From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,267eec8ad557a7d0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Theodore E. Dennison" Subject: Re: ARIANE-5 Failure Date: 1996/06/12 Message-ID: <31BEBA98.167EB0E7@escmail.orl.mmc.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 159833842 references: <834097751.22632.0@assen.demon.co.uk> <31B7A88D.446B@lri.fr> <31B7DEDD.E2A@lmtas.lmco.com> <31bc75ed.1932371@news.cableol.net> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: Lockheed Martin Information Systems mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.3_U1 sun4m) Date: 1996-06-12T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Dewi Daniels wrote: > From the alt.folklore.computers FAQ at > http://www.best.com/~wilson/faq: > > Then in issue 8.75 we found out what really happened... > > | erratically four minutes after launch. The alleged missing `hyphen' > | was really a missing `bar'. I quote from Paul's book, pp. 202-203: > | > | # relayed directly from the track radar. The symbol for this smoothed > | # data was ... `R dot bar n' [R overstruck `.' and `_' and subscript n], > | # where R stands for the radius, the dot for the first derivative > | # (i.e., the velocity), the bar for smoothed data, and n for the > | # increment. Still, if thy had named their variables Radius.Velocity_Smoothed_N and Radius.Velocity_N (their language probably didn't even allow this), the odds of this error being discovered by someone before the failure would have been MUCH greater. -- T.E.D. | Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com | | Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net | | URL - http://www.iag.net/~dennison |