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> Progress 59 was carrying "more than three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the space station crew, including 1,940 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxy
by kijin 12y ago
> Progress 59 was carrying "more than three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the space station crew, including 1,940 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water, and 3,128 pounds of spare parts, supplies and scientific experiment hardware,” NASA said.
(1940 + 110 + 926 + 3128) = 6104 lb = 2771 kg = 3.054 short tons.
If any U.S. agency is in desperate need of converting to the metric system, it's NASA. Remember the Mars Climate Orbiter? [1] As long as there is at least one person in the general vicinity of NASA who does not habitually use the metric system, that can happen again.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
- vesinisa 12y agoNASA has used metric exclusively since 2007.[1] I bet an important motive was the loss of the said craft. [1] http://www.space.com/3332-nasa-finally-metric.html http://www.space.com/3332-nasa-finally-metric.html
- icegreentea 12y agoNASA spec'd a system that outputs values in metric, Lockheed provided one that output values in customary units. The problem was a failure of verifications/validation, not of units per se.
- jsmthrowaway 12y agoI'm 90% sure they intentionally use imperial units when speaking to the press and someone converted it for the purpose.
- Dylan16807 12y agoI'm having trouble figuring out the intent of your post. Are you confused about the conversion factor with pounds and tons (it's 2), or are you taking the opportunity to snark about something unrelated? Edit: Wait did you seriously convert pounds to kilograms to short tons? That's like going from meters to feet to kilometers.
- ghshephard 12y agoIsn't a ton = 1000 kg, if so, why is this 3.054 and not 2.771 tons?
- kitd 12y agoA "short" ton == 2000lb A metric ton (aka "tonne") == 1000kg And in fact 6104 / 2000 = 3.052, so OP lost a few lbs in the conversion process as well.
- ghshephard 12y agoInteresting - Wikipedia tells me that, "In the United Kingdom the ton is defined as 2,240 pounds (1,016 kg)" - so an imperial "ton" is almost 1000 kg there.
- eps 12y agoars> "more than three tons of food, fuel, and supplies ..." NASA said This is the first time in my reasonably long life I see "tons" used for something that is not 1000 kilos. The way it read was "3000+ kgs of payload", not "3000+ pounds" of it. Really quite confusing and worthy of a comment.