Goodbye Mars Orbiter
In 1999, NASA’s Mars orbiter was literally lost in space after a metric miscalculation sent it on a course towards oblivion. The mistake was the result of Lockheed Martin engineers using English measurements like inches and feet to program the orbiter’s course instead of NASA’s metric calculations like centimeters and meters.
As a result, the navigational computer was confused by the mishap and the $125 million orbiter ended up heading into the deepest regions of unknown space instead of Mars, which was its intended destination.