👉 The term "losing engineering" typically refers to a situation where an engineering project or system fails to meet its intended goals, often due to poor design, inadequate planning, or unforeseen technical challenges. In the context of the 1980s and early 1990s, a notable example is the failure of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO). This mission was intended to study the Martian atmosphere and climate, but it ended in disaster due to a critical unit conversion error between metric and imperial systems. The error occurred because the team working on the navigation system used metric units while the rest of the team used imperial units, resulting in a miscalculation that led to the spacecraft's orbit being too close to Mars' atmosphere, causing it to burn up upon re-entry. This incident highlighted the importance of standardized systems and rigorous cross-disciplinary communication in engineering projects to prevent such catastrophic failures.
