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Well multiply that feeling by about 10,000 times and you'll appreciate how the folks over at NASA are feeling today after their NZ$400 million Genesis space capsule had a major fender-bender after its parachutes failed to open while plummeting towards the ground over a Utah desert.

After performing brilliantly on a three year mission to capture bits of flotsam ejected by the sun, the damned thing was just a few Kms from home when everything turned to custard.

Sounds a bit like a lot of IT big projects doesn't it? :-)

I guess the failure of this mission, especially when compared to the success of the last two martian lander missions and the tragedy of the last space shuttle mission, serves to highlight just how important luck is when you're pushing the boundaries of technology.

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When you create anything that has as many variables and points of failure as a spacecraft, no amount of checking and re-checking will really be able to catch all the tiny flaws which could spell disaster.

That's pretty much how software works too. It's virtually impossible to prove that any non-trivial piece of software has no bugs, all you can do is use good systems and practices to try and reduce the chances of such flaws being introduced in the first place.

Of course the Genesis failure was made even more embarrassing by the admission that the special glass plates on which the collected sample matter was deposited are so fragile that they might not even survive a conventional parachute landing.

It was this fragility that prompted an attempt to snag the chutes carrying the capsule using a helicopter so as to eliminate any significant shock or landing stress.

I hope those who are lining up to hurl themselves skywards in an attempt to claim the X-Prize took note of today's events and will be less inclined to rely on luck than common-sense.

Of course, anyone familiar with Greek Mythology could have told NASA that such a mission was doomed to failure by way of a very hard landing anyway.

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