
September 1999. NASA's 327 million dollar Mars Climate Orbiter fires its engine to slip into orbit, then goes silent forever. The cause: Lockheed's software reported thruster force in pound-force, the NASA navigation code read those numbers as newtons, and nobody converted between the two. The probe came in at about 57 km above the surface instead of the planned 226, far too low to survive, and was never heard from again. You are the engineer who adds the one conversion everybody forgot.
Objective
Convert a thruster force from pound-force into milli-newtons, and reject an invalid reading.
Steps
$ to_millinewtons(1)
4448
$ to_millinewtons(25)
111200
$ to_millinewtons(-2)
-1
Expected files
Allowed functions
None. Write every helper yourself.
Loading solutions...