You know there's something wrong with US politics when NASA is forced to communicate in Imperial measurements.
"Orion’s main engine provides up to 6,000 pounds of thrust, enough to accelerate a car from 0 to 60 mph in about 2.7 seconds. At the time of the burn, Orion’s mass was 58,000 pounds and burned approximately 1,000 pounds of fuel during the firing."
I can't overstate this. NASA's use of pounds and cubic feet in its outreach efforts does not come across to science-literate people, inside or outside the US, as a sign that the country is a badass superpower that can do what it likes and ignore everyone else.
Instead it suggests that the US is a provincial nation of dungaree-wearing banjo players.
@mrundkvist
Or that NASA, USA funded, is trying to appeal to its target audience of voters in the measures they actually USE.
Trumpler’s assault on science has hit NASA hard, this could be an attempt to fight back. Get their population to relate.
Also, mocking a country for its legal language, customs, currency, or systems of measurements is not okay. Ever. Just because someone believes their ‘system’ is better, does not make it so. Opinion is just a consensus. Not everyone has to agree.
I grew up with UK Imperial measures, and currency, yet somehow have a genius IQ and science degrees. Does the fact that the UK still uses MILES on all our roadsigns, and sells beer in PINTS (bigger than a USA pint btw 😉) make us all hicks?
"Does the fact that the UK still uses MILES on all our roadsigns, and sells beer in PINTS (bigger than a USA pint btw 😉) make us all hicks?"
Of course not. Hicks is a US thing. When the UK keeps using archaic, stupid measurements it's because they're all Tea-aboos who refuse to accept the loss of the British Empire and stubbornly cling on to anything that lets them pretend they're still a world power.
We're not culturally ignorant, you know. We target our insults.
@skjeggtroll @cflynnbooks @mrundkvist But it does make you less advanced and less polite than Canada.
Road signs here are in km, temperatures in Celsius. Other than that people tend to be bi-lingual in units. You can ask for 500g of cheese or a pound; the merchant will cheerfully give you what you want. Doctors officially record your weight in kg but automatically offer to translate to pounds. Inter-city train and commuter-rail timetables show 24-hour time, transit schedules where I live use 12-hour time.
Young people seem to be much more comfortable with SI than with US units, so we may mostly evolve away from the latter.
Some things stick to US units because of international trade. Lumber is measured in feet for length and inches for nominal width and thickness (though the latter have been a name more than a measurement in both countries for decades: go measure a 2 x 4 or a 1-inch thick 8-inch board). Standard sheets of plywood and drywall are 4' x 8'. Maybe that will change later.
Martin Rundkvist
Cornelius Flynn
Skjeggtroll
Norman Wilson