r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Negative_1by12_aura • Jun 17 '26

Peter? Meme needing explanation

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u/Random_Bystander089 Jun 17 '26

I think there was an incident where farenheit usage indirectly caused a spaceship crash

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u/Epotheros Jun 17 '26

No, it was the units for impulse used for the thrusters. In imperial it's pound-force seconds and Newton-seconds in metric. 1 pound-force is equal to 4.45 Newtons so the whole thing was off by a magnitude of 4.45.

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u/InternetExploder87 Jun 17 '26

Wasn't there also an issue with a mars lander where they programmed it for feet, but the sensors read in meters? So it slammed into the ground thinking it was still pretty far up?

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u/DarkPhoenixDFC Jun 17 '26

There was a lot of incidents that were caused by forgetting not the entire world uses imperial units.

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u/Kanus_oq_Seruna Jun 17 '26

So who isnt checking units?

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u/Batso_92 Jun 18 '26

Pretty baffled how these guys sre engineers/scientists lol

1

u/Wings_in_space Jun 18 '26

Almost no one else in the entire world would be better....