6 ms·

Why is NASA using those antiquated imperial units in the first place? I thought they'd want to be a force for progress?

Symbiote 6y ago
It's embarrassing that they don't provide a metric conversion, and also omit the ° sign. (PS America uses "US customary" or "English" units. Imperial units means the ones after standardization across the British Empire in 1824, which by then did not include the USA.)
- grishka 6y ago
  It's embarrassing that they aren't pushing to switch the US to the metric system.
  - mattowen_uk 6y ago
    I believe it's been tried before, and failed.
  - User23 6y ago
    The US did switch to the metric system over 45 years ago[1]. Many of us just prefer the customary units for many everyday uses for various reasons. For example, I find degrees Fahrenheit a more sensible choice for representing outdoor temperatures since the degree increments are slightly smaller and the typical outdoor temperature nearly always falls in the positive range. For Celsius, the triple point of water zero is a great reference for lab work, it doesn’t have any particular relevance to deciding what to wear. A base 12 distance unit also has some pleasant properties. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act
    - short_sells_poo 6y ago
      > Celsius, the triple point of water zero is a great reference for lab work, it doesn’t have any particular relevance to deciding what to wear. Uh let me do some primary school math for you: >30 Degrees Celsius: hot/summer weather. 20 Degrees Celsius: warm spring, t-shirt weather. 10 Degrees Celsius: light jacket. 0 Degrees Celsius: literally freezing. Winter clothing. -15 Degrees Celsius: requires heavy & layered clothing to avoid hypothermia and/or frostbite. -30 Degrees Celsius: arctic gear. Look, the turning point between light clothing and winter clothing is literally built into the system: 0 degrees is the triple point of water as you said so yourself. There are many arguments why the US hasn't seen a wide-scale adoption of metric temperature, but I'd posit that "objective ease of use" isn't it. You lot are just used to a legacy system with all it's warts and it's more convenient to go with the joneses than try to force change. I think trying to advance arguments how it's more convenient is a fools errand because it's literally just force of habit. I can promise you that the various feet, inches, fluid ounces and other shenanigans are mind-bogglingly confusing for anyone who is used to metric. Doubly so given the very annoying ratios that emerge with square/cubic/volume units.
      - lebuffon 6y ago
        During Canada's transition to metric in the 1970's a lady called into the local radio station's call in program. She issued a challenge to anyone who supported the English system to call with the answer to this question: What is 5/8ths of 2 ounces, 4 drams and 5 grains? :-) She was an immigrant from Czechia and had to learn the British Apothecary system when she arrived in the 1950s. To her credit she had mastered it but it was lunacy.
        User23 6y ago
        1 1/4ths ounce, 2 1/2 drams and 3 1/8th grains is what I came up with off the top of my head. Is some additional normalization expected? US customary isn’t as complex in practical use we just use fractions of our units. Of course there are fun questions like “which ounce?” Not knowing that I don’t think I can do better.
        Symbiote 6y ago
        At minimum, 1¼ oz was probably expected to be expressed as 1 oz 2 dr, and so on for the others. But I understood "2 ounces, 4 drams and 5 grains" to be a single measurement. An apothecary dram (ʒ) is 60 grains, and an apothecary ounce (℥) is 480 grains, so we have 1205 grains. ⅝ of that is 753⅛ gr, which is 1 ℥ 4 ʒ 33⅛ gr. I think these measurements would have been in common use by pharmacists ... although [1] says they're still in use some times in the USA, or have only recently fallen out of use. It's also interesting to see the mixtures of units in common use there. The UK has Imperial units for several daily things (body height and weight, road distance and speed) yet the medical profession actively avoids use of the system -- equipment is only metric. This is to avoid any errors made during conversion, and ensure day-to-day familiarity with the units. [1] https://nursekey.com/u-s-customary-units-and-the-apothecary-system/ https://nursekey.com/u-s-customary-units-and-the-apothecary-...
        lebuffon 6y ago
        But I understood "2 ounces, 4 drams and 5 grains" to be a single measurement. Correct. Three columns required, similar to the old British money system of Pounds, Shillings and Pence.
    - hnbad 6y ago
      I'm always confused when people say Fahrenheit is great because it's "more granular" and makes it easier to decide what to wear. Do other people use clothing this differently from me? How many increments worth of clothing variation do you have in your wardrobe? Based on all conversations I've had so far, it seems Americans just think their intuition being tied to Fahrenheit (because that's what they're familiar with) make Fahrenheit intrinsically more intuitive. I live in the North West of Germany, so based on the local climate this is how temperature works for me: 180°C/200°C (365°F/392°F): oven temperature; this is a good default for most frozen goods, e.g. store bought frozen pizza Roughly 100°C (212°F): boiling water; this is what comes out of your kettle Roughly 60°C (140°F): hot water; anything above this will probably scald you Above 30°C (86°F): warm summer; without wind chill it's probably going to be humid so loose-fitting clothing is a must Around 25°C (77°F): warm bordering on hot; above this temperature it's probably going to be annoying indoors without ventilation or AC, a few degrees more and I'll find it hard to focus while working Roughly 20°C (68°F): "room temperature"; legs and hands may get cold after sitting for prolonged times but otherwise it's warm enough to wear a