest event in human history??? Its like "accidently" painting over the mona Lisa or "accidently" bulldozing the great piramids🤔🙄🙄🙄🙄
Or accidentally throwing the tape where The Doctor regenerated for the first time in an incinerator because it was only in monochrome.
Tapes go lost all the fucking time becouse the people who are seposed tot take care of them are minimum wage staff or sometimes even volenteers. If you dont pay people enough to care about doing their jobs right, they wont.
Biggest event in human history? Yeah sure...You can say that about hundreds of things
It’s not only NASA; we have lost a lot of broadcasting history, especially in the 60s and early 70s because those large, expensive 2 or 3” reels of tape had to be reused because of cost.
Hi Scott,
I believe that the Mercury-Redstone 1 launch (all 4 inches of it) should at least get an honourable mention.
Especially the sequence of events after the abort, when the escape tower jettisoned itself, followed by the deployment of the drogue parachute, then the main and reserve parachutes, reminds me of a Road Runner cartoon.
It is safe to say that at the time nobody was amused, but 60+ years later, I can fall on the floor laughing when watching the video without any feelings of guilt.
**vp
Another candidate for inclusion is the Apollo CSM oxygen tank thermometers. The tanks were designed to be able to handle temperatures up to 81 degrees (freedom units*). For those unfamiliar with freedom units, 81 degrees is a pleasantly warm day, slightly above typical room temperature. Since oxygen boils at -297 freedom units, the engineers figured there was no way in hell an operational oxygen tank would ever reach 81 degrees, so the thermometers didn't display temperatures higher than that and as a result wouldn't tell the operators if the tank got too hot. Enter CSM-109. At some point during assembly, the shelf with oxygen tank number two from CSM-109 was dropped from a forklift. Inspections failed to reveal damage to the vent valve, so, thinking the spacecraft was safe, NASA went ahead and used it. In reality, the valve was jammed closed, but they didn't know that.
CSM-109 was mounted to SA-508 and rolled out in the spring of 1970 to be used on Apollo 13. During a launch rehearsal, the tank was filled with oxygen as it would be for a real mission. When the test was over, the tanks were drained so they wouldn't have to try to keep the oxygen cold for several more days until the launch. This is where the problems began. Since the valve was jammed, they couldn't drain the oxygen normally. Not knowing what the actual problem was, they came up with an alternate solution: use the onboard heaters to raise the temperature to 81 degrees and boil the oxygen off. This strategy should have taken a few days. This actually would have been fine, except there was another issue: the thermostats were designed to run on the CSM's 28v power supply, but the spacecraft was connected to the pad's 65v power supply. This caused the contacts on the thermostats to fuse shut, which prevented them from displaying the actual temperature. While the indicated temperature was 81 degrees, the actual temperature was about 1,000. This got the oxygen out much faster than intended, but also melted the insulation on wires in the tank.
With exposed wiring in an oxygen tank, something was bound to go wrong, and on the third day of the mission, they did. Shortly after finishing a TV broadcast, which, due to networks losing interest in the scientific missions after the space race was won, wasn't broadcast to anyone except the mission controllers, some other NASA personnel, and some of the astronauts' families at mission control, the tanks were stirred to help increase the accuracy of tank readings. About 90 seconds later, the exposed wiring caused an explosion that resulted in the loss of all the oxygen from both tanks, damage to the antenna, and potential damage to the engine. No more needs to be said about this, because every single person who's read this far, and 99.9% of people watching this video, know the story of Apollo 13 in detail. Even the general public knows this story reasonably well, since they made a movie about it.
*Freedom units used because my source for this information was Jim Lovell's book, which uses freedom units. Both because of the fact that he knows more about Apollo 13 than just about anyone else on or off the planet and because I don't want to look up conversions at the moment, I'm leaving them like that.
Bone-Tone Lord Oh, so close with the GREAT detail, but missed mentioning one key item. The tank contractor, Piper Cryogenics, Boulder, CO (a division of the Piper Aircraft Co.), before dropping the tank, ALSO failed to perform an engineering change order on said tank to upgrade the existing 28v thermostat to the 65v version. Source: NASA.
Freedom units sound like the inspiration for Freedom Fries.
Petition to change "Imperial" to "Freedom" since Europe doesn't even use them anymore.
(they're smart.)
Omg, I'm so glad I live in a country with metric system.
