A Small Sample of Aerospace Design Errors
- F14 lost to uncontrollable spin, traced to tactical software.
(Software Engineering Notes, Volume 9, Number 5)
- F18 crashed due to missing exception condition.
(Software Engineering Notes, Volume 6, Number 2)
- AFTI-F16: Asynchronous operation, skew, and sensor noise led each
channel to declare others failed in flight test 44. Flown home on a single
channel. Other potentially disasterous bugs detected in flight tests 15 and
26.
- X29 bug was detected by simulation after 162 at risk flights.
Analysis showed that the bug could have led to instability and consequent
loss-of-aircraft.
- HiMAT crash landed without landing gear because of a design flaw.
Traced to timing change in the software that had survived extensive testing.
Curator and Responsible NASA Official:
Ricky W. Butler
last modified: 27 November 2000 (10:06:24)