Re: ARIANE-5 Failure

[kst@thomsoft.com (Keith Thompson)]

In <dewar.834362765@schonberg> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
[...]
> But it would be nice to find out, anyone on this list have a REALLY
> AUTHORITATIVE first-hand source for the truth on this one (it is one
> that many people "know" the answer to, but as Jim pointed out, they
> disagree and can't all be right!)

Perhaps this isn't "REALLY AUTHORITATIVE", but it seems to be within
two or three steps of being first-hand knowledge.

According to Paul Ceruzzi's book "Beyond the Limits -- Flight Enters
the Computer Age", the loss of the Mariner I Venus probe was due not to
a Fortran error, but to a missing bar in a hand-written equation.

For details, see RISKS Digest 8.75, available at
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/8.75.html>.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@thomsoft.com <*>
TeleSoft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Alsys^H^H^H^H^H Thomson Software Products
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