P.S. It's a pretty complex situation, not one big single (stupid) mistake, but a series of accidents.
@@ImperativeGames. All accidents, particlarly accidents with complex aerospace systems, are the result of a string of errors.
I feel as though Apollo 1 was the biggest mistake of all time. "Make the whole atmosphere out of oxygen, that will work out well!!"
Catpirate noting they had been performing the same test as the one from A1 since Mercury without incident. The oxygen atmosphere was also only one of many issues.
They'd used pure oxygen on literally every other mission without incident. The spacecraft was just a giant fire hazard with s**tty wiring.
Poor initial design of the capsule was party to blame.
Pure oxygen environment was a holdover from Mercury. They were able to make the spacecraft lighter by reducing the pressure and increasing the oxygen level.
And then literally bolt the astronauts in with no way to egress without someone prying the door off from the outside.
"Soviet rocket, American rocket?!? All part made in Taiwan!"
--Soviet Proton Technician
Made in Taiwan with SOVIET designs,Soviet metal (Taiwan doesn't produce enough metal to make rockets) they mine mainly gold,copper & silver. So i think that is why a rocket assembled in Taiwan is called a Russian rocket.
7:33 a piece of dialogue from a show i watch, that goes, "So, you see, a man can't be blamed for his ignorance, but once he knows......" comes to mind when hearing that story.
Doesn't make any sense to anyone but yourself dude. Strange youtube youth.
@@petert9110 you could google it and find out what show im referencing....and im likely as old or older than you, unless 35 in now youthful.
the word youre looking for is 'esoteric'. ask an adult what it means, then you will see that if you didnt get the reference....it wasnt meant for you.
enjoy your day, son.
THe usal way of putting it is "ignorance can be cured, but stupid is forever".
@@kenoliver8913 granted.....but this was an esoteric reference and, thus, was written as it was for a reason. 👍
you're not wrong, obviously.....I'm just quoting something specific that only a minority of people will get or even care to get. haha its nothing important. its a pop culture reference.
Brazil: HOLD MY BEER: We put a satellite in orbit without having any software to utilize it!
What satellite was that?
Explain pls :D
Putting a satellite in orbit is quietly telling the world you can drop a bomb on them from orbit.
@@DrJReefer If its in orbit it will stay in orbit.
@@nizizumi Google what an ICBM is and get back to us.
OK... You done my heart good to have you list the Space Shuttle at the top of your list. Just curreouse if you know that you just scratched the surface with your design by committees (several) comment.... Number One;... There were two companies vying for the rocket engine contract. One that helped build the Saturn with a long track record with NASA that designed an engine that was safely relying on classical architectures even though the fuel had been changed to Hydrogen. The Second was experienced in military rockets and proposed a heat expansion of the fuel and oxygen to turn the feed pumps instead of burning some of the fuel in a preburner to turn the feed pumps. They even built a small demonstration engine. Their engine had a 20% advantage of what the legacy company promised. Giving the new company an overwhelming advantage... But the Engine program Director recompeted the engine contract giving the old lagacy company the specs of the new engine and told them to match it and he didn't care how. Then went to the new company and told them that Nasa did not believe their figures and told them that if they did not reduce their performance claims he would summeril kick them out of the competition. So the new company reduced their performance claims by 10% which was still better than the legacy company's. Then the new bids were opened and surprise, both companies engines performances matched. So the Director gave the contract to the legacy company even though his own engineers told him that they were lying... Surprise Surprise that the director retired and went to work for the legacy engine company for an outrageous salary to take long 6 month vacations... And for the Space Shuttles entire life you could hear at each launch the orbiter increasing its engine power over its designed thrust by 10 and 15%. trying to make up the difference of what they promised and what the engines could do... The new company came back after the first Obiter accident with a test engine demonstrating that their engine worked as planned at the original specs and offered to develop the full sized Shuttle engine garrentying not only the specs but the reliability as well and all Nasa had to do was garanty to lease the new engines and pay the company half the cost of the increased payload the new engines allowed the shuttle to lift.... But the new Nasa Administrator refused and when the company tried to go to congress, the administrator with the backing of the president, threatened to cancel all the companies military contract and bankrupt them.... Every time the Shuttle launched I felt sick when the engines went to 110% thrust and still the shuttle could only lift half the payload originally promised into orbit. (Believe it, Nasa reduced the orbital lift requirements when it was apparent early in the program that the shuttle would never lift the original load to LOE with its existing engines.even after increasing the size of the solid rocket boosters. Without the bigger boosters it could not even lift itself into orbit even after the weight of the flying brick had had been cut for the tenth time... With the newer tech engines, that were scrapped and the plans burned, the Shuttle could have lifted a hundred thousand pounds into LOE instead of them having to leave half to 2/3rds of the cargo bay empty on most missions... And no the heat expansion turbine closed system that burned all the lox and fuel in the combustion chamber where it is most efficient, does work even though Nasa has gone out of its way to hide the fact to cover their Assess.
