OFFS "On the station, crews rely on more than 4,000 pounds of exercise hardware spread across roughly 850 cubic feet." 🙄

#science #nasa #artemis

NASA's use of Imperial measurements is similar to if US biologists started using species names in the Texas dialect instead of in Latin.

#science #nasa #artemis #space

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.

#science #nasa #artemis #space

@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.