Iridium phone system - How to burn-up $6 billion
Int'l Space Station - Committee in the sky
Mars Polar and Climate Observers - metric mistakes
HDTV - Band scam
Y2K - gotcha!
ISDN - digital dive
Video phones
NMD - 'Star Wars' prequel
THAAD, thy name is consistent failure
Patriot missile system- Scud busted
More costly missile failures - "insertion of a decimal point"
News
References

Over the past 300 years, people have long since become accustomed to blindly falling in love with the new and discarding the old in the realm of technology, and the endless pursuit of new technology has become a panacea to resolve all the difficult questions of existence. Infatuated with it, people have gradually gone astray. Just as one will often commit ten other mistakes to cover up one, to solve one difficult problem people do not hesitate to bring ten more on themselves. For example, for a more convenient means of transportation, people invented cars, but a long string of problems followed closely on the heels of the automobile -- mining and smelting, mechanical processing, oil extraction, rubber refining, and road-building, etc., which in turn required a long string of technical means to solve, until ultimately it led to pollution of the environment, destroying resources, taking over farmland, traffic accidents, and a host of thornier problems. In the long run, comparing the original goal of using cars for transportation with these derivative problems, it almost seems unimportant. In this way, the irrational expansion of technology causes mankind to continually lose his goals in the complex ramifications of the tree of technology, losing his way and forgetting how to get back. We may as well dub this phenomenon the "ramification effect." [1]

Hi-tech failures are always amusing, my favorites are the ones that cost billions of dollars and end up returning absolutely no useable benefits to society. Rocket failures fit well into this category because they're one shot deals, when they fail they go up in a huge ball of fire burning up billions of dollars worth of equipment and thousands of hours of work, effort and stress.

But why do these blunders occur?

1. Too complex, not feasible, overestimated abilities
2. Simple errors, stupid mistakes (NASA syndrome)
3. Reality proves different than paper plans, technology changes

In a lot of cases it seems like simply foolish investing but that’s with the benefit of hindsight. No none really intends to create a financial and technological fiasco, instead mitigating factors and poor judgment interact to form a complex problem too difficult to correct and too easy just to acquiesce to the forces of inertia.

Economics has a rule of sunken losses. This states that any investment once spent dictates that the investor get out as soon as they realize it's a lost cause. In other words if you pay $7 for a movie then half way through realize its terrible, the logical action is to walk out because otherwise you are adding to the losses by spending your time watching a movie you don’t like when you could be using that time doing something more productive. Human nature makes it very difficult to carry this out in practice but it does make good sense. In the venture capital world as well as in research huge sinkhole projects won't die even after their doom becomes latently manifest. For reasons of pride and employment it's more palatable to go all the way and fail and have ‘tried’ then to stop and cut your losses and admit the obvious. Many of these following case studies demonstrate the futility of ignoring sunken losses.

Iridium: At $3000 per handset it's perfect for government users!

The Defense Information Agency bought a contract for Iridium phones including all the shiny accessories for $219 million dollars, all of it apparently completely wasted at this point. Also it's interesting to note that Motorola launched several Iridium satellites from China using that countries Long March rockets. Technology was pilfered from at least one of those rockets and used by China to improve multiple re-entry vehicles for its nuclear tipped ballistic missiles (guess where they're aimed). What other technology improvements China may have gained from Motorola either directly or otherwise remains for the courts to decide...

International Space Station

Besides the CIS, just about every other industrialized nation on the planet has some contribution to the international space station. I can only imagine how horrendous the coordinated planning on this project must be.

The International Space Station is very slowly moving forward but since it will require at least 40 shuttle missions just to complete it, the pace is almost negligible. It’s one of those prestige projects that Congress can’t kill because it will look bad. As sad as it is to say, the thing needs to die now before it turns into a total fiasco in 5 years. It’s very tragic because a space station could provide invaluable technical research and knowledge. Bureaucratic bungling and committee planning have a way of defeating even the noblest efforts.

Mars Climate and Polar Orbiters

Mars Climate Orbiter was lost Sept. 23 when nobody realized that Lockheed Martin Astronautics delivered navigation data in English units rather than metrics. The $125 million craft burned up in the Martian atmosphere. Their combined cost was about the same as the last successful spacecraft to land on Mars — Pathfinder in 1997 From MSNBC.

NASA is trying to do too much at once. As in the case of the Polar orbiter it had three probes, an error on only one caused the loss of all three. Clearly NASA is attempting to maximize its dollars by piggy-backing numerous payloads and sensors all into one package, but with the high rate of failure typical of not just NASA but the entire space industry, it would be wiser to keep the research probes simple and direct. Better to have one success with less data than have none at all and a spectacular Congress-investigation resulting failure.

