When something went wrong

In 1986, in American Cleveland, they decided to put a record in the number of balloons simultaneously released into the sky. The event was charity, as the United Way foundation wanted to attract attention – and, undoubtedly, attracted. But not as planned. Volunteers without tired inflated one and a half million multicolored balls. Already inflated balls held a dense mesh. When the grid was released, they swam up … and immediately paralyzed the movement in the city. The number of road accidents increased at times. Airport suspended its work. Multicolored peas in the sky and frightened prize horses on Earth – and they crushed, bringing huge losses to their owners. A huge number of balls settled in local lakes and water bodies. Coast Guard won his hands: they needed to find two fishermen who miss, but from a helicopter, except for balls, nothing was visible. A few days later, the body of drunks was carried to the shore, and the widow was filed by United Way a claim for $ 3.2 million.

Cunning units of measurements

Mars Climate Orbiter is perhaps one of the most unsuccessful NASA missions, and first of all because it fell on a very annoying and very simple reason. In December 1998, MCO was released in orbit – satellite-translator for the landing apparatus Mars Polar Lander. Part-time, he had to learn the Martian climate, seasonal changes to the weather, dust storms and monitor changes on the surface of the planet. However, in September 1999, communications with MCO was lost: as it turned out, the reason was the error in the software. The fact is that two teams of engineers worked on the creation of the satellite: a team of engineers from the Lockheed Martin Corporation used a British system of measures and scales, and the rest – metric. Because of this, the satellite flew was not there and collapsed in the Martian atmosphere, and without fulfilling his task. As a result, the damage from the loss of the satellite was NASA at $ 125 million, and a corporation was advocated to the final transition to the metric system with all calculations.

Undermining whale

In 1970, by the shore of a small town Florence in the state of Oregon, whale was thrown. At that time, by a strange irony, the beaches were treated to the category of roads, so the task to get rid of the deceased animal fell at the Oregon Transport Department and specifically – on some George Thornton. Later he explained that he chose him the main thing in the operation, and not a specialist, since the person who would have to deal with this on the debt was on the hunt. The Department of Transport decided that Koronat Whale would be too difficult, much easier … to blow it up with dynamite. The carcass of the deceased animal has studied half-removal explosives in the hope that it will break into small pieces, which will then eat the pads and do not have to clean. But in the calculations, the error was embryed, the explosion went to the ground, leaving under the carcass of China a huge funnel, and the whale itself broke into a very decent size of the part and scattered throughout the city. Some fragments hit the cars and even zooak, some attributed to residential buildings, and they had to scrupulously collect around the district.

Signal rocket

In the fall of 2003, lost in California forests near San Diego County Estates Hunter launched a signal rocket into the air to find it. Found a hunter very soon – the rocket did not just sign up, but also set fire to the grass and forest. Soon the assistance was required not only to the hunter, but also the entire California: the rocket provoked the largest fire in the history of the state. The fire destroyed 1214 km² of forests and 2322 at home, 14 people died, and the damage was estimated at $ 1.2 billion.

Space needs

Alan Shepard, the first American who committed a subborital cosmic flight, unfortunately, could not properly enjoy the magnificent views of the Earth from Cosmos. Shepard sent to flight on May 5, 1961, the astronaut managed to fly over the planet for 15 minutes 28 seconds. The flight was remembered for him for a long time: because of the unsuccessful arrangement of the portholes, Shepard could hardly see the stars, and the earth, flickering away, and saw the black and white. On the offensive cross, at the start of the periscope, forgot to remove a special filter. To all of the time, Shepard was too tightly fastened, so I really did not feel weightlessness, and in addition, NASA for some reason did not provide for a toilet on a spacecraft and Shepard had to cope with the need directly to his skate.

Safety valve

In July 1988, Occidental Petroleum workers were evacuated from Piper Alpha oil towers in the North Sea after gas explosion. The explosion was due to the life of 167 out of 226 workers, including two rescuers in boats. During the investigation, it turned out that the cause of the explosion was the absence of a safety valve on condensate pumps. During a planned check, shortly before the explosion, the inspectors were filmed and installed all safety valves. But one to install in place forgotten, and when the workers launched the entire system, gas began to slowly seid. The explosion was inevitable. Damage from the forgotten valve company consisted of $ 5.1 billion, since at that time more than 10% of all oil and gas of the North Sea mined.

Missing films

During the Mission "Apollo-11", an active shooting from several cameras was carried out (the chamber left by the Nile Armstrong and the Basz Oldrin on the Moon, still in the sea of ​​calm). However, the format in which the cameras have passed the image in NASA, was incompatible with the format in which the records could be broadcast on television. Therefore, all incoming video had to recodle and give television drivers with significant interference – transcoding costs. Even such entries, however, were widely broadcast – everything was interesting, as a person first stepped on the moon, and here it is not up to the perfectionism. However, in 2006, suddenly it turned out that the "sources" of these records. Lost. Those cassettes for which the image was recorded in the "lunar" format disappeared, and they had to attract NASA veterans. The results of the search were disappointing: on cassettes with the only one in its kind, someone from above recorded a new material. In the NASA in the 1980s, it was catastrophically lacking carriers for storing information – and nothing better than using old cassettes re-in the agency did not come up with.