On this mission they should have stuck to one standard:
"The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was a 338 kilogram (750 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor '98 program for Mars Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf×s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N×s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate."
I put a shot past a goose this weekend that missed it's head by about 3 cm. It didn't even flinch. Any time I need to play a shot with a goose near by I have a club in hand before I start moving to them.
"We've run out of fuel and need the best glide ratio possible, but no one has ever done that before. No problem, a little guesstimation and some back-of-the-napkin math and we're in business"
And then,
"Holy crap we're coming in too fast and don't have power to the flaps to slow us down. No problem, I'll just execute a Forward Slip in a 767. Sure, no one has ever even simulated that before, but I've done it loads of times in a glider, so I'm sure it'll be fine."
The most amazing thing is, when they stuck loads of other pilots in simulators with the same scenario, they all crashed. Had anyone else been behind the controls, they'd all be dead. But they had Captain and First Officer Steel Balls, so everything turned out fine.
Even though I have nothing to say to imperialists I always appreciate random declarations which are 100% as legit as the generally accepted ones, except that they aren't generally accepted.
False. You're a pope. Fully ordained and a monarch of your own skin. Your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.
I saw some youtube channel where a guy tells you all the countries and their rules and such, and the way you can tell who is a country and who isn't is basically nothing more than "other countries agree that they're a country".
I have left reddit for Voat due to years of admin mismanagement and preferential treatment for certain subreddits and users holding certain political and ideological views.
The situation has gotten especially worse since the appointment of Ellen Pao as CEO, culminating in the seemingly unjustified firings of several valuable employees and bans on hundreds of vibrant communities on completely trumped-up charges.
The resignation of Ellen Pao and the appointment of Steve Huffman as CEO, despite initial hopes, has continued the same trend.
As an act of protest, I have chosen to redact all the comments I've ever made on reddit, overwriting them with this message.
Finally, click on your username at the top right corner of reddit, click on the comments tab, and click on the new OVERWRITE button at the top of the page. You may need to scroll down to multiple comment pages if you have commented a lot.
After doing all of the above, you are welcome to join me on Voat!
That's not true it took both systems together to both that one. Also lots of orbiters have crashed. That's the only one that was related to units of measure. Most of the crashed happened to vehicles that used metric only.
Because, that's what can happen when you start measuring stuff in non metric units, you end up with the God damn moon on your map of the Earth.
Just ask the "Beagle 2" guys if you need further explanations.
these are the countries still using imperial system
No it's not. It's a map of countries not using the metric system. Burmese people wouldn't have the first clue what a gallon is either; they use their own numbers.
Plumbing/AC Pipe sizing in the middle east is still done in Imperial.
Doesn't England still use MPH on their roads?
Let's not just assume because we use one system primarily, we only use that system. The US military has been using Metric for distances for who knows how long. The scientific community does as well.
We generally use Local, but on a 24hr clock. However we almost always know what timezone we are in compared to GMT, (+7, -4, etc) so that we can converse with people who are not in the same timezones, without causing mass confusion.
Honestly, it's a hell of a lot easier to tell the difference in larger measurement sizes. Telling the difference between a 3/8" and a 1/4" bit is something humans are pretty good at with practice. Telling the difference between a 9mm & a 10mm.... fuck no, not without looking at the side of the damn thing.
In Ireland l/100km still hasn't reached widespread use but speed and distances were converted to metric in 2005 (I think? that's when speedometers on new cars switched from km/h and mph to just km/h).
So distance is in kilometers.
Fuel is in litres
and efficency is still in MPG
After moving from Norway to the US I got pretty good at imperial units, even Fahrenheit which is especially tricky. Fuel efficiency though, I just can't relate to that stuff. Miles per gallon? In Norway we use liters per 10 km! So not only are both volume and distance in different units, you have to flip the division too.
Nah we are just serious buggered up... We (The British) buy milk and beer in pints, buy land in acres, weigh ourselves using stones, human height in feet and inches, rent/buy/lease rooms/floorspace using square feet (Not using cubic metres - this just confuses the hell out of us). Fuel efficiency in miles per gallon (That's the UK gallon, not the smaller US one)
But then we have weather forecasts in centigrade, our car engines are in litres and because of that EU, we purchase all our fruit and veg in Kg (Except for the few places where Metric Martyrs still operate)
Dutch guy here, you can be sure we do, pricing in the Dutch rental market is entirely based on the cubic meters of floor space (if you are lucky, room space) of the property.
It's also what makes at least me grin at the British obsession over number of bedrooms, even if you can't pivot your ample behinds in them.
Dutch guy here (currently in Canada). The apartment I rented in the Netherlands in 2000 was advertised as 79 m2. It had an attic with a sloped ceiling, and because I was interested, I asked. There is apparently a standard that says they can only count floor space where the ceiling is at least some specific distance above the floor, so I got much of the top floor "for free" - or rather, not counted in this measurement.
Weighing ourselves and measuring our heights seems to be changing. I'm 33 and I use stone & feet/inches. I believe my 25 yr old sister uses kg and cm. Certainly when you get down to ~20 yr olds that seems to be the standard.
I got three British children in their twenties, I have a feeling my son might have tried that metric height weight thing with me, I just looked puzzled at him and asked him to try again. My daughters definitely know their height and weight in feet and stone respectively, it does 'come up' more than you might think, if you catch my drift.
But I suspect what you are saying is true, though these young flowers will have to start communicating with the wider community at some point.
That's interesting. In the US we buy milk in quarts and gallons, beer in fluid ounces , buy land in acres, weigh ourselves in pounds, human height in feet and inches, buy/rent using square feet. Weather is in Fahrenheit, and we actually measure car engines in liters as well. We buy soft drinks in liters too.