t-shirt outdoors but too cold for shorts Around 15°C (59°F): a bit chilly; may feel warmer in spring but below this temperature it's probably getting a bit too cold for t-shirts Below 10°C (50°F): cold; you should wear a jacket and with a bit of wind it can get uncomfortable Around 0°C (30°F): freezing point; risk of black ice and there might be snow, so you'll need proper footwear Below -10°C (14°F): very cold; you probably want to invest in proper winter clothing because those jeans might get a bit chilly Below -20°C (-4°F): extremely cold; it doesn't get this cold normally so you're probably not equipped to handle this, time to bring out that winter gear you bought for your last skiing vacation Note that this is aligned with the metric scale because that's what I've grown up with and hence what I've tied my intuitions to. If you looked at the Fahrenheit temperatures in isolation they would seem completely arbitrary so it's not surprising the inverse is true (e.g. 80°F is 26.7°C -- and this also settles the "more increments" argument as Celsius temperatures are usually given with a decimal and rounded in casual conversation).
      - jmholla 6y ago
        > Note that this is aligned with the metric scale because that's what I've grown up with and hence what I've tied my intuitions to. That's a bit unfair. You're coming from Celsius. If someone we're coming from Farenheit, they could round your scale to the nearest tens then complain how Celsius's fractions are so arbitrary for these cutoffs. (Not including your boiling water references since this is about weather.)
    - u801e 6y ago
      > Many of us just prefer the customary units for many everyday uses for various reasons. The switch wasn't effective because there wasn't a concerted effort to to make people switch by the government. They could have easily made it such that weather reports use Celsius in addition to Fahrenheit, speedometers in cars display speed in kilometers per hour by default, etc. Right now, we have a mix because certain products started using metric on their own (e.g., soft drinks with their 2 liter bottles, car manufacturers using liters to measure engine displacement instead of cubic inches, etc.).
    - bhupy 6y ago
      For a variety of reasons, I prefer Fahrenheit over Celsius for everyday temperatures. But, genuine question, what could possibly be the advantage to using a base 12 unit for measuring distance?
      - User23 6y ago
        Taking a third or sixth without a repeating decimal. I believe the ancient Mayans used base 60 for similar reasons. Edit: I misremembered. It was the Babylonians that used base 60.
        bhupy 6y ago
        In what contexts is taking 1/3 or 1/6 a common pattern?
yellowapple 6y ago
Behind the scenes, they're very likely using metric. For press releases and such, however, it's worth remembering that the primary audience is the American public, and said public - for better or worse - uses those antiquated units.
- chrononaut 6y ago
  In addition, when other partners / contractors have failed to use metric when expected, it has caused some grave mission failures! > The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere or escaped the planet's vicinity and entered an orbit around the sun.[2] An investigation attributed the failure to a measurement mismatch between two software systems: metric units by NASA and non-metric ("English") units by spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...
- aerothrowaway 6y ago
  >Behind the scenes, they're very likely using metric. This isn't true at all, lol. Aerospace in the US has used 'english' measurement from the start. My take on the matter is that all units are arbitrarily defined and flip flopping the units that we already use is a silly idea of progress.
  - jvanderbot 6y ago
    Someone has to flip flop when nations come together to build stuff.
  - marsokod 6y ago
    While on the temperature side, I would agree with you (though ideally you would want something that starts at 0 like Kelvin), this is different on the distance and weigh side. The strength of the metric system is not on the particular dimension of their definition, but lies in the use of a decimal system. That is what makes it superior to the old imperial system and why the scientific community in the US uses it. Using a single base system for all your numbers, and the same base system as the one used in your numbering systems is the only way you can do complex computations without resorting to many magic numbers.
PedroBatista 6y ago
They’re also a government agency under political influences like any other and at the end of the day someone had to make the call on how to communicate with the “plebs”. So Fahrenheit it is.
both_cucumbers 6y ago
In the United States we are capable of understanding more than one system of measurement and using the appropriate one for the current situation.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Are you really? I hear people ask for C to F conversion as much as the other way around.
  - short_sells_poo 6y ago
    Not to mention the multiple outright disasters that happened exactly because they don't have a good handle on using the appropriate units...
  - michaericalribo 6y ago
    Yes, it’s not hard...I use the reversed digits method: 82F ≈ 28C 61F ≈ 16C 40F ≈ 04C 11F ≈ -11C
    - bserge 6y ago
      First time I hear about it, noticed the accuracy drops off significantly if the last number is >1? 51F ~ 15C 52F ~ 25C 59F ~ 95C? Subtract 30, divide by 2 works well enough heh
      - michaericalribo 6y ago
        Ha! 59F is a good one :D Yeah, I should have clarified—this works for those specific combinations...it’s mostly a back of the envelope way to orient yourself in the other system.
      - nobody9999 6y ago
        >Subtract 30, divide by 2 works well enough heh That's close enough for most purposes, but (F)5/9-32=(C) provides better precision.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