To me it seems almost unfair to pick on NASA given the trifling amounts they have lost on very daring missions. Compared to say, Iridium, the Mars probes are pocket change. Still many of NASA’s errors are due to poor analysis, bad judgment, and very stupid mistakes, something an agency made up of intelligent and well-trained scientist and engineers should not be doing. They have no excuse.

HDTV (High Definition Television)

Likewise HDTV in general has been discombobulated for years, too few people seem to want it and the broadcasters have been dragging their feet to implement it because of the cost of the new equipment. Potentially it would provide high resolution picture and CD quality sound as well as a data channel. Seems great but no one really wants or needs it.

The real reason for HDTV is about content control, the fact that media execs feared Japanese and European technological supremacy would give them monopoly rights over domestic HDTV broadcasts. If those HDTV patents and bandwidth licenses fell into the ‘wrong’ hands the U$ networks would be in for some very unwelcome competition. Their lobby machine went into overdrive back in the mid-eighties, playing the FCC like a fiddle to allocate HDTV bandwidth contracts worth over $70 billion to the U$ networks monopolists, for free! Not only that but the FCC wrote in legal stipulations that HDTV would completely replace analog TV by 2006.

Preston Padden, now president of the ABC television network, was involved in some of the early meetings about analog HDTV. "I remember seeing fear in the eyes of my elder colleagues," he says. The result, according to Padden, was that the broadcast industry swiftly pulled together. Network executives were soon telling Congress they needed more spectrum to keep up with cable and direct broadcast satellite (DBS).

Little wonder, then, that the Telecommunications Act of 1996--which Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., dubbed the most heavily lobbied-for bill in U.S. history--directed the FCC to grant licenses for new spectrum to incumbent broadcasters. Congress did not require--as some, notably then-Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., suggested--that the spectrum be auctioned. http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=35cf74f30

Supply and demand has nothing to do with HDTV as is clearly demonstrated by the total lackluster consumer sentiment on the issue. The TVs we have now work fine, paying $2000 to $3000 for a new HDTV set is ridiculous.

In some ways this scam has backfired on the networks but not the equipment manufacturers. Without any consumer demand, broadcasting in HDTV is even more expensive and with the legal timeline the network broadcasters are left with few ways out. Although realistically the 2006 deadline will be flexed, I foresee that both TV modes will coexist for many years to come. By legal mandate HDTV has a future but without consumer demand or even consumer awareness it has a long way to go. This seems especially ironic given the insatiable appetite for consumer products like cars and home electronics within the present economic boom. I mean if people wont buy one now when will they?

Y2K

I think Y2K has got to be the greatest techno-blunder in world history, although not for the reason everyone expected. Billions of dollars were spent (at least by the Americans) trying to repair everything from imbedded chips in elevators to 1960s COBOL source code in mainframes. Scams were everywhere, software miracle fixes, hardware solutions; even new computer sales got a boost. The FED dumped billions into the economy as ‘insurance’ money, paranoids built underground bunkers and stocked up on flour and ammo. The State department pulled out most of its staff at great cost and personal inconvenience from Moldova, Ukraine and Russia over fears that Y2K computer failures would be widespread in that region. Russia did nothing to fix the problem but who was the fool on January 1 ???

Y2K says more about human psychology and the interface between computer technology and human perceptions than anything else.

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network)

ISDN was touted as the miracle breakthrough that delivered high speed digital communications to everyone and put the Internet in home and business. But in reality ISDN came out a day late and a dollar short, offering two 64kbps channels plus a telephone/control channel of about 16k. Being digital it requires a special modem but also a special line link from that modem to the phone company. Originally developed in 1984 its deployment has been lackluster at best. Indeed if not for home and small office sucker-use it probably wouldn’t have even been released. The fact that most ISPs charge by the hour for ISDN hasn’t made it especially cost effective.

I don’t know how much money was spent on development but I’m sure the returns haven’t even been close. Now for less than ISDN service you can get DSL for three times the speed over existing phone lines. I saw a deal from a local ISP for DSL $60 a month unlimited use, 354kbps and no set up fee.

Video-Phones

Here it is the year 2000 and videophones are everywhere, even in our moon colony living rooms right? As if traditional phones aren’t intrusive enough does anyone really want the other party to see you too? Videophones are completely feasible but even if implemented people would just use background pictures of Tahiti, ADVERTISING or put on masks to improve presentability like in the Jetsons.

