The Self-Destruction Of The Ariane 5 Rocket

Ariane 5 is a giant rocket produced by the European Space Agency. It took 10 years and $7 billion to produce Ariane 5 and the goal is to give Europe a huge supremacy in the commercial space industry. Each launch of the rocket was expected to hurl a pair of three-ton satellites into orbit by the help of a small computer program. However, an error in the line of code resulted in a devastating crash in the course of the launching (Gleick, 1996). At 39 seconds after dispatch, a self-destruct system damaged Ariane 5 with its payload of four costly and uninsured satellites as soon as it reaches an elevation of more than two miles. The self-destruction happened because aerodynamic forces were shredding the boosters from the rocket (Gleick, 1996). This happened a moment when the rocket swerved off course with the on-board computer that is responsible for the steering thought the rocket needed a change of course.
At this point, the controlling system has automatically shut down as it tried to convert the sideways velocity of the rocket from a 64-bit format to a 16-bit format (Gleick, 1996). The number was too big, and an overflow error resulted (Gleick, 1996). This bug that actually caused this havoc served no purpose when the rocket was in the air other than to align the system before launch. So, it should have been turned off (Gleick, 1996). …show more content…
However, the investigators blame no contractor as regards the failure (Gleick, 1996). According to Gleick (1996) he said the European investigators wrote that "a decision was taken, it was not analyzed or fully understood and the possible implications of allowing it to continue to function during flight were not realized." They failed to calculate quantitatively the money and time saved by ignoring the standard error-protection code (Gleick,