stackyFACTSInstead of designing complex, fragile landing legs, the Mars Pathfinder mission completely wrapped its rover in giant, heavy-duty balloons. The incredibly expensive scientific package just violently bounced across the rocky Martian surface until it finally rolled to a harmless stop.
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NASA's 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere because one engineering team used imperial units while the other used metric. A $125…
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Apollo 13 was heavily derailed when a simple wiring flaw caused an entire oxygen tank to violently rupture in deep space. The crew spent days freezing in a…
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Trillions of dollars of advanced engineering can always be saved by the contents of a standard toolbox. After snapping a vital piece of their rover,…
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The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was an engineering nightmare built over permafrost and fault lines. Planners had to elevate it on special heat-radiating supports so…
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To ensure human astronauts could actually perform tasks in zero gravity without losing their minds, scientists first sent up an extensively trained primate…
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Because putting the motor actually on the train was apparently too radical. The very earliest railway systems simply had massive steam engines permanently…
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