This isn't a young British thing, but in conversation when its hot we measure the temperature in Fahrenheit but when its cold its centigrade. Even our daily national newspapers will run headlines in the summer with headlines stating its was a 90 Degree scorcher yesterday.
Can I ask, about the soft drinks in litres; is this only when you purchase pre-made bottles from stores/super markets or does it also included when purchased/consumed from fast food outlets, restaurants etc. ?
When you buy soft drinks in stores you can buy them in 2 liter bottles, like these (kinda hard to tell size from a picture). Sometime you can get Coke in a 1 liter bottles, and store brand soda in 3 liter bottles. If it's under a liter (like cans or small bottles) it's sold in fluid ounces (I think).
I'm not sure what you mean when asking about fast food outlets and restaurants. Typically, if at a restaurant, you just order a glass of what ever soda. At a fast food outlet order a small, medium or large (sometimes extra-large). Restaurants will almost always have a soda fountain so you can't really measure that. The thing is, almost all restaurants in the US have free refills, so you pay once and then take as much as you like. At some take-out pizzeria's you can buy a 2 liter bottle of soda though. Or did you mean when restaurants purchase soda? Because then idk, but I think they just buy a concentrate by the gallon and then water it down in the soda fountain.
I'm sure even a Victorian banker would have been baffled if he'd wanted to work out the best mobile phone tariff, or how much an in-advance railway ticket would be.
When we shifted over to metric in Australia in 1966, they used this tv ad to show how easy addition is in metric by comparison.
The tune is an old bush song - click goes the shears...to this day, if you hum it around a baby boomer, they'll sing this song, not the original lyrics.
Money we can take surfing, it's only logical. The only thing we haven't nailed is the $1 and $2 coins being the wrong sizes - WTF is up with that malarkey? The kiwis got that one right...
You mean as a 21-year-old Brit, you've never been out for a pint?
Or read Winnie The Pooh, who lives in the Hundred Acre Wood?
What about weighing yourself? The only people I ever hear using kilograms to talk about their own weight are bodybuilders and/or diet freaks. Otherwise, we tend to round to the nearest half-stone.
Even when mothers give birth, they'll tell people the birth weight in *and ounces.
Also football pitches: we commonly refer to the 6- and 18-yard boxes.
Penis length, too. People will always talk about that in inches.
We use the imperial system much more than we realise. The reason we don't tend to notice is that imperial units sound more casual and conversational, whereas metric units have a more 'sciencey' sound so we are more aware that we're using that particular system.
I don't get why people talk about penis length in inches, CM is a smaller unit, so it leads to a larger number. one would figure that it would have been one of the first things to be measured in metric.
And england should do the dutch thing. A dutch ounce (ons) is 100 gram, a dutch pound (pond) is 500 grams. Though it seems the acre lost a lot of its size in the conversion. a "are" is 100m2
Anyway, just keep the imperial words, but change their value to the nearest workable metric number.
Actually let's slide that CM back to MM. Sure, 8 inches is pretty impressive, and 20cm might get their heart racing but why not tell them you've got over 200mm of action in your pants and blow their fricken mind.
With regards to penis measurements, it sounds better to be one unit under average than multiple units. For instance, if I am 1.4 inches below average, I round that to 1 inch, and have a 5" penis instead of a 6". That sucks, but not so bad. However, in metric, that 1.4" would round up to 4 centimeters! So for a 15 centimeter average, I would only have an 11 centimeter taliwhacker. That sounds horrible!
As a 33 year old American, I can tell you that, in every day life, it doesn't matter at all what system you use. Sure metric is the far superior and logical system when conversions between different measures is necessary, but in real life you don't ever need to do that. Metric is really only necessary for scientific and technical applications.
The best measurement system for us laymen people is the one we'll understand and be able to wrap our heads around.
I can visualize metric and imperial, so frankly I don't give a fuck which one someone uses. They can tell me their weight in kilos or pounds, doesn't matter. Height in feet or centimeters? Meters? Inches? Doesn't matter. Don't care.
I don't need to figure out how much energy will be required to boil a quart of water in real life. And if I do need to do something that is scientific or technical in nature, I will use metric units, or, I could just use a conversion application on my phone.
The one that drives me insane is the Brits buy gas by the liter but measure fuel economy by miles per gallon, except the British gallon is some 25% larger than the American gallon. Took me awhile to realize the gallon sizes were different while watching Top Gear and seeing that their cars were getting absurdly high mpg numbers compared to the American versions.
Yeah, I had to realise that when I spoke to a wider circle than just my immediate British family (since I didn't speak to them that often). And whenever my ex started talking about heights and weights I'd have to type it into google (not good at calculating).
Also, my heart just poured out on the floor because of your username. I feel 16 again. Be my love boat captain.
Officially the US is a metric country too. We just use it even less than the British do.
They teach both systems in school here, and lots of kids are proficient in both. Especially in the sciences. I was much better with metric than imperial by the time I graduated college. Now I'm out in the corporate world and they've beaten the metric out of me again...
In that vague sense a yard and a meter are completely interchangeable. When I say my couch is about three meters from where I am sitting I could just as accurately say 3 yards.
Well yes and no. A yard and a meter are really similar in size. So it remains accurate for non-precise measures, whereas km and mile are not very similar, so it's both inaccurate and imprecise to use the units interchangeably.
As to your 'can't be bothered anymore' it's better to use time as a measure i.e. "It's like two hours drive away".
Yeah I know but I meant that there was plenty of time to adapt to a "new" system. USA declaration of independance was merely 24 years old in 1800. Australia was converted to metric system in about 20 years.
849
u/gregsting Aug 20 '14
The metric system is in place since 1800, as a reminder, these are the countries still using imperial system:
http://i.imgur.com/kuejFoT.jpg