Essays on Bahamas

The Mars Climate Orbiter: A Multimillion Dollar Mistake

The Story Grossman (1999) addresses the incident of NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter in her article named “Metric Math Mistake Muffed Mars Meteorology Mission”. She explains how a simple unit conversion mistake caused the Orbiter to burn up in the Martian atmosphere. The vessel costed NASA a whopping $125 million when it vanished into the Martian atmosphere. The problem, later identified by a NASA review board, owed to a software glitch. The software was used to calculate the thrust in “pounds of force” while the other software took the input in “newtons”. This happened due to the fact that ...

Abstract

The Hurricane Katrina is considered the most devastating storm in the United States due to its magnitude of destruction and the casualties involved. Though the weather forecasters had predicted about the storm, the American government had not put any measures to deal with the catastrophe. As a result, the Gulf Coast States that was hit hardest by Katrina lost properties worth billions as well as thousands of lives. The parties involved in the rescue process included the Army Corps, Coast Guards, as well as FEMA. The Katrina hurricane recorded the government inefficiency in two levels. The first one is ...

ABSTRACT

Hurricane Katrina proved to be one the largest natural disasters to occur in the United States. This storm devastated parts of the south, particularly Louisiana. High winds, rains and the breaking of levees left mass flooding and the drowning of entire neighborhoods. The emergency response from the government proved to be highly disorganized, inefficient and lacked the needed supplies to meet the needs of those requiring medical attention, food, water and shelter. In fact, some argue that the disaster lasted longer because of organizations like FEMA whose efforts many call a great failure. Since then many suggestions have been ...