[null and void]

No one checked the novice's work?

[colorado tanker]

They should be very afraid. Czar Vlad will not be amused.

[PapaBear3625]

No one checked the novice's work?

Design 101: it should not be possible to insert a component in an orientation other than the correct one.

[Carl Vehse]

One Russkie screwup. A similar NASA/JPL screw-up involved more people. From a 1999 Radsafe post:

'SI Oops' - A short 3-act play

ACT I - A $125 million spacecraft completes a perilous 10-month journey through space to arrive at the planet Mars. The NASA spacecraft receives its maneuvering instructions that should put it into orbit around the red planet, but, instead, it proceeds to do a flaming swan dive into the Martian surface.

ACT II - NASA convenes three different investigating panels including an internal panel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Along the corridors at the Pasadena laboratory, late into each night, hundreds of engineers in their offices huddle over their computer terminals reviewing, bit by bit, all of the computer codes, electronic schematics, test data, and telemetry dumps trying to find the cause of this terrible scientific loss. Suddenly, echoing through the corridors, up and down the stairwells, around the corners, a single agonizing scream -

"Aaaawwwwww sssshhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeettttttt....!!!!!!!!!"

ACT III - Excerpts from a CNN News release, September 30, 1999 -

"(CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday. For that reason, information failed to transfer between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft."

"'People sometimes make errors,' said Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science in a written statement.'

"'Our inability to recognize and correct this simple error has had major implications,' said JPL Director Edward Stone."

No cast party was planned.

[bgill]

Here, hold muh vodka.

[Steely Tom]

Investigators found that the rocket’s angular velocity sensors had been installed upside down.

That's interesting, because the rocket flew upside down.

[Alex in chains]

"Reach for the sky!"

[I want the USA back]

Human stupidity. Do they fire the novice or his supervisor?

[chemicalman]

Many of them rich folk cancelling their rocket trips on Russian rockets.

[norwaypinesavage]

NASA’s Genesis spacecraft crashed on its return back to earth in 2004 for the same reason.

[Jeff Chandler]

[Moltke]

The Challenger disaster killed seven and was determined to be caused by a faulty O-ring design.

Looks like the Russians got off easy here, and there’s little cause for jeers.