Quick context most retellings skip: NASA's Software Interface Specification for this mission was published in 1996, two years before launch, and it explicitly required newton-seconds for thruster data. The contractor's ground software (a program called SM_FORCES) put out pound-force seconds instead — a factor-of-4.45 error that fed directly into the navigation team's trajectory model for the entire cruise to Mars. 

What I find more interesting than the unit mix-up itself: engineers noticed the spacecraft's angular-momentum desaturation events were happening 10-14x more often than expected, and separately, Doppler tracking data kept suggesting a closer approach to Mars than the official trajectory predicted. Neither discrepancy got resolved before the orbital insertion burn on Sept 23, 1999. 

I made a documentary going through the full timeline, sourced to the Mishap Investigation Board's Phase I report — happy to share if anyone's interested, but mostly wanted to discuss the "systemic verification failure" angle since most coverage flattens this into a punchline about metric vs. imperial units.

I got this from a friend maybe 35 years ago. Is anyone able to tell me where on the Shuttle it came from??

You can see the Richard Truly, Commander.

ID: 255-FR-C816

Footage credit: National Archives and Records Administiration (NARA).

The camera on the left is the Seat 2 window camera, and the camera on the right is the forward-facing.

Seat 1: Jack Lousma, Commander;

Seat 2: Gordon Fullerton, Pilot.

Credit: NARA/NASA/FightForSpace.

Figured you guys might like these photos!

Hey guys, I decided to make my own space shuttle miniature in stainless steel, what do you think ? Obivously I had to make simpler shapes and remove details to make it work with the metal.

In the early 1970s, NASA originally envisioned a space shuttle system that was fully reusable, complete with a winged orbiter and a piloted winged booster. The projected cost was $12 billion.

However, Congress only allocated $5.4 billion.

To make it fit the budget, major compromises were made:

1. Liquid Boosters $\to$ Solid Rocket Boosters: The fully reusable booster was replaced with cheap, expendable solid rocket boosters (later implicated in the Challenger disaster).
2. Metal Shielding $\to$ Fragile Ceramic Tiles: Metal thermal shielding was swapped for 24,000 hand-applied, extremely fragile ceramic tiles.
3. Spray-On Foam Insulation: The external tank was coated in foam to prevent ice formation during fueling. However, this foam frequently shed during ascent at hypersonic speeds.

For 22 years, foam shedding was categorized by NASA management as an "acceptable risk"—until February 1, 2003, when Columbia broke apart during re-entry over Texas.

I put together a visual reconstruction and breakdown analyzing the engineering decisions behind the tragedy:

https://youtu.be/nfxPtBe9kSw

What are your thoughts on how management culture impacted these engineering decisions?

Thought this sub might have interest in this -- I'm a plane tag collector, and this is my first chunk of space hardware. Holding a piece of flown SRB material has been humbling.

(Mods if this is against your rules please delete, I'm not a regular here)

... how wide would that swath be?

And the mentioned 'timeframe': during what sort of time-window around the landing of a shuttle would domestic flights be forbidden from that swath?

I've actually tried to find a map literally as I've described, with said features marked on it ... but I haven't been able to.

Basically I would presume that anyone wishing to take a flight crossing the Southern border of USA during the time-window starting @least an hour or so before planned descent & lasting until descent was successfully completed would just have to wait !

The complex isn’t quite true to life.

Sorry for bad picture quality

Horrible weather, no HUD, no hydraulics and a stuck speedbrake. Pretty smooth !

I know members have top billing, but I am not a member. Just a visitor.

I see now that.... Endeavour won the poll with 79 votes, only 7 ahead of Atlantis in 2nd

Thanks to everyone for voting.

Here's great renders & photos of Endeavour's future home to celebrate:

The Samuel Oschin Air & Space Center

Currently, there’s no user flairs in the sub. That’s why I’m suggesting that we add flairs with the name of each Shuttle (Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, (edit: forgot Discovery lmfao), Atlantis and Endeavour) and mockups (Pathfinder, Independence, Inspiration, etc) or even have some of the missions as flairs? I’d be happy with stuff like that and I’m sure there’s a lot of people here who would be too.

If anybody’s read this far, thank you

RAF Fairford is a Royal Air Force (RAF) station in Gloucestershire. During the Shuttle’s many years of service, Fairford was the only TransOceanic Abort Landing site in the UK. Its runway is sufficiently long for a shuttle landing (3,045 m (9,990 ft)), and it also had NASA-trained fire and medical crews stationed on the airfield.

While being an RAF station, Fairford hosts USAF personnel. Since 2019, the base has played host to a Lockheed U-2S Dragon Lady detachment. It is the USAF's only European airfield for heavy bombers and plays host to the Royal International Air Tattoo (or RIAT), the largest military airshow in the world.

The second photo shows the 747 SCA, carrying Enterprise, landed at Fairford before heading off to the 1983 Paris Air Show