Half Measures

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.8 • 27.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2017

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The United States is one of just a handful of countries that that isn’t officially metric. Instead, Americans measure things our own way, in units that are basically inscrutable to non-Americans, nearly all of whom have been brought up in … Continue re...

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.
0:04.0	6, 5, 4.
0:07.0	Cast your mind back to the late 1990s.
0:10.0	We have ignition and we have lift off of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter as we continue to explore the mysteries of the red planet.
0:18.0	It's the late 20th century and is the threat of Y2K and Rap Metal crossover loom large in people's minds and
0:25.6	NASA satellite blasts off towards Mars. That's producer Joel Werner from the
0:30.7	Some of All Parts podcast. 20 seconds after liftoff.
0:34.0	Everything continues to go well.
0:36.0	So this satellite weighing 338 kilograms.
0:41.0	That's 745 pounds.
0:42.0	Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that. So the satellite weighing
0:45.6	338 kilograms hurdles through space towards the distant planet. It takes nearly a year to
0:52.1	get there and when it gets close the satellite fires its main engine to go into orbit around Mars.
0:59.0	Up until that point all data from the spacecraft appeared normal.
1:03.7	Everything was running smoothly.
1:05.4	The engine burn begins just as the spacecraft disappears behind Mars.
1:10.6	Mission Control waits for it to reappear, and they wait, and wait, and wait.
1:18.0	But the spacecraft never emerges.
1:21.0	The Mars Climate Orbiter is lost.
1:24.0	I'm sorry to report that we have a serious problem with the Mars Climate Orbiter.
1:29.0	We may in fact be facing a loss of mission.
1:32.0	We believe the spacecraft came in at a lower altitude
	...

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