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.
@OneInterestingFact @Anne_Delong @tsrams @mrundkvist
Because it was the only runway within hundreds of kilometers. So that, or a dirt field which would nearly guarantee a cataclysmic crash landing.
The Canadian prairies are sparsely populated - probably very sparsely by the standards of wherever you live.
@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.
@Anne_Delong @tsrams @mrundkvist here's the tv episode
@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.
@drhoopoe @farbel @mrundkvist I moved to Canada 35 years ago, but it took me only a year or so to become comfortable with Celsius in everyday life. You just have to learn new numeric names for things like `really cold', `chilly', `warm', `too damn hot'.
But I had the unfair advantage of being interested in science and studying physics for a time back in my US 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."
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