A wide collection of errata

I just ran across http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/illustrative.html
- it's a collection of one-line summaries of cases that have appeared in
the RISKS digests, or similar newsletters, and several may be of
interest to folks here (indeed, at least one is a reposting of a ssh
article by Pat).

[Be warned, it's a v. large file - but the relevant stuff is early on]

Many of them readers are likely to have heard of, but some are rather
intriguingly pithy:

"STS-6 shuttle bugs in live Dual Mission software precluded aborts" (!)

"STS-18 Shuttle Discovery positioned upside down" - you'd have thought
someone would have noticed... ;-)

"Discovery SRB recovered with missing pair of pliers" - recovered using?
Recovered with them hanging off the side?

"5 printers off-line or jammed, Voyager 1 data lost over weekend"

"Boeing space station tanks accidentally taken to Huntsville dump"

"Apollo 11 lunar module, pen used to replace circuit breaker" - what is
the story with this, BTW? I've heard three or four garbled versions, and
never seem to run across one in a good source...

"Mariner 1 Venus probe: HW fault plus programmer missed superscript bar
in `R dot bar sub n'"

"Project Mercury had a FORTRAN syntax error such as DO I=1.10 (not
1,10)"

"Gemini V 100mi landing err, prog ignored orbital motion around sun"

"Aries with $1.5M payload lost: wrong resistor in guidance system" -
there's plenty of cases of software typos, but not many of hardware
typos :-)

"Ozone hole over South Pole observed, rejected by SW for 8 year" (!)

And a selection of others; may interest some...

--
-Andrew Gray

Andrew Gray wrote:

I just ran across http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/illustrative.html
- it's a collection of one-line summaries of cases that have appeared in
the RISKS digests, or similar newsletters, and several may be of
interest to folks here (indeed, at least one is a reposting of a ssh
article by Pat).


Mine is:
"Faulty microwave powered vibrator circuitry dooms Firewomen
electro-orgy by causing red-hot IUDs." :-)
(Actually it's about the KORD system on the N-1 rocket; it was supposed
to make the rocket more fault tolerant, but instead ended up in
destroying the rocket- and in one case, both the rocket and its launch pad.)

Pat

Andrew Gray wrote...

"Apollo 11 lunar module, pen used to replace circuit breaker" - what is
the story with this, BTW? I've heard three or four garbled versions, and
never seem to run across one in a good source...

I found a 1999 interview with Buzz Aldrin which describes the incident.
His description is more detailed than any I have heard before.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++
http://www.exn.ca/apollo/Interviews/
But anyway see we the cabin was depressurized we got back in we pressurize
it then we depressurize it again. And we put the pressure back in again,
now is our sleep period. So we got all ready so I’m looking around, getting
things scored away and as I look down the corner of the floor, I saw a
small little black object and I immediately recognize what it was. It was
the end of a circuit breaker. That had broken off.

So I looked up to see these rows of circuit breakers, see which one had
broken off. And it was the one that armed the engine to ignite. Now all
you, we left a lot of circuit breakers out until the time approached when
you’d need them and then you’d push them in and then pretty soon you’d
throw the right switch so sort of a double protection, but we knew we had
to push outside the breaker in, and hopefully it would stay in, even if it
had a broken off end to it.

But when I when we called back to Houston and told them about this we still
had maybe 8 or 10 hours before launch. And they were pretty busy trying to
figure out different ways around that circuit if that had not truly been
armed when I went to push it in. So I used a, a pen that we had and I
pushed it in, and it stayed in. But there wasn’t any way to pull it back
out again, if you needed to do that. So that was a little bit of a funny
that the world didn’t know about at the time. Kept people busy.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++

- Peter

Pat Flannery wrote:


Andrew Gray wrote:

I just ran across http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/illustrative.html
- it's a collection of one-line summaries of
cases that have appeared in
the RISKS digests, or similar newsletters,
and several may be of
interest to folks here (indeed, at least one
is a reposting of a ssh
article by Pat).


Mine is:
"Faulty microwave powered vibrator circuitry
dooms Firewomen
electro-orgy by causing red-hot IUDs." :-)
(Actually it's about the KORD system on the
N-1 rocket; it was supposed
to make the rocket more fault tolerant, but
instead ended up in
destroying the rocket- and in one case, both
the rocket and its launch pad.)

Pat

Wasn't the explosion of the N-1 so powerful that a U.S. satellite picked
it up and there was an intial report of a nuclear detonation in the low-Kt
range? At least that's the story I recall.

Posted via www.My-Newsgroups.com - web to news gateway for usenet access!

Matt Wiser wrote:

Wasn't the explosion of the N-1 so powerful that a U.S. satellite picked
it up and there was an intial report of a nuclear detonation in the low-Kt
range? At least that's the story I recall.


We thought it was a on-pad explosion, rather than a in-flight one,
caused by a fueling accident; I've also heard that story about the heat
flux looking like a small nuclear blast or a ICBM launch to our
satellites; We did get photos of the damage from our Corona satellites:
http://www.hrw.com/science/si-scienc...mg/381l4p4.jpg
The lower of the two close-ups on the left shows the damaged pad. It's
the one to the lower right.

Pat

This is why I would not be an astronaut.....my luck in dealing with
electronic devices is lousy. If a hammer falls off the dashboard, and
breaks a circuit breaker, it will miss "map light" and "circulation fan" and
break off the one that says "engine ignite - you will die if this doesn't
work"

We could learn something from the Russians as far as fixing things. If this
happened in a Russian ship, the cosmonauts would remove the breaker for the
fan or whatever, remove the broken one for the engine starter, and wire the
good breaker in place. Better yet, use a breaker from the spare parts kit.

Seems to me that the ability to solder stuff and make minor repairs should
be part of the mission plan because no matter how careful you are there are
going to be some things that break or malfunction along the way.

There was a similar problem 11, 12, oe 13 where the CSM engine had an engine
arming toggle switch with a short due to some contamination...its in the
archives.

Er, Apollo 15.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...eshoot_ptc.htm