I don't know how much research dollars have been put into developing videophones but I imagine most of it has been on the manufacturers side and not the telecom companies. The telecoms are too busy trying to get basic phone service and maybe Internet to customers.

NMD (National Missile Defense)

The 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty covers a lot of issues but most importantly it specifies that only one missile site be established for incoming strategic ballistic missile protection. The Russians long used a ring of anti-missile, missiles known to NATO as the Galosh system, to protect Moscow. The U$ has flirted with varying ideas and haphazard systems the only one of which ever deployed, if I'm not mistaken, was in North Dakota.

In 1997 the Clinton administration failed to renegotiate the terms of the treaty with Russia to allow broader implementation of NMD systems such as lasers and space based weapons. Fundamentally much of the interpretation of this document lies in the eyes of the beholder. The Russians being cash strapped interpret it very literally; nothing is allowed to counter the established Mutual Assured Destruction pact but one anti-missile site. Obviously the Russians don’t have the money to do much but improve their existing ICBMs let alone build lasers, kinetic kill vehicles and anti-satellite weapons.

The U$ on the other hand views the treaty much more charitably and wants to build exotic tools to defend against the likes of North Korea and other vicous and extremely dangerous, imperative threats to democracy and capitalism like Iraq. Finally the ABM treaty allows a country to build any weapon they want the problem is in testing space weapons and fielding the systems, a little loophole the defense contractors are taking full advantage of.

Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)

`"We are going to have a huge, huge bill in the future for missile defense,'' Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles head of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization

THAAD is designed to shoot down incoming medium range ballistic missiles such as the Shahab 3 of Iran and the Taepo Dong of North Korea with ranges around 1200 miles.

THAAD has had more consecutive failures than any military program in recent memory. After 7 the government threatened to slap a fine on Lockheed Martin for inability to deliver and cost overruns. After nine successive failures the government renegotiated the contract under the guise of ‘cost-sharing’ and the project crawled onward.

The first nine attempts were to hit a SCUD missile with a separated warhead, something the Army claimed the Patriot missile did in the Gulf War, or at least a SCUD with an attached warhead anyway, (see the Patriot entry on this page). Test 10 and 11 were successful, but why the sudden change in luck? The idea is if you can’t hit a real threat missile like a SCUD build a new missile designed to be shot down (called Hera) and voila! It works.

Presently the project is on hold since the last two miraculous successes were a little suspicious. In other words the test was dumbed down so low it almost had to succeed. Presently the military is debating whether to dump more money into it or come up with a way to kill the project and still save face.

THAAD was scheduled to be deployed in the mid 1990s. Right now the budget for the continued development of the system is running at about half a billion dollars a year; sure makes NASA's failures look paltry!

Performance problems notwithstanding, there is little reason to anticipate that the Army's THAAD will face anything other than programmatic restructuring and shifting schedules and funding profiles until Lockheed Martin eventually manages to build something that can hit a few targets in a few tests. The Army is too heavily invested in THAAD to allow the program to be canceled, and Lockheed Martin is too heavily involved and too influential to allow the program to be radically restructured. Recalling the extraordinarily protracted development effort required for the initial air-defense version of Patriot, all parties are likely to persevere even in the face of what to date has been an extraordinarily troubled program. By: John Pike of the FAS, Apr.1998 http://www.armscontrol.org/ACT/april98/pikap98.htm

Patriot MIM-104 missile system

The U$ Army claimed an 80% hit ratio in Saudi and a 50% hit ratio in Israel. In truth they were a total failure that was covered up. Even according to the Government Accounting Office (GAO) investigation at best only 9 percent actually hit their targets. What actually happened was most missed completely and the few that did hit either sliced through the Scud harmlessly or blew up the Scud and the pieces fell to the ground crushing everything below. The Patriot is such a late phase interceptor that the debris literally falls over the heads of the Patriot operators! Finally certain analysts such as Theodore A. Postol have posited that the actual intercept rate was ZERO. The latest modification known as the PAC-3 has already doubled in cost from projections to about a million dollars a missile. Now I don’t know exactly how much a Scud costs but I’m sure it’s much less than a million dollars.

"In Israel, the amount of damages and casualties increased after the Patriots were deployed there." - PBS / Frontline report

I’m sure the PAC-3 has improved the Patriots anti-missile capability but the point is that anything less than 100% protection of civilians is spurious. This was clearly demonstrated in Israel during the Gulf War. One Scud with nerve gas that makes it through by whatever miracle and plops down in a city is not acceptable, no matter how many Patriots were fired at it.

