Tech

A bit bigger than that. Really.

How long is the Space Shuttle runway? BBC Dimensions, a new "mashup" website launched yesterday to answer this kind of question and put other measurements in context. It's a good idea, although the implementation is very sketchy (too much fanfare and hype coupled with an underpowered application that can't even put up a decent "sorry we're busy" page when flaked out).

But back to that runway. By default the website compares it to the Palace of Westminster. Immediately I was impressed: surely that's much shorter than any of the runways I've been on.

The mistake is clear when you overlay the indicative graphic on the actual shuttle landing facility: the website authors are out by a factor of ten. Instead of fifteen thousand feet long, they've depicted a runway fifteen hundred feet long.

Fair enough, the website is a demo. But this kind of mistake is massive. The lesson I learnt from it is that if you get just one key aspect of your site wrong, you risk tarnishing its reputation forever.

How big really? Quite a bit bigger.

2147: It's now been corrected on the site. Much more impressive.