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Here is a real whopper in the history of stupid space exploration tricks. The spacecraft that recently arrived on Titan was supposed to transmit images and experimental data on two data channels: channels A and B. But as it turns out, someone forgot to turn on channel A and so only channel B was available. And channel B was the least reliable channel of the two. It had slower transmission speed and was not designed to be the primary data channel.

As a result, some experiments were entirely destroyed. One scientist had been working for 18 years on an experiment to measure the winds on Titan, and his data was supposed to be transmitted on channel A. But since somebody at NASA or the Italian space agency forgot to turn on channel A, none of that data was transmitted. And thus, 18 years of waiting was lost.

All of this reminds me of the fiasco that happened when NASA sent the rovers to Mars. When the rovers first got to Mars and started taking pictures, NASA suddenly discovered that, ‘Gee! The onboard computer memory is getting full!’ For some reason, when you actually take photos, it takes up memory. And after only a couple of days, the rovers were unresponsive because they were constantly rebooting due to the fact that their memories were full. It was as if no one had thought to actually test the rovers here on Earth before launching them into space at a cost of 800 million dollars.

So I have a question. Why do we as a nation spend literally billions of dollars to launch hardware into space when that hardware is being programmed and operated by bumbling idiots who can’t flip a switch or remember to test the hardware before launch day?

Of course, NASA always manages to put a positive spin on these events. The Mars rover missions were ultimately proclaimed a great success, but only because some sharp-minded system administrators were able to ‘hack’ the rovers from Earth with a process that reprogrammed the way the rovers store images.

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