4 ms·

They could just cop on and use the meter.

fourthark 4y ago
I like how they gently say "this is a step in the right direction".
cesaref 4y ago
Chances are the tools they use are working in meters and convert to feet either in their front end display, or it's a manual process that the surveyers perform. But changing the definition of the unit whilst keeping it the same is a very pragmatic solution if they want to converge on the 'normal' foot. Software displays stuff with the right units, values which are old are probably close enough to be correct if just used directly, and anything large enough for the transformation to need to be applied will be hopefully rare enough that it can be calculated and applied with ease.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  I’m not sure this is a pragmatic solution at all. You’ve now raised the possibility that someone who starts being educated in the field a few years down the line, and never used the old foot at all, will look at old data with SFT measurements and assume they are IFT and introduce all sorts of errors in their analyses and calculations. You’ve gone from 2 distinctly named standards with a 3x difference in value, which meansa mental sanity check should be sufficient to identify errors in most cases, to introducing a 3rd that is named very much like 1 of those and is close enough in value that a mental sanity check will not get you anywhere in most cases.
  - xwolfi 4y ago
    All other countries had to transition but the US is sadly stuck as long as they perceive themselves as leading and modern. Once they get left behind maybe a politician will finally propose to "modernize" the whole thing but feh... the US will drag this crap for centuries like we still have a completely special keyboard layout in France for reasons no one seem to remember lol
    - nephanth 4y ago
      Most currently used keyboard layouts (like qwerty, azerty..) were made for one reason: to avoid jamming typewriters. They are old legacy that is clearly suboptimal, but no one wants to change it because it still works and the transition would be costly A bit like the imperial system
    - School-Cotton 4y ago
      You are making the common mistake of assuming that the US political system works similarly to the standard modern democracy found in Europe and parts of Asia. It doesn’t. It is infinitely more deadlocked and slow-moving, mostly by design. Switching to metric wouldn’t be a matter of “a politician” proposing it and 50%+1 of the parliament agreeing. It would be a massive, years-long all-consuming struggle.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
77pt77 4y ago
That would be communism. I've actually seen an old ex-NASA engineer claim that. He was not joking.
- xwolfi 4y ago
  What ? They still dont use the meter at NASA ? So they ll drag this silly foot for millions of years if they colonize space ? I root for the chinese communist to be there first then lol
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    There is the old joke: “there’s 2 types of countries on this planet - those that use metric and those that put man on the moon.”
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      I agree, the Liberian space program simply doesn’t get the respect it’s due.
    - ncphil 4y ago
      ... and pissed away $193M when they missed/crashed into Mars because a US made spacecraft was using metric units while US-ground control was using Imperial (ironic because I thought we fought a Revolution to get out from under the Empire). By the 1990s when that loss occurred, there was no scientific or business reason for the US space program to be using Imperial units: except maybe in press releases that no one read. Generations of machine tools, dies, moulds and instruments have come and gone since the 1970s push for metrification. It's all about as rational as people insisting on only buying incandescent light bulbs. Oh wait.
      - adolph 4y ago
        The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit, contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. . . . . . . The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document their concerns". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...

I like how they gently say "this is a step in the right direction".

Chances are the tools they use are working in meters and convert to feet either in their front end display, or it's a manual process that the surveyers perform. But changing the definition of the unit whilst keeping it the same is a very pragmatic solution if they want to converge on the 'normal' foot. Software displays stuff with the right units, values which are old are probably close enough to be correct if just used directly, and anything large enough for the transformation to need to be applied will be hopefully rare enough that it can be calculated and applied with ease.

rhaway84773 4y ago
I’m not sure this is a pragmatic solution at all. You’ve now raised the possibility that someone who starts being educated in the field a few years down the line, and never used the old foot at all, will look at old data with SFT measurements and assume they are IFT and introduce all sorts of errors in their analyses and calculations. You’ve gone from 2 distinctly named standards with a 3x difference in value, which meansa mental sanity check should be sufficient to identify errors in most cases, to introducing a 3rd that is named very much like 1 of those and is close enough in value that a mental sanity check will not get you anywhere in most cases.
- xwolfi 4y ago
  All other countries had to transition but the US is sadly stuck as long as they perceive themselves as leading and modern. Once they get left behind maybe a politician will finally propose to "modernize" the whole thing but feh... the US will drag this crap for centuries like we still have a completely special keyboard layout in France for reasons no one seem to remember lol
  - nephanth 4y ago
    Most currently used keyboard layouts (like qwerty, azerty..) were made for one reason: to avoid jamming typewriters. They are old legacy that is clearly suboptimal, but no one wants to change it because it still works and the transition would be costly A bit like the imperial system
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    You are making the common mistake of assuming that the US political system works similarly to the standard modern democracy found in Europe and parts of Asia. It doesn’t. It is infinitely more deadlocked and slow-moving, mostly by design. Switching to metric wouldn’t be a matter of “a politician” proposing it and 50%+1 of the parliament agreeing. It would be a massive, years-long all-consuming struggle.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

77pt77 4y ago

That would be communism. I've actually seen an old ex-NASA engineer claim that. He was not joking.

xwolfi 4y ago
What ? They still dont use the meter at NASA ? So they ll drag this silly foot for millions of years if they colonize space ? I root for the chinese communist to be there first then lol
- nemo44x 4y ago
  There is the old joke: “there’s 2 types of countries on this planet - those that use metric and those that put man on the moon.”
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    I agree, the Liberian space program simply doesn’t get the respect it’s due.
  - ncphil 4y ago
    ... and pissed away $193M when they missed/crashed into Mars because a US made spacecraft was using metric units while US-ground control was using Imperial (ironic because I thought we fought a Revolution to get out from under the Empire). By the 1990s when that loss occurred, there was no scientific or business reason for the US space program to be using Imperial units: except maybe in press releases that no one read. Generations of machine tools, dies, moulds and instruments have come and gone since the 1970s push for metrification. It's all about as rational as people insisting on only buying incandescent light bulbs. Oh wait.
    - adolph 4y ago
      The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit, contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. . . . . . . The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document their concerns". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...