That's not the only time a government official has gone to work for a contractor after being in charge of giving the contractor money. They put a pause clause in there saying that they were not allowed to go to work for a contractor for a certain period of time after they had been in charge of giving them money - so - these guys would get moved to another job that amount of time before they retired - so that they could go right to work for the contractor when they retired from the government.
Another thing that went on was that when someone was about to retire from the government - the contractors would come courting. Then they would hire this guy and send him back to visit the people he had mentored when they were working for him - to get them to buy that company's stuff.
And - it's PROMISE ANYTHING to get the contract - then try and get out of all the stuff you don't want to do after the fact.
And - is any of that illegal. Nope. That's why the contractors have lawyers.
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One small note, not on the story but something else...
it would help a lot with reading it if you separated you paragraphs, it was very strenuous keeping track of where I was.
Sorry but the shuttle should not have been on this list. It cost way more than it should have but without it, we would not have had the hubble, the ISS, and every other thing that the shuttle bay had to transport because there was nothing else with a big enough cargo bay. There were a lot of mistakes, but it was a first of its kind and did its job. We took a huge leap in understanding the universe because of the shuttle.
Damn, that was hard to read, try using a spell checker next time...
@@julianemery718 some punctuation would have helped as well.
I saw this video today, and it’s posted 6 years ago! Still as valuable as the one I saw last week! Cudos for keeping at it, you’re still going very strong! Keep it up, I think we are all enjoying it! 👍😊
Me: Haha, these mistakes are so stupid!
Also me: Forgets parachute in KSP.
makes me feel better about killing Jebediah after forgetting to open the parachute in time
"People are very very good at finding new ways to do things badly".. Especially programmers.
Scott Manley _is_ a programmer. *Shots fired*
As a programmer myself...
i'm not entirely inclined to disagree, though half the time it's not a programmer calling the shots resulting in bad engineering, it's non-programming managers of programmers.
Perhaps I should've mentioned that I'm also a programmer.. my comment comes from many years experience of making dumb mistakes!
Thankfully my dumb mistakes usually just lead to a website or two acting weird, not the destruction of very expensive bits of hardware...
As an amateur programmer and a network tech in training, yup.
Very true, but an experienced programmer learns to compensate. That Ariane 5 thing of converting double to int with no overflow handling is really an elementary mistake. However Siana Gearz has put her finger on what's often the bigger issue: programmers are working to deadlines and under budgets, and managers in my experience are reluctant to authorize effort spent on looking for such traps. "It worked fine on Ariane 4, where's the beef?"
I recall my astronomy teacher talking about a project where a rocket was sent up to photograph some object that was going to pass close to the earth. When they got the film back it had taken photos of empty space. The team figured out that they missed it by an hour because they forgot to account for daylight savings time.
I love this guy! just found him through SciShow, love the presentation, delivery and humnour as well as the Science! keep it up!
The Space Shuttle was awe-inspiring and iconic and an amazing piece of engineering, and also far too expensive and bogged down by add-ons and dangerous. A bad design executed brilliantly is still bad. I'm glad we had it, and I'm glad it's gone.
It would have been a justifiable design had it:
a) Cost much, much less. The contractor that was paid to crunch the numbers ($ numbers) found it would be economical if they could launch 50 times a year.
b) Capabilities. None of it's unique capabilities were ever used more than a few times (eg, recovering satellites) or at all (cross-range). In the end, it was used for pretty much the same purpose as a Soyuz with a tiny version of Mir built in, and a Proton (for the ISS modules).
Nearly everything the Shuttle did for $450 million, Falcon 9 can do for $62 million. Spacelab was cool and all, but it was still no ISS.
