Metric on Mars

Having seen many reports and press conferences (on NASA TV online)
about JPL's Mars Exploration Rovers over the past two weeks,
it looks to me very much like the whole MER project is designed and
operated entirely in metric units. It is very encouraging to see that
leading-edge engineering in the U.S. is metric today.

(A shame though that the media still doesn't follow that lead quite
as eagerly.)

Markus

"Markus Kuhn" wrote in message ...

Having seen many reports and press conferences (on NASA TV online)
about JPL's Mars Exploration Rovers over the past two weeks,
it looks to me very much like the whole MER project is designed and
operated entirely in metric units. It is very encouraging to see that
leading-edge engineering in the U.S. is metric today.

One Polar Lander lost because of unit confusion and Murphy's Law is
probably enough...

Then again, that happened because NASA had already switched to metric
while the company they'd gotten their descent velocity data from
hadn't. They thought they were looking at m/s when the numbers were
ft/s. Thus the thing came in just a little bit to fast...

(At least from what I've heard...)


(A shame though that the media still doesn't follow that lead quite
as eagerly.)

They'll follow suit once the constant pulling out of their calculators
becomes too much for them. It's only a matter of time...


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Ool wrote:

"Markus Kuhn" wrote in message ...

Having seen many reports and press conferences (on NASA TV online)
about JPL's Mars Exploration Rovers over the past two weeks,
it looks to me very much like the whole MER project is designed and
operated entirely in metric units. It is very encouraging to see that
leading-edge engineering in the U.S. is metric today.

One Polar Lander lost because of unit confusion and Murphy's Law is
probably enough...

Then again, that happened because NASA had already switched to metric
while the company they'd gotten their descent velocity data from
hadn't. They thought they were looking at m/s when the numbers were
ft/s. Thus the thing came in just a little bit to fast...

(At least from what I've heard...)

What I heard was that NASA thought that they were getting force
measurements for rocket 'burns' in newtons when the contractor was using pounds.

(A shame though that the media still doesn't follow that lead quite
as eagerly.)

They'll follow suit once the constant pulling out of their calculators
becomes too much for them. It's only a matter of time...

From what I understand, the AP Stylebook fully supports using metric
units, it is the writers themselves who keep insisting on converting
them into Olde Englishe.

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___________________________________________ ____ _______________
Regards, | |\ ____
| | | | |\
Michael G. Koerner May they | | | | | | rise again!
Appleton, Wisconsin USA | | | | | |
___________________________________________ | | | | | | _______________

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Joona I Palaste wrote:
John Savard scribbled the following

Perhaps because they know the people who read newspapers, for the most
part, know the size of customary American units better than the size
of metric units. News articles are intended to convey information to
their readers, and they will not do so effectively if they give
measurements in units unfamiliar to those readers.

And in the progress, newspapers are (perhaps unintentionally) preventing
their readers from ever actually *LEARNING* the metric system, thus
enforcing the current muddled state of affairs. NASA might keep losing
more and more spacecraft because of those newspapers (amongst other
factors).

I'm not much in favor of metric spaces, preferring instead normal spaces.
However Earth can hardly be called a normal space in view of the
ascendance of corporate totalitarianism. Now as metric spaces are normal
spaces and Earth is not a normal space, requiring the whole Earth to be a
metric space is not possible. ;-)

William Elliot scribbled the following
on misc.metric-system:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Joona I Palaste wrote:
John Savard scribbled the following

Perhaps because they know the people who read newspapers, for the most
part, know the size of customary American units better than the size
of metric units. News articles are intended to convey information to
their readers, and they will not do so effectively if they give
measurements in units unfamiliar to those readers.

And in the progress, newspapers are (perhaps unintentionally) preventing
their readers from ever actually *LEARNING* the metric system, thus
enforcing the current muddled state of affairs. NASA might keep losing
more and more spacecraft because of those newspapers (amongst other
factors).

I'm not much in favor of metric spaces, preferring instead normal spaces.
However Earth can hardly be called a normal space in view of the
ascendance of corporate totalitarianism. Now as metric spaces are normal
spaces and Earth is not a normal space, requiring the whole Earth to be a
metric space is not possible. ;-)

We seem to be talking about different interpretations of the term
"metric". Do you have a topology background?

--
/-- Joona Palaste ) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"A bicycle cannot stand up by itself because it's two-tyred."
- Sky Text

On 21 Jan 2004 19:39:14 GMT, (Markus Kuhn)
wrote:

Having seen many reports and press conferences (on NASA TV online)
about JPL's Mars Exploration Rovers over the past two weeks,
it looks to me very much like the whole MER project is designed and
operated entirely in metric units. It is very encouraging to see that
leading-edge engineering in the U.S. is metric today.

Or America falls to the will of France, and it's metric system.

(A shame though that the media still doesn't follow that lead quite
as eagerly.)

Markus

lid (John Savard) writes:
"Michael G. Koerner" wrote:
From what I understand, the AP Stylebook fully supports using metric
units, it is the writers themselves who keep insisting on converting
them into Olde Englishe.

Perhaps because they know the people who read newspapers, for the most
part, know the size of customary American units better than the size
of metric units.

I wonder how many U.S. readers really find 200 million miles
significantly easier to visualize than 300 million km.

Markus

And in the progress, newspapers are (perhaps unintentionally) preventing
their readers from ever actually *LEARNING* the metric system, thus
enforcing the current muddled state of affairs. NASA might keep losing
more and more spacecraft because of those newspapers (amongst other
factors).

I think many people these days are familiar with the units, but don't
really have a good sense of scale with it. Most people I know of
(self included) have to mentally convert metric units into their
English equivalents.

It's odd, though... from using Orbiter, I'm more comfortable with
metrics in terms of orbital parameters and all, at least in space.
But once down into the atmosphere (and flying more like a plane) I
keep wishing for feet and knots. Go figure.

(Markus Kuhn) writes:

I wonder how many U.S. readers really find 200 million miles
significantly easier to visualize than 300 million km.

Many. Because they learned in their youth that the sun is 93 million
miles away, so 200 million miles is a little over 2 AU. But given the
unfamiliarity of a huge metric figure, many won't bother with the
initial conversion from km to miles and will have almost no idea how
big 300 million km is.

In article ,
Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
(Markus Kuhn) writes:

I wonder how many U.S. readers really find 200 million miles
significantly easier to visualize than 300 million km.

Many. Because they learned in their youth that the sun is 93 million
miles away, so 200 million miles is a little over 2 AU. But given the
unfamiliarity of a huge metric figure, many won't bother with the
initial conversion from km to miles and will have almost no idea how
big 300 million km is.

I doubt the average U.S. reader has any idea how far away the Sun is.
They may have been told at some point but is there any particular
reason they would remember it? Of those who do remember it, how many
actually remember the distance in kilometers? That's what I remember:
150 million kilometers.

Nor is 93 million miles a easily comprehensible figure. For most people,
it's BigNumber. No-one really has an understanding of how large the sun
is either, so relative scale isn't going to help.

Basically, 200 million miles or 300 million kilometers are functionally
equivalent. It's a big distance.
--