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 Worse, NASA lost a spacecraft due to this oractice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
I don’t see it as superpower bravado but rather the inability to adapt and the low values the public places I. Science and engineering.
Having incompatible measurement units can lead to bizarre situations. One of these is the story of the Gimli Glider, a Boeing 767 which, after its fuel density was calculated in pounds per litre instead of kilograms per litre, had to land with no engines on a decommissioned runway on which a motorsport event was taking place.
@SalemsLot @Anne_Delong @tsrams @mrundkvist
I think we may, in our own way, be making the same point.
@dresstokilt @tsrams @mrundkvist
Sorry, I didn't intend to imply that it was an American issue, just that dealing with two different measuring systems can lead to mistakes.
@Anne_Delong @dresstokilt @tsrams @mrundkvist
It was was one of the reasons Canada smartened up and switched to metric.
@chu @dresstokilt @tsrams @mrundkvist
Aside from the fuel issue, it seems that the pilots had not been trained on what to do if both engines were not working, and there was no item in the emergency manual about it. Only because the pilot flew gliders as a hobby did the plane get to the runway (which had a guardrail down the middle for safety during drag races).
@Anne_Delong @dresstokilt @tsrams @mrundkvist
We learnt about the glimi glider in flight school.
It was a long time ago in aviation terms. The industry was not as mature as it is now. It is important to remember that all safety regulations and protocols are written in blood. In general, until sometime fatal (or near fatal happens), things don't get regulated due to lack of information or just lack of understanding.
This was one of those incidents that added to the rule books.
@farbel @mrundkvist I mean, it's not like we don't have inches and feet in Europe either. I've had to do conversions all my life too because they're commonly used in many contexts. Since the default is metric, I do the conversion the other way of course, but at the end of the day, it's still an additional cognitive load.
I was just discussing wind speed with my brother, who works at an airport. I'm used to metres per second wind speeds, but they use knots.
@Tho99 @veronica @farbel @mrundkvist
Ah, aviation...
Altitude is still measured in Flight Levels which are enumerated in thousands of feet (though they're actually a pressure altitude). Even metric flight levels in Russia named that way though the actual altitude varies slightly because of the difference between the metric flight levels and everybody else's feet-based flight levels. So planes may have to adjust their altitude slightly when entering or leaving Russia.
@veronica @resuna @Tho99 @farbel @mrundkvist
A 2x4 is 1½ x 3½ inches
A 2x6 is 1½ x 5½ inches
My old house had an addition built by someone who didn't know that, and as a result there's an approximately 1-inch jog where one wall of the addition meets the original house.
@Tho99 @veronica @farbel @mrundkvist Ireland uses SI and has done for a long time. The pint is the most frequently encountered imperial unit but it's defined in SI units. Distances on road signs are in Km. In NI, still part of the UK, they're in miles.
Brexit has made no difference. A proposal by an arch clown politician in the UK to (Jacob Rees Mogg, aka the minister for the 18th century) revert to Imperial units was essentially laughed out of town.
@samueljohnson @Tho99 @farbel @mrundkvist Yeah, I wasn't referring to the official standards. It's the same here in Norway. Everything is labelled in metric. A 2-by-4 is labelled 48 by 98 mm, and a 3 inch nail is labelled 75 mm, but a lot of things are still made according to inches, and often referred to by the old units.
Not sure if our feet and inches were exactly the same as the imperial, but all of the old units are standardised and rounded to metric units these days.
@pthane @Mutedog @mrundkvist
@aumalatj
Which means that you should choose the units with an eye to the use, not that there should be one set of units required for every measure.
For NASA communicating with the American public, imperial measures will communicate with the least friction.
@pthane @Mutedog @mrundkvist
Another consideration for choosing units of measure is the precision needed. I once read an article that made a good argument to use units that resulted in useful numbers with two significant digits to the left of the decimal point. This allows easy reasoning without calculations.
This article pointed out that the best unit for studying the migration of tortoises was "furlongs per fortnight."
@gdinwiddie @pthane @Mutedog @mrundkvist I agree about NASA communicating primarily to the US taxpayers, but it feels silly not to also include SI-units when there is an international aspect to this as well. "For all mankind" and so on. Hell, the service module is from Europe.
The point about decimals is quite inconsequential when SI prefixes are a thing.
@gdinwiddie @Mutedog @mrundkvist These are simple conversions which a child can do. The "difficulty" of it isn't what's being discussed.
It's an annoying extra step which should be completely unnecessary given that under the hood NASA uses SI-units for everything. Don't know about you, but I think that converting from X to Y and then back to X is pretty dumb, when you could just leave the original value X visible for those who prefer that.
@pthane @14mission @mrundkvist
No, it is officially sized in metres in the laws of the game, but length and width is up to each team to set, some teams change width day to day depending on opposing teams strength/weakness
A fairly standard size pitch is one that fits inside a running track, and there's a FIFA recommendation size that does this
@14mission @mrundkvist #TheRegister has an occasional series of articles about bad units of measurement, and has a unit conversion page.
https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/21/truss_reg_standards/
https://www.theregister.com/2007/08/24/vulture_central_standards/
Why you gotta do Dungaree Wearing Banjo Players so wrong? I'd take either Pete Seeger or Bela Fleck over Trump any day of the week.
@mrundkvist I’m not reflexively opposed to the use of old-school units (many of them have useful mathematical properties that metric lacks). But in science and engineering contexts, it should be all metric all the time.
I’m fortunate to have been a reasonably bright kid during the two weeks the US made a metric push in the late 70s, and then decently trained in science that I’m reasonably comfortable in both systems.
Well, these dungaree-wearing banjo players broke the interstellar barrier, did a fly-by of Pluto, and are currently flying a team around the moon.
Ain't nothin' wrong with the banjo.
Long as you do your science right.
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