It has been an exciting week if you are a space fan. On April 1st, the Artemis II mission lifted off, on a 10-day lunar fly-by mission.
Nasa’s mission is a bit of a big deal. The last time the agency had a crewed lunar mission, it was Apollo 17 in 1972. That means it is more than 50 years since the space programme has sent astronauts to the moon, and all eyes were on the launch.
Like all live events, it has had some hiccups; a few technical issues. There was the helium leak that delayed the launch and a problem with the heat shield, both of which would feature highly on the “must fix” list. Then there was the jammed toilet fan, which ranks as less critical to the whole operation, but at the same time something that needed fixing, if only for comfort.
But the glitch that probably triggered an audible groan from Microsoft’s public relations department was when the astronauts requested tech support on the live feed. The problem? Commander Reid Wiseman couldn’t get Outlook to work on his personal device.
Rory McIlroy wanted to enjoy the Masters Dinner as well. Well la-di-da, Mr Fancy
‘Maybe we are not that mad – and it is worth pursuing’: Tipperary castle wins prestigious heritage award
How Augusta National outwitted ticket resellers and kept door closed on Donald Trump
You, Me & Tuscany review: another patronising Hollywood comedy replete with thumping stereotypes
“I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working,” he said.
[ Artemis II: Manned moon mission fires rockets to break out of Earth’s orbitOpens in new window ]
The exchange was caught and shared on social media. It wasn’t quite as memorable a soundbite as Apollo 13’s “Houston, we’ve had a problem”, but then neither was the issue at hand. The problem was not mission-critical technology, and it was eventually resolved. But it proves that astronauts are just like the rest of us, struggling with technology that should work but for some reason, it doesn’t.
Technical difficulties are an inevitable part of life. But occasionally, they happen (publicly) to the people trying to sell us the very technology that we will be (privately) cursing later on. There’s a certain Schadenfreude when that happens.
From the Cybertruck’s unbreakable windows that smashed live on stage to American film director Michael Bay’s awkward teleprompter fail at the Consumer Electronics Show, things don’t always go to plan. How they deal with it, though, is often the thing that is remembered afterwards.
Some do better at that than others though. While demonstrating Windows 98’s plug-and-play capabilities live on stage at Comdex in 1998, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates was left red-faced when confronted with the famous Blue Screen of Death.
A scanner was plugged into the computer as part of a live demo, causing the software to crash and display the famous error screen.
Gates’s reaction? “That must be why we’re not shipping Windows 98 yet.” Humorous and memorable. All in all, it proves the Windows blue screen of death comes for us all at some point – even the man behind the software – but there is something to be said for styling it out.
It isn’t just Microsoft though. When Steve Jobs demonstrated the first iTunes phone – the Motorola Rokr – live on stage, the concept was simple: a phone that allowed you to switch easily between calls and music. Of course things didn’t quite go to plan. When Jobs tried to switch from listening to music to taking a call, it failed.
The phone didn’t do too much better out in the wild. It did have one positive effect though; Apple doubled down on its efforts to make a music phone and almost two years later, it launched the iPhone. Its subsequent success was the best response, despite its own well-publicised antennagate glitch.
Sometimes we bring it on ourselves though. Take Ed Balls (former UK Labour Party politician) and his viral Twitter moment back in 2011. Like many public figures, Balls tracks his media mentions. But while searching Twitter for articles on him, things went a bit awry. Instead of putting his name into the search box, he tweeted it instead – a mishap most of us have narrowly avoided at some stage – and the incident went viral. Fifteen years and a name change later, #edballsday is still celebrated on X.
And we can’t talk about tech fails without a mention of the current hot technology. Artificial intelligence has been a wild ride. When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, OpenAI’s rivals were on the back foot. None more so than Google, which had been developing AI similar technology but had been hesitant to release it before the company felt it was really ready.
So there was a lot pinned on the launch of Google’s own AI chatbot Bard a few months later. In February 2023, Google hit the promo trail, showing off demos of the technology answering questions. One such demo showed Bard answering a question about the new discoveries made by Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope. It spat back some facts about green pea and 13-billion-year-old galaxies. But it only took a few hours before experts started pointing out it had wrongly attributed the first pictures of a planet outside of our solar system to the Nasa telescope. The credit for that one went to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.
Not only did it embarrass Google, but it also wiped $100 billion off parent company Alphabet’s stock, making it an expensive hallucination.
Things have improved significantly since then for Google though, and the repackaged Bard, now known as Gemini, has been gaining ground in the AI arms race.
All of that is to say that no one is immune to technical difficulties. Thankfully, few of us have had them play out in front of a global audience. But regardless of how many witnesses there are, deal with it with grace. That is what will likely be remembered, and despite repeated attempts, the internet rarely forgets.
