They’re both imperial though. The Brits are fucking weird. They act like they use metric, but they swap between them like crazy. The US and British have different versions of several measurements with the same name though. If you look into the history of the measurements, some of them get insane with dozens of different potential values.
I still don’t understand nautical miles. Everyone knows regular miles. Or even feet, that’s what Blue Origin does because it’s relative to aircraft altitude that people might know. But nautical miles? I don’t get it.
It’s because if you travel at one knot for an hour you’ll travel a nautical mile. Still dumb but that’s where it comes from… And of course knot comes from knots in a rope tied to a board or bag dropped off the side of the ship to measure it’s forward speed.
Sorry, I misspoke. I understand what a nautical mile is. What I don’t understand is why ULA describes both downrange distances and altitude in nautical miles when covering rocket launches.
Kilometers are great. Used in sciencey stuff in the US and for everything in the rest of the world. Or miles / feet, which the primary audience in the US is familiar with. But nautical miles? Most people never interact with them. Not good for science and engineering communication with the general public.
Yeah that’s very true especially since rocket scientists use metric for all of their calculations so the target audience speaking in nm is basically just pilots
It’s a space ship I guess. I have a fondness for sci-fi that uses naval conventions because that’s probably how things will end up going, because tradition takes priority over utility.
To be fair, an Ariane 5 rocket failed because of a float being treated as a double, or something similar. I don’t remember the details, but what makes it embarrassing is that it was the result of recycling code from Ariane 4.
I don’t think recycling code is embarrassing? No-one can be expected to write a new codebase from scratch for every new product or machine. That would be worse than building on top of a solid foundation.
Having read up on it quickly, the real issue was with a lack of tests and failure handling, so you’re not wrong.
Apparently this code wasn’t even necessary to run after liftoff, yet it caused the self-destruct.
Crazy.
RetroFed
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NASA used metric, it was a contractor that fucked up the conversion on their piece which they decided to do in US units for some reason
Lockheed is the company that fucked up by using US customary, for any curious.
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even worse, Americans cant even get a pint right and will short you 4oz
Then ask for a tip…
I like how it just devolved from metric vs imperial to imperial vs imperial
I consider myself a fairly “progressive and open minded American”. I have even paid lip service to the superiority of the metric system.
But I can say with sincerity, this is the first thing that has ever made me truly care about metric vs imperial… or conversions in general.
They’re both imperial though. The Brits are fucking weird. They act like they use metric, but they swap between them like crazy. The US and British have different versions of several measurements with the same name though. If you look into the history of the measurements, some of them get insane with dozens of different potential values.
Oops
When you watch a ULA launch stream and they talk about how many nautical miles in altitude they are it’s just so fuckin embarrassing
Fun fact:
Internally they switch between imperial and metric all the time. The broadcast is in imperial for US viewers.
Sauce: once upon a time I worked there
I still don’t understand nautical miles. Everyone knows regular miles. Or even feet, that’s what Blue Origin does because it’s relative to aircraft altitude that people might know. But nautical miles? I don’t get it.
It’s because if you travel at one knot for an hour you’ll travel a nautical mile. Still dumb but that’s where it comes from… And of course knot comes from knots in a rope tied to a board or bag dropped off the side of the ship to measure it’s forward speed.
Sorry, I misspoke. I understand what a nautical mile is. What I don’t understand is why ULA describes both downrange distances and altitude in nautical miles when covering rocket launches.
Kilometers are great. Used in sciencey stuff in the US and for everything in the rest of the world. Or miles / feet, which the primary audience in the US is familiar with. But nautical miles? Most people never interact with them. Not good for science and engineering communication with the general public.
Yeah that’s very true especially since rocket scientists use metric for all of their calculations so the target audience speaking in nm is basically just pilots
It’s a space ship I guess. I have a fondness for sci-fi that uses naval conventions because that’s probably how things will end up going, because tradition takes priority over utility.
Good thing Trump is ending the only metric highway in the USA despite pleas from locals.
Technically the ISS isn’t NASA and it has happened to them as well.
Gotta break a few pounds of eggs to make a meter wide omelette
To be fair, an Ariane 5 rocket failed because of a float being treated as a double, or something similar. I don’t remember the details, but what makes it embarrassing is that it was the result of recycling code from Ariane 4.
I don’t think recycling code is embarrassing? No-one can be expected to write a new codebase from scratch for every new product or machine. That would be worse than building on top of a solid foundation.
It isn’t. Never testing that it’s compatible with the new hardware platform is.
Having read up on it quickly, the real issue was with a lack of tests and failure handling, so you’re not wrong.
Apparently this code wasn’t even necessary to run after liftoff, yet it caused the self-destruct.
Crazy.
You will not go to space today
https://youtu.be/Ayu0GsrvKQA
What units is the 1 above Nasa in? Is it a metric 1 or a “no public healthcare” 1?
“Oh I’m sorry, did you guys not use imperial when you walked on the moon?”
Did they?
Well yes and no? Calculations were apparently done in metric units but operators were reading
fantasycustomary units.Fom the Wikipedia Article for the Apollo Guidance Computer
AFAIK no country on earth has brought humans to the moon since the Apollo missions ended, so no.