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Comment by voidUpdate | Hacker News Reader

A piece of software Lockheed made gave its outputs in US Customary units (not following their specification), and NASA expected it in SI units (as their specification expected)

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That should have been checked multiple times by NASA before they launched it.

It seems like it should have been checked by Lockheed not NASA since supposedly NASA provided a specification, that specified the units, and paid for the software no?

I just had a quick scan of the incident report (https://llis.nasa.gov/llis_lib/pdf/1009464main1_0641-mr.pdf) and:

> "The output from the SM_FORCES application code as required by a MSOP Project Software Interface Specification (SIS) was to be in metric units of Newtonseconds (N-s)"

(MSOP = Mars Surveyor Operations Program). One of the recommendations was

> "Conduct software audit for specification compliance on all data transferred between JPL and Lockheed Martin Astronautics"

So yes, NASA should have checked the provided software more thoroughly, but also Lockheed should have actually followed the spec they were given. I doubt the SIS is available online to check any harder

Should have been checked by both. Lockheed should have checked because of contractual obligations; NASA should have checked because of minimal engineering practices (bugs happen in all your dependencies).

They happen and some are put there on purpose too. In this case it's not a "bug" in your dependencies, and yes NASA since it's using public funding should have been more careful, but ultimately it's Lockheed that was paid to do something no?

I work in aerospace.

Both parties fucked up.

Lockheed's job is to follow the customer's specifications.

NASA's job is to check to make sure what they paid for is what they received.

I do this every single day as a quality inspector here. I don't know why a bunch of highly-degreed engineers can't do a simple job that a person with oonly a GED does without fail.

Actually no, it's Lockheed's that should have had a test-suite and conformance-suite for it, but probably only has a C-Suite. If the program is non-trivial proving its correctness can be very expensive to prove, both money and time wise, and something that is done contrary to the spec is obviously on the one executing the spec and being paid for it, which probably wasn't cheap and probably these expenses add to the "NASA only burns money..." narrative.

"Actually no, it's Lockheed's that should have had a test-suite and conformance-suite for it"

Tell me you don't run AS9100D quality inspections without saying so directly.

Well, it seems like simple test & conformance suites would have been enough to catch this, so you wouldn't need to run AS9100D quality inspections.

Besides it looks like the first AS9100 Standard was released after the incident even happened - perhaps even as a result of this.

So it's totally irrelevant that you both audit software in the space and know the Standard, no pun intended

AS9100 is based off of ISO9001. It doesn't fucking matter, the responsibility is on both parties.

Again, tell me you don't actually handle quality without directly saying so.

No, if NASA chose not to triple check everything before sending something into space then they are as much to blame as the supplier. Blindly assuming something works like it should without testing it makes an ass out of u and me.

Very fitting for the AI age as well. "Yeah I just put the specs of the project you're paying me to do (in NASA's case, probably 100% public funds) but Claude the gimp missed the units because all previous training data use Stones and Yards as units, you should have verified it yourself! I just prompt!"

That is why the good lord invented acceptance tests.

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