redle wrote:...like when the scientists working on one of the space missions years ago had something fail because one team was working in English units and one team was working in Metric and someone didn't convert one of the results to the other system before combining them...
I remember that one -- if I remember correctly it wasn't just a failure, a highly expensive Mars probe instrument package that had spent the best part of two years travelling to the red planet was caused to catastrophically headbutt the very celestial body it was supposed to delicately approach and observe. Worse than what happened to Beagle, which at least landed on target, although whatever happened on landing stopped it functioning properly.
I also seem to remember that two Chinook helicopter pilots were posthumously blamed for the crash of their machine for ages until the relevant authorities were forced to admit that a software error caused the onboard computer to think they were at the wrong height and impose a lethal emergency action! Wasn't it something about flying below sea level flipped a bit that implied that they were actually at 32,000 feet and hence above a viable operating height?