3 ms·
NM = nautical miles or what?
by cinntaile 4y ago
NM = nautical miles or what?
- bee_rider 4y agoThe main alternative I can think of is nanometers, which they probably wouldn't write an article to brag about. :)
- olyjohn 4y agoProbably not Newton-Meters either. That's a lot of torque.
- bombcar 4y agoYep, most airplane things are measured in nautical miles.
- Ekaros 4y agoStuck in the past of nautical miles and knots for distance and speed. And feet for height. Not that nautical miles don't make sense for navigation on maps.
- S201 4y agoUh huh... feet is more useful for aviation than meters. 1,000ft is a comfortable vertical separation between planes and it's a nice round number instead of ~300m. As for nautical miles and knots, one nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude making for easier navigation when you're traveling over significant distances of the planet. I'd hardly call it stuck in the past but rather the right units for the application at hand.
- tourist2d 4y agoSo by that logic we should mix metric and imperial whenever it rounds to a nice number. Pretty awful argument.
- S201 4y ago1. No one is mixing metric and imperial here. All planes use knots, nautical miles, and feet. No one is measuring altitude in meters in one location and then feet in another. 2. I guess we should just use metric for every application even when it doesn't make sense to do so then.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jackweirdy 4y agoIf you want to measure distance travelled over the earth you want nms since the earth is a sphere and you don’t want your route length to be longer when you’re at higher altitudes If you’re measuring distance in nms you want knots as they’re nms/hour We use kms for other things though- like weather minima, runway length - things on (or close to) the surface. Eg I need either 5km or 8km forward visibility to enter some controlled airspace. Ft for height is less functionally defined though- that’s just the way it is because it’s the way it’s always been. Not much gain in changing it though
- dghlsakjg 4y agoCorrect, as other people have noted. Nautical miles are used for shipping and air travel since the length of a nautical mile is derived from the size of the earth. A nautical mile is 1/60 of one degree of latitude.