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NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

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Re: NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

#12

a NASA video which uses feet as measurement unit

The worst part is we understand the concept of meters. A meter is very roughly the size of a yard. When a youtube vide says "100 meters or 328 feet", that really doesn't help.

I can visual 10 meters because I can visualize 10 yards. I understand the rough size of 100 meters because I know how big a football field is. I know how big two meters is because it's (again very roughly) the size of a person.

In the context of these types of videos the 9% difference is size from yard to meter makes absolutely no difference.

So just gimme the darn meters.

Re: NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

#13

a NASA video which uses feet as measurement unit

I was reading some old engineering textbooks (from the 50s) and they used imperial units. It was actually pretty nice since I think in terms of those units.

Edit: also, if you are designing anything structural in the US your loads are probably going to be in pounds unless you convert them to kilograms first, so if you use metric you're going to be doing a conversion anyways.

Re: NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

#14

a NASA video which uses feet as measurement unit

The worst part is we understand the concept of meters. A meter is very roughly the size of a yard. When a youtube vide says "100 meters or 328 feet", that really doesn't help. I can visual 10 meters because I can visualize 10 yards. I understand the rough size of 100 meters because I know how big a football field is. I know how big two meters is because it's (again very roughly) the size of a person. In the context o…

> The worst part is we understand the concept of meters. A meter is very roughly the size of a yard. When a youtube vide says "100 meters or 328 feet", that really doesn't help.

> I can visual 10 meters because I can visualize 10 yards. I understand the rough size of 100 meters because I know how big a football field is. I know how big two meters is because it's (again very roughly) the size of a person.

While I think pretty much every American knows what a yard is, as a practical matter I think people almost never use it. IMHO, it totally makes sense for NASA to ignore it in some video, because people have about 1000x more familiarity with feet for estimation and visualization.

And for intermediate lengths (like your 100 meters), it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to use yards to help someone convert into "football fields" when you could just give a comparison to football fields directly.

Re: NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is we understand the concept of meters. A meter is very roughly the size of a yard. When a youtube vide says "100 meters or 328 feet", that really doesn't help. I can visual 10 meters because I can visualize 10 yards. I understand the rough size of 100 meters because I know how big a football field is. I know how big two meters is because it's (again very roughly) the size of a person. In the context o…

> The worst part is we understand the concept of meters. A meter is very roughly the size of a yard. When a youtube vide says "100 meters or 328 feet", that really doesn't help. > I can visual 10 meters because I can visualize 10 yards. I understand the rough size of 100 meters because I know how big a football field is. I know how big two meters is because it's (again very roughly) the size of a person. While I thin…

I appreciate your opinion. But even as an American I understand 2, 10, and 100 meters just fine. And that is really my point.

Re: NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst part is we understand the concept of meters. A meter is very roughly the size of a yard. When a youtube vide says "100 meters or 328 feet", that really doesn't help. > I can visual 10 meters because I can visualize 10 yards. I understand the rough size of 100 meters because I know how big a football field is. I know how big two meters is because it's (again very roughly) the size of a person. While I thin…

I appreciate your opinion. But even as an American I understand 2, 10, and 100 meters just fine. And that is really my point.

> I appreciate your opinion. But even as an American I understand 2, 10, and 100 meters just fine. And that is really my point.

I guess my point is that you may be an outlier, and in mass communication, NASA should have an eye towards targeting the masses [1].

[1] And given it's an American government agency, by masses I mean American masses, not metric-using global masses.

Re: NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

#17
post #5
post #4

Odd this won any kind of award. The nonsense mythology made it one of NASA's worst videos of late in my opinion, but I guess that appeals to the non-science type unfortunately.

If you don't like things named after mythology, then space is perhaps not the place for you.

I don't care them naming things after things. Things need a name and mythology is a great dictionary of a random assortment of unique words. However the names mean nothing in regards to the science. They're just mnemonics. Explaining the mythology in a science video is completely irrelevant.

Re: NASA's “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” Selected for Siggraph Film Festival

#18
post #10
post #2

It would have been cool if they'd release the 3d model, and then it could be put in some sort of an interactive demo.

they have released various 3d models at different resolutions, although I am not aware of a web based interactive version. see: https://www.asteroidmission.org/updated-bennu-shape-model-3d... and https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2632-3338/page/Shape_Mode... with data hosted by the PDS at: https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/pds4/orex/orex_spice/...

Thanks!

It seems extracting a 3d model to be easily integrated with a program like Unity from the BDS files will not be trivial, and the 3d model as asteroidmission.org is relatively low-poly.

Nevertheless, it's pretty nice of them to release these.

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