541–550 of 636 posts
Because the words come from Dutch nautical terms. “Starboard” is really “Steer-board”, an external keel on one side of a boat. Therefore Port is the only side of the boat that can dock to the port.
Stjόrn means stern, so the back of the boat. I'm guess borði refers to the rudder itself, meaning plank.
From what I gather the OP story is bunk. It's easy to verify.
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In French, starboard and port are "tribord" (same etymology as "starboard", through Dutch) and "bâbord" ("back (of the oarman) board"). On stage, they are "côté cour" and "côté jardin" because the "Comédie-Française" theatre during the 1770 was in the Tuileries palace, and the stage was oriented with the Louvre courtyard on its right, and the Tuileries garden on its left.
In English, there's an archaic "larboard" meaning "port side". My understanding is that this word was intentionally banished due to confusion originating from the sound being so similar to "starboard".
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I suppose it has to do with how many frames of reference you're juggling in a task/profession. With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame. Then there's space, where it gets even more fun, as the relevant frames - the ship, the orbit (or the "centre of gravity" of everything pulling on you) - are completely independent. That is…
The convention for orbital spacecraft is that the local coordinate system has +z facing whatever it is orbiting and +x facing travel direction. Then you can refer to directions relative to the spacecraft such as "+x", "-y", etc. The space shuttle normally orbited with it's payload bay, opposite of the landing gear facing Earth. The payload bay was +z direction. From the layperson's point of view, the shuttle orbited…
That wasn't a choice. The doors had to remain open and pointing away from the earth so that the radiators could properly dissipate heat. It also, in theory, kept the most important thermal tiles pointing away from incoming space rocks.
It's interesting to compare how different professions handle the ambiguity in left/right. In the maritime world they went with an approach at one extreme, where they just use two completely separate words, "port" and "starboard." (Though that's far from the only case where there's a special word for something on a boat.) At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical s…
> At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective. I was recently involved in a case where a patient decided that their left should be called the right side during a phone consultation as that would help their doctor. Good times.
When having my arm x-rayed years ago they places a small pad with an embedded metal "L" to indicate that it was my left arm. But if you place the L backwards, then they will think the image has been reversed, which just makes everything more complicated. So the L-pad needed "this side up" label.
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Mexican spanish should not be the reference for what is said in spanish
Why not? https://www.statista.com/statistics/991020/number-native-spa...
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The convention for orbital spacecraft is that the local coordinate system has +z facing whatever it is orbiting and +x facing travel direction. Then you can refer to directions relative to the spacecraft such as "+x", "-y", etc. The space shuttle normally orbited with it's payload bay, opposite of the landing gear facing Earth. The payload bay was +z direction. From the layperson's point of view, the shuttle orbited…
>> The space shuttle normally orbited with it's payload bay, opposite of the landing gear facing Earth That wasn't a choice. The doors had to remain open and pointing away from the earth so that the radiators could properly dissipate heat. It also, in theory, kept the most important thermal tiles pointing away from incoming space rocks.
It's the opposite. The orbiter usually kept it doors pointed toward Earth and the "bottom" tiles pointed away from Earth, and orbited with its engines pointed prograde. (Upside-down and backward relative to the atmospheric flight people are familiar with)
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/12321/why-did-the-...
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> With boats, others mentioned that wind provides its own frame, and there are separate words still for "left" and "right" in that frame. There's windward (towards/upwind) and leeward (away/downwind). Are there left and right too? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windward_and_leeward
What matters to sailors with respect to the wind is the angle which it meets the boat or the orientation of the boat with regard to the direction of the wind. For that there are dedicated names known as the points of sail which include: close hauled, close reach, beam reach, broad reach, run, and in irons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_sail
But points of sail don't have any handedness, correct? I.e. they're mirrored on both sides of the wind.
As mentioned in another comment, tacking (with its active directionality) is probably the closest to handed-terminology.
"Driver" and "passenger" side for cars. Oh wait, doesn't work in England etc. I guess for ships there is no variation between countries? Starboard is presumably where the wheel was so everyone must have left it on the right side?
I've always assumed that "driver" and "passenger" were simply reversed for England, etc. I'd reverse it for postal trucks, after all, or cars imported from England and such.
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The convention for orbital spacecraft is that the local coordinate system has +z facing whatever it is orbiting and +x facing travel direction. Then you can refer to directions relative to the spacecraft such as "+x", "-y", etc. The space shuttle normally orbited with it's payload bay, opposite of the landing gear facing Earth. The payload bay was +z direction. From the layperson's point of view, the shuttle orbited…
That's a convention, but hardly the convention. I used to work satellite navigation for NOAA. For the GOES sats we often used Intrack (Prograde/Retrograde), Crosstrack (Normal/Anti-normal), and Radial (Towards planet/away from). I don't think anyone really referred to any directions as "plus x" or "minus y"
Actually I work on rovers and it's a perennial debate whether to follow spacecraft convention (+z is down) or automotive convention (+z is up). Then mechanical engineers will usually follow what is intuitive on the screen (+z is forward). This is because computer graphics convention is +z facing out of the screen.