It's embarrassing that they don't provide a metric conversion, and also omit the ° sign. (PS America uses "US customary" or "English" units. Imperial units means the ones after standardization across the British Empire in 1824, which by then did not include the USA.)

grishka 6y ago
It's embarrassing that they aren't pushing to switch the US to the metric system.
- mattowen_uk 6y ago
  I believe it's been tried before, and failed.
- User23 6y ago
  The US did switch to the metric system over 45 years ago[1]. Many of us just prefer the customary units for many everyday uses for various reasons. For example, I find degrees Fahrenheit a more sensible choice for representing outdoor temperatures since the degree increments are slightly smaller and the typical outdoor temperature nearly always falls in the positive range. For Celsius, the triple point of water zero is a great reference for lab work, it doesn’t have any particular relevance to deciding what to wear. A base 12 distance unit also has some pleasant properties. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act
  - short_sells_poo 6y ago
    > Celsius, the triple point of water zero is a great reference for lab work, it doesn’t have any particular relevance to deciding what to wear. Uh let me do some primary school math for you: >30 Degrees Celsius: hot/summer weather. 20 Degrees Celsius: warm spring, t-shirt weather. 10 Degrees Celsius: light jacket. 0 Degrees Celsius: literally freezing. Winter clothing. -15 Degrees Celsius: requires heavy & layered clothing to avoid hypothermia and/or frostbite. -30 Degrees Celsius: arctic gear. Look, the turning point between light clothing and winter clothing is literally built into the system: 0 degrees is the triple point of water as you said so yourself. There are many arguments why the US hasn't seen a wide-scale adoption of metric temperature, but I'd posit that "objective ease of use" isn't it. You lot are just used to a legacy system with all it's warts and it's more convenient to go with the joneses than try to force change. I think trying to advance arguments how it's more convenient is a fools errand because it's literally just force of habit. I can promise you that the various feet, inches, fluid ounces and other shenanigans are mind-bogglingly confusing for anyone who is used to metric. Doubly so given the very annoying ratios that emerge with square/cubic/volume units.
    - lebuffon 6y ago
      During Canada's transition to metric in the 1970's a lady called into the local radio station's call in program. She issued a challenge to anyone who supported the English system to call with the answer to this question: What is 5/8ths of 2 ounces, 4 drams and 5 grains? :-) She was an immigrant from Czechia and had to learn the British Apothecary system when she arrived in the 1950s. To her credit she had mastered it but it was lunacy.
      - User23 6y ago
        1 1/4ths ounce, 2 1/2 drams and 3 1/8th grains is what I came up with off the top of my head. Is some additional normalization expected? US customary isn’t as complex in practical use we just use fractions of our units. Of course there are fun questions like “which ounce?” Not knowing that I don’t think I can do better.
        Symbiote 6y ago
        At minimum, 1¼ oz was probably expected to be expressed as 1 oz 2 dr, and so on for the others. But I understood "2 ounces, 4 drams and 5 grains" to be a single measurement. An apothecary dram (ʒ) is 60 grains, and an apothecary ounce (℥) is 480 grains, so we have 1205 grains. ⅝ of that is 753⅛ gr, which is 1 ℥ 4 ʒ 33⅛ gr. I think these measurements would have been in common use by pharmacists ... although [1] says they're still in use some times in the USA, or have only recently fallen out of use. It's also interesting to see the mixtures of units in common use there. The UK has Imperial units for several daily things (body height and weight, road distance and speed) yet the medical profession actively avoids use of the system -- equipment is only metric. This is to avoid any errors made during conversion, and ensure day-to-day familiarity with the units. [1] https://nursekey.com/u-s-customary-units-and-the-apothecary-system/ https://nursekey.com/u-s-customary-units-and-the-apothecary-...
