Useful and Simple Advice On Speaking Clearly From Mr. Rogers
Fred Rogers gives a master class on communication.
It was 1999, a year Prince claimed would be the ultimate time to party. However, the horrified faces at NASA didn’t look festive. A stunned disbelief filled the agency.
How could everything have gone so wrong with the Mars mission?
As Lisa Grossman mentions in her article in Wired, a $125 million probe would have been the first weather satellite to circle another planet. However, it disappeared. Everyone at NASA knew it crashed into Mars. But the reason for the failure was unbelievable. Grossman says:
“A NASA review board found that the problem was in the software controlling the orbiter’s thrusters. The software calculated the force the thrusters needed to exert in pounds of force. A separate piece of software took in the data assuming it was in the metric unit: newtons.”
The numbers crunched as the probe came close to Mars were totally off. The Mars Climate Orbiter dropped below the safe distance from the Martian surface by about 20 miles. Poof! $125 million down the drain from a simple communication error.
You think someone would have caught something as obvious as that.
