[null and void]

No one checked the novice's work?

[miserare]

Do their engineers smoke pot?

[grobdriver]

More wadka, camrade?

[dfwgator]

A few weeks back, a Russian rocket called “Proton-M” exploded over a spaceport in Kazakhstan a few seconds after it launched.

[miliantnutcase]

And these guys launch our astronauts into space these days...

[b4its2late]

[taxcontrol]

I would blame this on the engineer not the technician. If there is a specific orientation required for a piece of hardware, the device should be designed and constructed to only fit in one way.

[SeaHawkFan]

And some people think the Chinese can conduct aircraft carrier operations?

[DuncanWaring]

Back in the 1960s, a missile was launched out of Vandenberg AFB with an improperly-installed inertial-nav system.

Instead of heading south, as was intended, it headed east towards Los Angeles.

Due to the improperly-installed sensor, it scraped the self-destruct package off the missile as it came out of the silo, so the Range Safety Officer was unable to destroy it.

Fortunately, as it was shedding its self-destruct package, it also damaged itself badly-enough that it disintegrated on its own shortly thereafter, before it got to LA.

[null and void]

The part that terrified me, was there was no action taken by the Range Safety Officer.

They do have a Range Safety Officer, don’t they? Don’t they???

[Red Badger]

[NonValueAdded]

I understand that kind of error was caught early in the Minuteman development program. Someone must have realized which end was the pointy end.

[TigersEye]

Oops!

[Izzy Dunne]

An easy mistake to make, one would suppose, except for the minor fact that they had arrows on them showing which way was up and which way was down.

I would point out that it's possible that the rocket was on its side when this was installed, meaning the mistake is easier to make.

[Hardraade]

Ah. The old “upside-down” trick. I know it well.

[RinaseaofDs]

Turns out it was an EV error on the sensor bank.

(EV = Excessive Vodka)

[SeaHawkFan]

Maybe the tech and the inspector had to bend over to read the label, so from that perspective, it look right.

[reed13k]

Bfl for root cause analysis and keyed assemblies

[Menehune56]

The person responsible for this mistake was an inexperienced technician. What’s more, his work, records indicate, was never double-checked.

Has this hapless person been executed?

[11th Commandment]

Looks like my modified bottle rockets on the fourth of July.

[11th Commandment]

Looks like my modified bottle rockets on the fourth of July.