January 21, 2005

WAS HAL BUSY? (via Jim Yates):

Professor's Saturn Experiment Forgotten (NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, 1/21/05, Associated Press)

David Atkinson spent 18 years designing an experiment for the unmanned space mission to Saturn. Now some pieces of it are lost in space. Someone forgot to turn on the instrument Atkinson needed to measure the winds on Saturn's largest moon.

"The story is actually fairly gruesome," the University of Idaho scientist said in an e-mail from Germany, the headquarters of the European Space Agency. "It was human error — the command to turn the instrument on was forgotten."

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 21, 2005 6:24 PM
Comments

The error was leaving a human in the loop.

Posted by: ZF at January 21, 2005 6:38 PM

Too bad they didn't have Al Bean there to whack it with a hammer. Or Dave Scott to trip over the cable.

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at January 21, 2005 7:56 PM

I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently. But I've still got the greatest confidence in the mission.

My mind is going.

I can feel it.

Posted by: HAL 9000 at January 21, 2005 8:05 PM

What a story line for a Veggie Tales episode (forgive me, I'm filled to the brim w/veggies & 6 year olds).

Posted by: Dave W. at January 21, 2005 8:31 PM

Mars by 1965. Saturn by 1970!

Posted by: Ripper at January 21, 2005 10:02 PM

It's surprising that things like this don't happen more often with NASA projects, given that they froze the technology about 30 years before.

Posted by: pj at January 21, 2005 11:31 PM
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