English/metric measurement error in the Mars Climate Orbiter

[Jack55]

Hello All, This discussion prompted me to make my first post. My father worked for a coal company in the 50's. They wanted him and his crew to float a pump out onto the surface of a tailings pond. The engineer in charge gave them a sketch for a set of pontoons to be fabricated out of steel pipe. A couple of the men were WWII Navy Seabees so they knew how things float, but they also followed orders. They fabricated the pontoons to spec, mounted the pump and pulled it out into the pond, where it promptly sank. As they were dragging it out of the pond the engineer showed up, pondered the problem and came up with a brilliant solution. He told them to weld a couple of valve stems onto the pontoons and fill them with air. Don't know if they followed that order or not.