        lebuffon 6y ago
        But I understood "2 ounces, 4 drams and 5 grains" to be a single measurement. Correct. Three columns required, similar to the old British money system of Pounds, Shillings and Pence.
  - hnbad 6y ago
    I'm always confused when people say Fahrenheit is great because it's "more granular" and makes it easier to decide what to wear. Do other people use clothing this differently from me? How many increments worth of clothing variation do you have in your wardrobe? Based on all conversations I've had so far, it seems Americans just think their intuition being tied to Fahrenheit (because that's what they're familiar with) make Fahrenheit intrinsically more intuitive. I live in the North West of Germany, so based on the local climate this is how temperature works for me: 180°C/200°C (365°F/392°F): oven temperature; this is a good default for most frozen goods, e.g. store bought frozen pizza Roughly 100°C (212°F): boiling water; this is what comes out of your kettle Roughly 60°C (140°F): hot water; anything above this will probably scald you Above 30°C (86°F): warm summer; without wind chill it's probably going to be humid so loose-fitting clothing is a must Around 25°C (77°F): warm bordering on hot; above this temperature it's probably going to be annoying indoors without ventilation or AC, a few degrees more and I'll find it hard to focus while working Roughly 20°C (68°F): "room temperature"; legs and hands may get cold after sitting for prolonged times but otherwise it's warm enough to wear a t-shirt outdoors but too cold for shorts Around 15°C (59°F): a bit chilly; may feel warmer in spring but below this temperature it's probably getting a bit too cold for t-shirts Below 10°C (50°F): cold; you should wear a jacket and with a bit of wind it can get uncomfortable Around 0°C (30°F): freezing point; risk of black ice and there might be snow, so you'll need proper footwear Below -10°C (14°F): very cold; you probably want to invest in proper winter clothing because those jeans might get a bit chilly Below -20°C (-4°F): extremely cold; it doesn't get this cold normally so you're probably not equipped to handle this, time to bring out that winter gear you bought for your last skiing vacation Note that this is aligned with the metric scale because that's what I've grown up with and hence what I've tied my intuitions to. If you looked at the Fahrenheit temperatures in isolation they would seem completely arbitrary so it's not surprising the inverse is true (e.g. 80°F is 26.7°C -- and this also settles the "more increments" argument as Celsius temperatures are usually given with a decimal and rounded in casual conversation).
    - jmholla 6y ago
      > Note that this is aligned with the metric scale because that's what I've grown up with and hence what I've tied my intuitions to. That's a bit unfair. You're coming from Celsius. If someone we're coming from Farenheit, they could round your scale to the nearest tens then complain how Celsius's fractions are so arbitrary for these cutoffs. (Not including your boiling water references since this is about weather.)
  - u801e 6y ago
    > Many of us just prefer the customary units for many everyday uses for various reasons. The switch wasn't effective because there wasn't a concerted effort to to make people switch by the government. They could have easily made it such that weather reports use Celsius in addition to Fahrenheit, speedometers in cars display speed in kilometers per hour by default, etc. Right now, we have a mix because certain products started using metric on their own (e.g., soft drinks with their 2 liter bottles, car manufacturers using liters to measure engine displacement instead of cubic inches, etc.).
  - bhupy 6y ago
    For a variety of reasons, I prefer Fahrenheit over Celsius for everyday temperatures. But, genuine question, what could possibly be the advantage to using a base 12 unit for measuring distance?
    - User23 6y ago
      Taking a third or sixth without a repeating decimal. I believe the ancient Mayans used base 60 for similar reasons. Edit: I misremembered. It was the Babylonians that used base 60.
      - bhupy 6y ago
        In what contexts is taking 1/3 or 1/6 a common pattern?

