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incoming information, the person probably looked at it and
decided to get back to it later. Or perhaps the person didn’t
even read it—maybe the overwhelming volume of daily mail
caused the person to miss it entirely (as any of you with sev-
eral hundred unread messages in your inbox understand). In
any event, the critical e-mail disappeared into the vast forest
of unanswered messages littering this inbox, and the mission
ended in failure.
Oh, yes, regarding the huge waste, the cost of the spacecraft
was $125 million. The total cost of the project was $327 million.
(And that was in 1999 when $327 million still meant something.)
When you have a multitude of tasks you could be doing at
any one time—and you do when you’re supporting m ...