Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Orion Flight Test Live Launch

nasa.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–96 of 96 posts

Re: Orion Flight Test Live Launch

#91

Post by RyanMcGreal »

randlet wrote: post #48
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's similar in Canada. The country formally converted from imperial to metric between 1970 and 1983 for temperature measurements, road signs and speed limits, consumer goods packaging (volume and weight), and so on. However, due to our physical and cultural proximity to the US, many consumer goods are sold in "soft-metric" quantities: 454 grams of butter, 273 milliletres of pop and so on. Food recipes are still most…

"For weather, we tend to use whichever measure sounds more dramatic: Fahrenheit for hot summer days" Strange...I never hear that in Ontario! Whereabouts in Canada are you?

Southwestern Ontario, but I also remember it from when I lived in the suburbs east of Toronto.

Re: Orion Flight Test Live Launch

#92

Post by whyaduck »

anigbrowl wrote: post #89
netcan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Ireland we use a mix. Miles for casual talk, KMs for speeding tickets. Pounds when cooking, stones for people & kgs for everything else. Inches in carpentry and horsepower for cars. In a lot of places metric is a lingua franca kind of like latin. It's used in international, formal or academic settings (like a space launch) but the average farmer speaks a local dialect more natively.

Yeah, I like metric but I still prefer my beer measured in pints. The difference is that while people have preferences like this, everyone knows metric is The Standard. There's only one long stretch of road in the US with metric signage, and even that's controversial: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/10/04... Hilariously, people in the comments on that article demand miles because they're 'Engli…

As Arizona Republic comment sections go (especially on stories related to the border with Mexico, language or immigration), that one's so tame it's almost charming.

Re: Orion Flight Test Live Launch

#93

Post by abruzzi »

anigbrowl wrote: post #89
netcan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Ireland we use a mix. Miles for casual talk, KMs for speeding tickets. Pounds when cooking, stones for people & kgs for everything else. Inches in carpentry and horsepower for cars. In a lot of places metric is a lingua franca kind of like latin. It's used in international, formal or academic settings (like a space launch) but the average farmer speaks a local dialect more natively.

Yeah, I like metric but I still prefer my beer measured in pints. The difference is that while people have preferences like this, everyone knows metric is The Standard. There's only one long stretch of road in the US with metric signage, and even that's controversial: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/10/04... Hilariously, people in the comments on that article demand miles because they're 'Engli…

> Yeah, I like metric but I still prefer my beer measured in pints.

Its funny. Orwell was against the metric system, so there is a small amusing scene in 1984 where on the proles (an old man) in a bar complains that he hates liters of beer.

    "'Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next."

    "Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half litres - that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front of you."

    "I likes a pint," persisted the old man. "You could 'a drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man."

Re: Orion Flight Test Live Launch

#94

Post by calinet6 »

runeks wrote: post #30
calinet6 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I'd put them on around the same level of complexity from an engineering perspective. Have you thought, recently, how difficult it really is to broadcast video to millions of viewers and all of the individual moving parts that make that happen? It's mind boggling.

> Have you thought, recently, how difficult it really is to broadcast video to millions of viewers and all of the individual moving parts that make that happen? It's mind boggling. Yes. And as far as I can tell, YouTube has it down to a science. If I were NASA, I would let YouTube broadcast the live stream, and embed a YouTube player on the NASA website.

> "YouTube has it down to a science"

Yes, but arguably, NASA has rocket science down to a science too. My point still stands: it's still a pretty complex and difficult thing to pull off with a high rate of consistency.

Post reply on HN