Literally The Worst Thing To Ever Happen In The United States Government

So NASA's former deputy administrator allegedly used part clipping in CAD software while designing a multi-billion dollar spacecraft that's supposed to take humans back to the Moon. You know, that thing your engineering professor explicitly banned on day one because it's basically the digital equivalent of duct tape and prayers.

For context: part clipping is when you let two solid objects occupy the same space in your 3D model—which works great in video games where physics is optional, but tends to cause slight problems when you're dealing with actual metal, physics, and the vacuum of space. It's the CAD equivalent of "I'll fix it later" except later is now T-minus launch day.

The fact that this made it into a multi-billion dollar spacecraft design is genuinely wild. Somewhere, a quality control engineer is still having nightmares. But hey, at least they didn't use Comic Sans on the mission patch, so there's that.