Engineering Disasters By Matthew Greenbaum and Hawa Diallo`

NASA Crashes Orbiter Due to Unit Mistake In 1998, NASA set out to work on an orbiter with the intention to orbit it around mars and collect data about the planet. To help complete this goal, NASA enlisted the help of Lockheed Martin. When the Mars Orbiter was launched on December 11th. 1998. It sailed smoothly until September 23rd, 1999 when the orbiter lost communications with NASA because of the orbiter disintegrating in Mars’ atmosphere. This $125 million loss was caused by a mistake in communications, Lockheed Martin and NASA used different units to represent the maximum height that the orbiter could be from mars, therefore when the orbiter was switching stages, it went too close into the atmosphere and disintegrated. As a result of this mistake, NASA was given large amounts of bad publicity. To this, NASA responded by explaining that the mistake could have been avoided if the U.S. Congress would have given NASA a larger budget to run their tests on mars. Picture of the Mars Satellite

Silver Lake Dam Doesn't Stand During Flood On May 14, 2003, the Silver Lake Dam, located in Marquette County, Michigan, failed. As a result of prior heavy rains, the dam was overfilled which caused a flood. The earthen fuse plug spillway was not designed properly, therefore it couldn’t hold against the pressure of the water. This caused billions of gallons of water to be released from the lake and into the city of Marquette. Because of this, highways and routes were closed and this isolated Big Bay from the surrounding cities. Investigators say that the failure of the dam was caused by the large amount of water the dam was storing, and the weak design. The flood caused over $100 million in damage. A flooded cottage. The water from the dam flowing through the city.

Works Cited “Metric Mishap Caused Loss of NASA Orbiter.” CNN, Cable News Network, www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/index.html?_s=PM%3ATECH The Washington Post, WP Company, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/space/stories/orbiter100199.htm. Grace, Francie. “2 Dams Burst In Michigan.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 16 May 2003, www.cbsnews.com/news/2-dams-burst-in-michigan/. Asplund, Steve. “13 Years since Dead River Flood.” WLUC - Content - News, www.uppermichiganssource.com/content/news/13-Years-since-Dead-River--379549371.html.