5. NASA’s failures to communicate
In 1999 the Mars Climate Orbiter was launched on a mission to monitor weather and climate conditions on the red planet, including the content of water vapor and dust in the atmosphere. Nine months later the spacecraft flew too close to the planet as it was being inserted into orbit, deflected out, and was lost to nobody knows where. The reason for the failure was the inability of the ground controllers to send information which was comprehensible by the orbiter’s computers. The ground controllers were using pounds-force units of measure, which are standard in the United States. The spacecraft understood the same measurements only in terms of newton-force, the international standard. The spacecraft couldn’t understand what its controllers were saying.
A similar failure to communicate nearly cost the lives of three astronauts during the third lunar landing mission, Apollo 13. After an explosion in the service module, the astronauts were returning to earth using the lunar module as a lifeboat when carbon dioxide levels rose alarmingly. The lunar module ran out of cartridges for its CO2 scrubbers, and it was discovered that the cartridges for the command module could not be used. One module used square cartridges, the other used round. It took a considerable effort from technicians on the ground to devise a method of adapting the existing cartridges to use the lunar module scrubbers. After the mission, NASA quietly corrected the anomaly for future flights.