yellowapple 6y ago

Behind the scenes, they're very likely using metric. For press releases and such, however, it's worth remembering that the primary audience is the American public, and said public - for better or worse - uses those antiquated units.

chrononaut 6y ago
In addition, when other partners / contractors have failed to use metric when expected, it has caused some grave mission failures! > The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere or escaped the planet's vicinity and entered an orbit around the sun.[2] An investigation attributed the failure to a measurement mismatch between two software systems: metric units by NASA and non-metric ("English") units by spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...
aerothrowaway 6y ago
>Behind the scenes, they're very likely using metric. This isn't true at all, lol. Aerospace in the US has used 'english' measurement from the start. My take on the matter is that all units are arbitrarily defined and flip flopping the units that we already use is a silly idea of progress.
- jvanderbot 6y ago
  Someone has to flip flop when nations come together to build stuff.
- marsokod 6y ago
  While on the temperature side, I would agree with you (though ideally you would want something that starts at 0 like Kelvin), this is different on the distance and weigh side. The strength of the metric system is not on the particular dimension of their definition, but lies in the use of a decimal system. That is what makes it superior to the old imperial system and why the scientific community in the US uses it. Using a single base system for all your numbers, and the same base system as the one used in your numbering systems is the only way you can do complex computations without resorting to many magic numbers.

PedroBatista 6y ago

They’re also a government agency under political influences like any other and at the end of the day someone had to make the call on how to communicate with the “plebs”. So Fahrenheit it is.

both_cucumbers 6y ago

In the United States we are capable of understanding more than one system of measurement and using the appropriate one for the current situation.

1_player 6y ago
Are you really? I hear people ask for C to F conversion as much as the other way around.
- short_sells_poo 6y ago
  Not to mention the multiple outright disasters that happened exactly because they don't have a good handle on using the appropriate units...
- michaericalribo 6y ago
  Yes, it’s not hard...I use the reversed digits method: 82F ≈ 28C 61F ≈ 16C 40F ≈ 04C 11F ≈ -11C
  - bserge 6y ago
    First time I hear about it, noticed the accuracy drops off significantly if the last number is >1? 51F ~ 15C 52F ~ 25C 59F ~ 95C? Subtract 30, divide by 2 works well enough heh
    - michaericalribo 6y ago
      Ha! 59F is a good one :D Yeah, I should have clarified—this works for those specific combinations...it’s mostly a back of the envelope way to orient yourself in the other system.
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      >Subtract 30, divide by 2 works well enough heh That's close enough for most purposes, but (F)5/9-32=(C) provides better precision.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]