Amiga 4000 contributes to NASA Mars disaster in 1992?

[alexh]

I was watching the UK TV show Horizon last night about missions to mars. They were reviewing all the failures in 1992-1994 and in each scene they were using or had in the background an Amiga A4000

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...Horizon_Guide/

I'll try to narrow down at what time it appears.

(Only works for people in UK)

[prowler]

Here is a link to a report entitled "Amiga at NASA" dated March 1999 by Bob Castro:
http://obligement.free.fr/articles_t...iganasa_en.php

[Paul_s]

I've seen a few of those Nasa 4000's appear on eBay once or twice over the years. Would make for an interesting ornament

[ImmortalA1000]

I think the failures are more to do with NASA than the Amiga myself....them and their underwhelming tech still not surpassing project orion in 1965

[Paul_s]

Question of the day... do outer space missions occur in Pinewood Studio's or on a Video Toaster 4000?

[emufan]

there is a video on youtube: [ Show youtube player ]. cool stuff

Edit: another thing the commodore marketing guys missed

[mfilos]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

Question of the day... do outer space missions occur in Pinewood Studio's or on a Video Toaster 4000?

LOL !!!

[SpeedGeek]

You might be interested to know that least one NASA mission failed because of a Metric to English conversion problem. The scientists and engineers employed there usually use Metric but for "Public Relations" purposes often convert measurements to English.

Yeah, here in the land of high tech (and government bureaucracy) we still use the good old English measurement system!

[SS454]

But the English measurement system is metric.

If you mean feet and inches that's imperial. Besides, isn't the US the land of "supercars" with a horizontal leaf spring and pushrods?

[dJOS]

Most of the NASA Mars failures where from different contractors mixing metric with imperial measurements iirc.

[SpeedGeek]

Originally Posted by SS454

But the English measurement system is metric.

If you mean feet and inches that's imperial. Besides, isn't the US the land of "supercars" with a horizontal leaf spring and pushrods?

Yes, that's what I mean but it's most often referred to locally as "English" because the 13 original colonies of New England inherited the measurement system from Imperial England.

As far as the "Supercars" they are mostly in the former Spanish/Mexican colony of California.

[SS454]

Imperial England? You mean the British Empire.

But yeah, America isn't high tech. At all.

[lifeschool]

Good find. I enjoyed the video posted by emufan showing the original doco - very interesting! Yeah, metric to imperial convertions were the cause, the Amigas never 'crashed' or broke down. And even if they had crashed, they could reboot in 3 seconds and put the data back up on screen within 10 seconds - not that any other machine could do that - then OR now.

[Charlie]

Yeah, metric to imperial convertions were the cause, the Amigas never 'crashed' or broke down. And even if they had crashed, they could reboot in 3 seconds and put the data back up on screen within 10 seconds - not that any other machine could do that - then OR now. :)

Ooo, ooo... ;)


P.S.
'Englsh' and 'US' imperial measurements aren't quite the same...

Yep, I only lurk these days because I've nothing useful to say

[synchro]

5 seconds to landing...4...3...2..." GURU MEDITATION....zzzzzzzzzz

[Merlin]

It may have been a fuel miscalculation from metric litres to gallons, as US gallons are about 3.8 litres and a UK gallon is 4.54 litres; that might make all the difference.

I remember it as 45 UK gallons is the same as 54 US gallons and they both measure 205 litres.

[SpeedGeek]

Yes, I mean British Empire but Imperial England preceded this Empire. Also, I don't believe there were many people claiming the Metric system was "English" in 1799!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system

[SS454]

That would be colonial England.

[CrashMidnick]

Our Amiga's were the best for looking at the stars

Just a little story of my A3000 et A4000 : about 1 year ago I posted a "wanted amiga stuff" on local sale websites here in France and I was contacted by a guy from the Paris Observatory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Observatory). He said that those computers were the best in the 80's-90's for "heavly calculating stuff" and they never crash. PC's cannot do the job at this time.
He decided to sell them as they no longer use them and to invite his colleagues to restaurant with the money I send him
He told me that he will keep the Amiga 1000 they had for nostaligia and for his son

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by synchro

5 seconds to landing...4...3...2..." GURU MEDITATION....zzzzzzzzzz

ReLOL: