A Google search for “the great Kersten Blunder” turns up many results, such as this one. The claim is that a programmer named Kersten screwed up a measurement conversion factor, causing the $2B “Vigor space probe” to miss Venus and become lost in space.
The problem is that I can’t find any mention of a “Vigor space probe” that identifies who launched it or what its mission was.
So what’s the deal? Was there actually a “space probe” named Vigor, targeted at the planet Venus, that was lost due to a faulty measurement conversion factor in the software?
That one gets mentioned on metrology websites in the same list as the great Kersten Blunder, IOW they seem to be regarded as two independent things (although the MCO, and the nature of its demise, is very well documented).
:dubious: You’re asking one of the questions I implicitly asked in my OP.
Given the lack of specifics on the internet about who might have launched it and why, until someone can present evidence to the contrary, I’m inclined to think it never existed.
[QUOTE=Phil Plait]
Hi- To my knowledge there never was a Vigor probe. I wonder if this story was made up, or was part of a short story that got out into the wild. I see it used as if it really happened. Interesting. I might write about this, if I find a hook for it (like the origin of it). Very weird!
[/QUOTE]
I made one last stab and sent an inquiry to the National Physical Laboratory, who published an educational guide to measurement in mechanical engineering that includes the Kersten Blunder as an anecdote. I asked if they knew the source of the story, and received a very nice response that “sadly, it may indeed be recycling an urban myth.”
This is all becoming weirdly incestuous. The guide you mentioned is the very one in which I first read about the Great Kersten Blunder (and why I inquired here!
There was a Venus probe (Mariner 1) which failed due to a typo in the code specification Mariner 1 - Wikipedia - I wonder if that story got merged with the Mars Climate story to create this “Kersten” blunder story.
Perhaps there’s a rocket scientist named Kersten somewhere, having to periodically deny he was to blame for that legendary blunder that probably never happened.
As the above-linked Wiki pages documents, there is a lot of speculation over what happened. The thing about the hyphen is just one story that got around.
At the time, or for some time thereafter, the standard story going around was that it was a one-character punctuation error in a FORTRAN program:
DO 5 K = 1. 3
that should have been
DO 5 K = 1, 3
In FORTRAN, both of the above are valid and mean very different things.
That was the widely-held story. The Wiki page now debunks that, suggesting a lot of different hypotheses.
