Question

Помогите пожалуйста

Answer 1

In a rare ten minute coffee break, Detective Hartland recounted a story to Officer Barlow. When he was on leave in the USA one year he was asked to observe a case. He said it was around 35 years ago then and it was very interesting. There was great concern that Russian spies had infiltrated an American site and sabotaged their equipment. "Yes," Hartland said, "we don't get too much of that sort of stuff now that the Cold War is over," said Barlow.

Hartland continued, "Indeed. I was one of a team investigating the case. We tried - to determine whether it was a case of espionage or an unfortunate mistake. We couldn't really see any foul play and it was widely suspected that it was just a mistake. We didn't have a great deal to go on anyway. Unfortunately, that one mistake cost $18 million."

"Jeez! I bet that stung the taxpayers' pockets," Barlow stood up to get another cup of coffee from the percolator.

"And the funniest thing was that the mistake was caused by a short, horizontal line!" said Hartland.

Barlow looked back at the detective in puzzlement. "And what?" he asked.

"A short, horizontal line. Why, I don't think you need to be a great detective to work it out. There aren't too many things that are SO expensive that they cost that much money to rebuild. Certainly, it was an expensive job because the parts had to be made so precisely."

"Ah, so this was advanced techie stuff, then. Well, I think I might have an idea of what you're on now. Told you it wasn't difficult," said Hartland as he finished his coffee.

Hartland referred to the Mariner I mission that was launched towards Venus in 1962. However, the rocket separated from the boosters too soon and plunged into the ocean just four minutes after take-off. The cause was a missing minus sign (a short, horizontal line) from the computer program, caused by human error.