Hi David,
I found this:-

A missing punctuation mark in a guidance equation led to a much greater national embarrassment when the rocket carrying the Mariner 1 space probe exploded shortly after liftoff on July 22, 1962, in what is widely believed to the most expensive typographical mistake of all time. Some reports attributed the rocket failure to a misplaced decimal point, an extra semicolon or a comma that was entered in place of a period in the coded mathematical instructions that guided the steering systems on board the spacecraft. However, NASA investigators traced the cause of the accident to the omission of a single hyphen (or superscripted overbar) in the guidance control software, which transmitted a series of incorrect course correction signals that threw the vehicle off its flight trajectory. The range safety officer had no choice but to order the intentional detonation of the spacecraft less than five minutes after liftoff to prevent the vehicle from crashing into a populated area.

The high-profile failure of the Mariner probe to reach its intended destination underscores the need for periodic proofreading, peer review analysis and rigorous testing for performance problems at all stages of computer coding and programming. The syntax of a programming language requires a highly specific sequence of symbols and characters to process information, specify external machine behavior and direct a computer to execute a set of commands. A simple typing error or misplaced character could preclude the operating system from translating coded language accurately, render an entire application useless, or lead to unpredictable or even disastrous consequences.

There was intense political pressure to hasten the schedule to launch a planetary expedition ahead of the Soviet Union and to establish spaceflight supremacy. The single missing FORTRAN coding symbol was not detected during preflight preparations as a result of the accelerated timetable and was largely responsible for the loss of the first American spacecraft destined to explore another planet. The mission failure was a setback for interplanetary space exploration and dealt a significant blow both to national morale and to the prestige of the space administration at a time when the United States was losing the space race. When calculating the adjusted costs of research, development, training and construction, the total losses connected to the accident are estimated to exceed $620 million. Never
in history has so much money or so many resources been squandered
over the exclusion of a single punctuation mark.

On 2022-03-30 01:31, David Spiegel wrote:
Hi Robin,
I searched, but, am not yet successful in finding it
If I find it, I plan to let you know.

Regards,
David

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Reply via email to