To you and me, it's a "whoops". To NOAA and NASA it's a godsend. Satellite projects take ten or more years from start to finish even when things go perfectly. Now a little corner of a bureaucracy gets to double its lifespan thanks to their project falling off the table!
I expect 100% of the blame will be shouldered by some unpaid intern, and everybody in a position of responsibility now sleeps well at night knowing they don't even need to look for another project to work upon before retirement kicks in.
This one's not quite as bad, but a friend of mine who works for Intel once dropped a tray of CPU's worth about 60 grand. Seems they were very forgiving about it, he didn't get fired or anything, though they did stress they'd really like him to be more careful...
do i need to proclaim my love for video games? i mean do i really? i think yes. sure i do. one of the best games of all time: rise of the triad. indeed.
by the way, the xbox and ps2 are blah. pc all the way. over and out.