John Brown Its unique capabilities were born out of Pentagon fantasies that never matched reality.
@J Shepard Exactly.
this is a totally fair comparison seeing as how both were designed and built in the 70s oh wait
Actually, Alan Bean DIDN'T point the camera at the sun. Instead, he pointed it at the LM, where the reflection of the sun in the kapton film was bright enough to kill the vidicon tube.
“I can’t honestly say that it was necessary or good at what it did” - yet your #1 was the only vehicle capable of (and indeed, did so) fixing your #4 ie. HST. ;)
With the arm and payload bay, nothing before or since has been capable of that type of “work” in space. Or creating an actual temporary “home” in LEO for projects and research.
I also don’t think we would have an ISS (even today) without the Shuttle program. We didn’t really have another way of getting payloads that size up there, much less a vehicle capable of manipulating them and supporting extensive EVAs like the shuttle and it’s large crews.
In the end it left a lot to be desired - but I’m still amazed the thing even worked at all, much less accomplished what it did. I don’t think it’s fair to call it a mistake. ;)
Everyone: “Mirror”
Scott: “Mid’r”
Yeah we actually say the word like it’s spelled in the U.K. and pronounce all of the syllables correctly. To us it sounds like Americans are saying ‘meer’ when they try to say mirror. There’s nothing that remotely sounds like a ‘d’ in there, he’s just pronouncing the double ‘r’ properly. Which, sounds a bit stronger than an English person would pronounce it because of his Scottish accent. To us, it’s the American pronunciation that sounds way wrong.
Correction: the Hubble mirror was the most PRECISELY ground mirror. . Precise, but inaccurate. TRW.
great example of precision vs accuracy
Oh, it was accurate all right. It just wasn't ground for the task it was sent to do.
Yeah supposedly it was ground correctly...for being inserted in to a KeyHole for ground imaging...
"the Hubble mirror was the most PRECISELY ground mirror". Not really. Hubble mirror is not special among other large telescopes (both space-based nad ground-based) - all of them need to be precisely figured.
You would think they would have investigated when their 'known good' measuring equipment said it was wrong, but the fancy new test equipment said it was right.
Its funny how Kerbal these accidents are!
nha , y bet scott can safeland most of this mistake on ksp , or safe the kebals
It may not be all entirely accidental. After all, KSP would have been designed with historical and plausible failures in mind from game design perspective rather than entirely fictional ones, to ground it in people's prior experiences and expectations.
Ikr! Throughout most of the video I was like that happened to me, that happened to me, that happened to me lol
"COM off."
"Whoops, forgot the solar panels, batteries, and antennas."
"Docking port wrong way around"
"broke up mid launch"
"Kraken attac- hey wait that's not one"
My best blunder was getting all the way to the Mun before I realized I had my landing gear on upside down. RIP Jeb.
Another candidate is the design of the receiver on-board the Cassini spacecraft for receiving the data from the Huygens probe as it went to Titan.
The design recognised that the frequency of the signal transmitted by Huygens, as received by Cassini, would change due to the Doppler shift. But it failed to anticipate that the data rate would also change.
When the people involved realised this (after Cassini was launched), the mission had to be redesigned to minimise the Doppler shift so that the data rate remained within the bandwidth of the receiver's clock recovery circuit.
Another error was the failure to turn on one of Cassini's receivers, which meant half the data sent by the Huygens probe was lost!
Overall, the Cassini / Huygens mission was successful, but a bit of systems engineering would've led to even more success.
"The Dumbest Mistakes In Space Exploration
"
Number 2. NASA Letting the Challenger attempt take off.
Number 1. NASA Letting the Columbia attempt re-entry.
Challenger was actually because a SRB's O-ring was out of order and let hot gasses through burning the external tank which exploded.
Columbia bcus a chunk of foam the size of a large suitcase smashed into the RCC of the wing and mashed a hole in it.
@@TheRadioactiveBanana32 but according to reports it could've easily been preventable if the bureaucrats had listened to the engineers.
@@ricardosimoni2855 perhaps they could have fixed the orings
For #1, there really weren’t any alternatives. Even if they’d conclusively known of the damage that proved to be fatal to ship and crew, a rescue mission has been shown to have been infeasible. Columbia was doomed at launch. What was NASA supposed to do once she was in orbit, even if it had known that?