How a typo took down S3

etienne_marais

Honorary Master
Joined
Mar 16, 2008
Messages
15,093
Looong ago, at university our AI lecturer mentioned a misplaced comma in a Fortran program resulting in a spacecraft crash. This is the first time I checked it out and it turns out it was superscript-bar being missed by the programmer and according to alternative explanations a misplaced hyphen. The space-program, Mariner 1, cost $18.5 million in 1962:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_1
 

[)roi(]

Executive Member
Joined
Apr 15, 2005
Messages
6,282
Looong ago, at university our AI lecturer mentioned a misplaced comma in a Fortran program resulting in a spacecraft crash. This is the first time I checked it out and it turns out it was superscript-bar being missed by the programmer and according to alternative explanations a misplaced hyphen. The space-program, Mariner 1, cost $18.5 million in 1962:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_1
Bugs....

bug.jpg
 

Solarion

Honorary Master
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
Messages
21,885
[video=youtube;VjJgiDuHlRw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjJgiDuHlRw[/video]
 
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