NASA astronauts had to install new optics to correct the Hubble Space Telescope's misshapen mirror. In 1967, a launchpad fire in the Apollo 1 capsule killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Edward White, who were trapped by a slow-opening manual hatch lock. As a result, the pioneering Apollo 11 moon landing was an unqualified success. As Neil Armstrong placed the first human foot on the moon, he mangled his well-rehearsed speech. The giant U.S. space station lost a meteoroid shade and half its solar panels during its launch in 1973.
Technology progresses, but the list of mishaps goes on and on.
The Soviet Union's Venera probes to Venus repeatedly fizzled and fried when they reached the planet's surface during the 1970s. In 1986, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Challenger on a cold day, when the seals in its solid-fuel rockets wouldn't hold properly, resulting in the tragic explosion. The Hubble Space Telescope went into orbit in 1990 equipped with a flawed mirror, exquisitely fashioned to the wrong shape, while a perfect backup mirror sat useless in a warehouse. Even when the equipment works fine, often the scientists themselves go awry. In 1997, Louis Frank at the University of Iowa announced that Earth is constantly bombarded by tiny comets that replenish the oceans.