31–40 of 101 posts
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Yes it has! It conquered our soda industry and then gave up.
"Yeah I'll have a quart of Coke" certainly sounds weird. It is strange now that I think about it that we have imperial measurements for milk but metric measurements for sugary drinks/beer.
Does anyone else think NASA should reconsider their plans for a manned mission to Mars? With Europe, Ceres, Enceladus, Ganymede and many more promising moons out there it seems kind of a waste to spend time, effort and capital in Mars now.
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And I have to point to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...
@mitchty, I don't see how the Beagle probe relates unless parallel but different measurement systems caused that, and I'm not seeing anything to indicate this (but let me know if I'm missing something, I'm curious).
Does anyone else think NASA should reconsider their plans for a manned mission to Mars? With Europe, Ceres, Enceladus, Ganymede and many more promising moons out there it seems kind of a waste to spend time, effort and capital in Mars now.
Does anyone else think NASA should reconsider their plans for a manned mission to Mars? With Europe, Ceres, Enceladus, Ganymede and many more promising moons out there it seems kind of a waste to spend time, effort and capital in Mars now.
It's at least 13 months to get to Jupiter for a probe, and reasonably much longer for a man-rated craft.
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@mitchty, I don't see how the Beagle probe relates unless parallel but different measurement systems caused that, and I'm not seeing anything to indicate this (but let me know if I'm missing something, I'm curious).
"The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit ('American'), contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, that used those results expected them to be in metric units, in accord with the SIS."
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Why? Units are mostly arbitrary anyway. Actually, having more than one system is a good reminder of that. And Fahrenheit is supposedly more efficient for describing weather. http://isomorphism.es/post/3767526267/fahrenheit-versus-cels...
That's just a blatant rationalisation because people don't like change. There's nothing natural about understanding either metric or imperial, so suggesting that humans inherently are born with more understanding of one is silly. Metric only wins in my book because it is much easier to convert units (there are no magic numbers for conversion factors). However I'd laugh at anyone who suggest metric is better because p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit ('American'), contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, that used those results expected them to be in metric units, in accord with the SIS."
That's in reference to the Beagle 2?
Fascinating! However, I get the cringes every time an article about space exploration uses those atavistic units like Royal Hangnails (length), Princely Bladders (volume), Regal Farts (speed) and Fornicating Fever (temperature) for measurement. Hasn't the metric system arrived yet on planet USA?
This sounds like a perfect example of bikeshedding.
Does anyone else think NASA should reconsider their plans for a manned mission to Mars? With Europe, Ceres, Enceladus, Ganymede and many more promising moons out there it seems kind of a waste to spend time, effort and capital in Mars now.
