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Article #2825Re: Zimmermann's responses to Sidelnikov's
From: Ken Shirriff
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 01:46
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 01:46
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In article <1993Jan22.154035.20835@shearson.com> dmandl@shearson.com writes: >> DO 10 I=1.5 >If I remember correctly, it was an error exactly like this that >blew up a U.S. rocket (complete with astronauts) back in the '70s. Well, no. This has been rehashed extensively in comp.risks. The unmanned Mariner I flight to Venus on July 22, 1962 went off course and was destroyed. The cause was a missing hyphen in the hand-written guidance equations, causing a faulty implementation. Coupled with a failure of the onboard rate system hardware, the computer processed the tracking data incorrectly, the rocket went off course and was destroyed by the range safety officer. Look in the comp.risks archives for extensive, referenced discussion of this. The period-for-comma story has been circulating for years in relation to this incident, but according to the discussion on comp.risks, the missing hyphen was the real story. Followups probably belong in alt.folklore.computers, or somewhere. Ken Shirriff shirriff@sprite.Berkeley.EDU
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!sprite.berkeley.edu!shirriff From: shirriff@sprite.berkeley.edu (Ken Shirriff) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Re: Zimmermann's responses to Sidelnikov's Date: 23 Jan 1993 01:46:35 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 21 Message-ID: <1jq81r$8dn@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <1993Jan21.143916.22207@colnet.cmhnet.org> <1993Jan22.154035.20835@shearson.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: sassafras.berkeley.edu