More Costly Missile Failures

Human error called culprit in 3 rocket launch failures
By Stephen Sobek
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - Three rocket launch failures that have cost taxpayers at least $3 billion can be traced to human error, the Air Force's top space official told a House subcommittee Tuesday.

Malfunctions being investigated by the committee include a rocket that exploded after launch on Aug. 12, a missile-warning satellite that was launched into the wrong orbit on April 9, and a military communications satellite sent into orbit thousands of miles too low on April 30.

The most recent failure seems to have been caused by an error written into the software in the rocket's upper stage, said Keith Hall, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space.

''There was the insertion of a decimal point,'' Hall told the House Technical and Tactical Intelligence subcommittee. ''That appears to be the cause.''

The Air Force is investigating the three cases, all involving Lockheed Martin Titan 4 rockets, but the hearing did not produce details of what human errors apparently caused the other two failures. [June 16, 1999 ]

Here's some enlightening historical examples of techno-blunders consisting of poor predictions, bad guesses and 'expert' advice, proving technology can be a tricky topic.

• In 1903 in a small Ohio town, Milton Wright, a minister in the Church of Christ, was looking for an appropriate sermon topic. He found his theme in a very unlikely place—a U.S. Patent Office report on the future. The report said that everything that could conceivably be invented had already been discovered. There are strict limits to human ingenuity, the report argued, and no major advances were likely to occur in the twentieth century.
  Wright delivered a sermon based on that notion. At the end, a young man raised his hand and said, "You know something, sir, I believe that one day people will fly."
  "Fly?" responded Minister Wright, "If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us wings; He would have made us angels; He would have made us birds. Let me assure you, you will not see people fly." The young man, however, got the last laugh. Three months later, Wright's two sons, Orville and Wilbur, flew the first airplane, from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

• In 1927, film producer Harry Warner said, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

• In 1905, Grover Cleveland said, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."

• In the 1830s, Dionysius Lardner, author of The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated, said, "Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."

• When told of Robert Fulton's steamboat, Napoleon said, "What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense."

• On the eve of World War II, Admiral Clark Woodward said, "As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, it can never be done."

• Thomas Edison said, "Just as certain as death, George Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in an electric system of any size," and "the phonograph has no commercial value at all."

• "This telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of communication," said the president of Western Union in 1876. "The device is of inherently no value to us."

• The president of Michigan Savings Banks advised Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Company because, he said, "The horse is here to stay, the automobile is a novelty."

• In 1921, radio pioneer David Sarnoff said, "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

• In 1926, Lee DeForest, inventor of the vacuum tube, said, "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility."

• "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," said Lord Kelvin, president of the British Royal Society and one of the nineteenth century's greatest experts on thermodynamics.

• "A rocket will never be able to leave the earth's atmosphere," stated the New York Times in 1936.

• "Space travel is utter bilge," said a British astronomer in 1956.

• "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom," said Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Milliken in 1923.

• Darryl Zanuck observed, in 1946, "Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

• The chairman of IBM said, "I think there is a world market for about five computers," in 1943.

• "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home," said the president of Digital Electronic Corporation in 1977.

• "We will bury you," predicted Nikita Kruschev in 1958.

• Visionary designer Buckminster Fuller said, in 1966, "By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties."

• Social scientist David Riesman declared, in 1967, "If anything remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women."

News: Missile Defense Program Changes Course - Officials Blame Bad Luck For Testing Mishaps but Put Off Full Production, Washington Post August 5, 2002

References:
1. Unrestricted Warfare, by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999
Iridum / Softwar: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_smith_news/20000407_xnsof_bankrupt_i.shtml
Iridium fact sheet : http://www.comlinks.com/satcom/iridium.htm
FAS on Patriot performance many links: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/docops/operate.htm
ACTBMDO analysis http://www.armscontrol.org/ACT/april98/pikap98.htm
HDTV mess: http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/story?id=35cf74f30
HDTV info and articles from CNET: http://www.cnet.com/consumerelectronics/0-3648.html?tag=st.cn.3622scd.tc.3648
Genreal says BMDO cost huge http://infomanage.com/nonproliferation/sdi/story.html
THAAD 9th failure http://eetimes.com/story/industry/systems_and_software_news/OEG19990329S0041
Space station 6 times cost: http://www.fas.org/news/usa/1999/04/story_99765.htm
$30.2B for NMD program: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000404/ts/arms_starwars_1.html
3 Rockets fail human error: http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/stories/1999b/061699e.htm