That’s because this kind of software frequently supports all measurement units, allowing English and metric units to be mixed in equations without fear. If engineers working on the Orbiter had access to today’s software for engineering math, the spacecraft might still be happily orbiting the Red Planet. NASA had used metric units while spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin had used English units. What caught the public’s attention wasn’t so much the failed mission as the cause of the failure: An investigation found a measurement mismatch between two software systems.
The Mars Climate Orbiter made headlines back in 1999 when it approached Mars on a trajectory bringing it too close to the planet and wound up either destroyed in the Mars atmosphere or orbiting the Sun. Numerous open-source software packages now provide engineering math capabilities and go easy on the pocketbook.
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