NASA criticised for sticking to imperial units (New Scientist)

[arenean]

Interesting debate going on in the 'comments' page after the article!

NASA criticised for sticking to imperial units

[pokerfan]

1. So stupid

There is zero advantage to the metric system unless one first abandons the imperial system. The advantage comes from working within the system, not converting to and fro.

Imperial lengths:
A foot = 12 inches
A yard = 3 feet
A chain = 22 yards
A furlong = 10 chains
A mile = 8 furlongs

Wrong way to teach metric system:
An inch = 2.5400 centimeters
A centimeters = 0.3937 inches
A foot = 0.3048 meters
A meters = 3.2808 feet
A yard = 0.9144 meter
A meter = 1.0936 yards
A mile = 1.6093 kilometers
A kilometer = 0.6214 miles

Right way to teach metric system:
A meter = 100 centimeters
A kilometer = 1000 meters

As of 2008, all countries that used the imperial system have become officially metric, except for the United States, Burma and Liberia...

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Absolutely!

I've been saying for decades that the schools teach the metric system (if they still even teach it) about as poorly as one possibly could.

[qazplm]

4. regardless

the point is that the conversions are known, and there is only one known instance in the entirety of the space program of the different systems causing a problem.

I wish we put more money into NASA but it makes no sense to me to waste almost half a billion dollars to convert when that precious money can be doing science.

[gtar100]

3. In words, a great cartoon to drive this point home would be

a US ship attempting to dock with the International Space Station, and it doesn't fit.

[salvorhardin]

5. Not really

There are various sized/types of docking ports on the ISS that are mostly standardized. For instance, both the Shuttle and Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft use the Androgynous Peripheral Attach System which goes all the way back to the Apollo-Soyuz days. Presumably the Soviet space shuttle Buran would have used this system too if it had ever flown. The ISS also has a Russian Probe and Cone mechanism which is not entirely dissimilar. When Orion starts flying the ISS will have to be reconfigured with the new Low Impact Docking System which is the succesor to APAS. There are also Pressurized Mating Adapters to interconnect two different docking systems.

It's fun to ridicule NASA for still using imperial units, but there's a whole gaggle of very expensive, already manufactured parts originally made for the Shuttles but will be repurposed for the Constellation program. There's a lot to criticize NASA for, and it would be nice if they finally joined the rest of the world in using the metric system entirely, but it's not like they don't plan for these sorts of things.

[whyverne]

6. And Us Old Farts Like It That Way!

A foot is a foot, it's as big as my foot. I can measure things with my foot.

A meter has something to do with the Equator and the North Pole. Sure, that's something I can relate to. Not.

And don't get me started on Centigrade. I loathe it. Fahrenheit is beautiful. To just about everybody in the world 0 degrees is really cold and 100 degrees is really hot.

In Centigrade 0 degrees isn't all that cold and 100 degrees means everything is dead.

Pain in the butt French revolutionaries.

[gtar100]

7. What I like about the imperial system is the way it divides. Very natural.

12 6 4 3 2 1
10 5 2 1

1/2 1/4 1/8 1/16
0.5 0.25 0.125 0.0625

As a carpenter, it's eyeball easy to view halves or thirds. Maybe that's why it came out the way it did.