Mars Climate Orbiter

Mars Climate Orbiter

As science progresses through the 21st century, our race must not totally forgo the hard work and dedication past scientists have put in to developing standards and models that everyone can use worldwide. Hundreds of years ago, scientists worked to create methods of classifying and interpreting data that could be read and understood by people universally. In September of 1999, scientists at NASA lost contact with a multi-million dollar project during an atmospheric entry to mars all because of a human error. Scientists from different fields came together to design and program the Mars Climate Orbiter, but did not utilize a universal measuring system for the entire project. This confusion should not have happened because of the man-hours put in by scientists hundreds of years ago. All scientists, early in their education, are taught units help interpret numbers. In the NASA project, scientist excluded units and used the metric system in part of the software and then the imperial system in the rest of the software. Therefore, the computers in the spacecraft were not programmed to convert newtons into pounds, or vice versa. The crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter directly relates to its inability to distinguish between the metric system and the imperial system.

The metric system prevails in America’s school systems when children begin science and learn about the scientific method. The metric system bases its values on properties of one hundred. The history of the metric system dates back to the 18th century. The goal of the metric system was to unify measurements across the continent so that people could communicate numbers accurately. In 1799 the first proclamation became in order in France, when the prototype kilogram and the prototype metre were held in the archives to ensure a universally defined weight and length. This system was not accepted at first because of the trouble people had with converting their measurements to metric. Eventually laws were past to make all other systems of measurement illegal to use. Napoleon himself authorized the use of a French measurement system because he did not accept the metric system. After a hundred years of fighting, the metric system finally prevailed in the mid 1900s. The metre was changed with new discoveries about the size of the earth, but the kilogram still resembles the prototype developed in the 18th century. School systems teach the metric system to students usually when they start learning about science, and the scientific method. The metric system usually only appears in America when speaking of scientific quantities. The only reason people in America use the metric system when doing science is because science represent a certain purity and hierarchy. These qualities need to be defined and understood universally. Most countries in the world today utilize the metric system because it is a reliable language between areas of study.

The imperial system is taught to children, in America, early on in their education. The imperial based system that the students are taught though, is the English system that is hundredths of metric units apart from the actual imperial system. This early knowledge of the imperial system forces most children and many adults to still not understand anything but