General > General Technical Chat
why is the US not Metric
CatalinaWOW:
I can't tell from personal knowledge how much metric was used by NASA during the moon landings. I can easily believe that trajectories and guidance were done in metric. I can virtually assure that fasteners, material and electronics packaging were done in traditional units as very little metric material was available in the US in the 1960's. My own experience in the aerospace world of the 1970's and on was that units were very mixed. On one system I was involved with the sensor diameter was in traditional units while focal length and area were metric. Similar mix in a detector, linear size in standard units, but area in metric. Any assertion that the unit system had anything significant to do with the moon landings is very suspect. From either side of the discussion.
rdl:
America is already mostly metric anyway. If a complete switch was magically done overnight, the only things that most people would be annoyed by are temperature, driving distances and buying gas by the liter. And I'm not sure about the gas because soft drinks are already sold by the liter.
tooki:
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on February 06, 2020, 03:50:14 am ---It is the Americans that say that the use of imperial is backwards, stupid, etc.! Didn't I post a video pages ago about some senior scientist at NIST saying exactly that? Holy crap!
So we say what we say using the authority of the highest body instituted with the task of defining those doggone units. What patronizing do you see there? Geez!
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Not all metric advocacy is patronizing and sanctimonious. But what's contained in this thread mostly is. It hasn't been the American metrication advocates in this thread who've been patronizing and sanctimonious, it's been the European ones.
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on February 06, 2020, 03:50:14 am ---I, and others, have accepted many of the answers. But some answers are clearly bullshit. I've just shown the moon-landing/metric-enough fallacy a few posts above.
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A few of the answers were BS. But the metric nuts here continue to reject even the sensible, realistic answers.
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on February 06, 2020, 03:50:14 am ---We are "nuts", but not because of metric. Because of that kind of argument.
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I never said that metric makes someone "nuts". I am referring to "metric nuts" in the sense of "nuts whose chosen subject is metrication". I said "metric nuts" deliberately instead of "metric advocates", because not all metric advocates are nuts, and I'm not talking about ALL metric advocates, only the ones that are nuts. Like several people in this thread, including yourself.
Bear in mind that I was referring to the discussion occurring within this thread, not about all metric advocacy by anyone anywhere.
Mr. Scram:
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on February 06, 2020, 04:15:11 am ---I can't tell from personal knowledge how much metric was used by NASA during the moon landings. I can easily believe that trajectories and guidance were done in metric. I can virtually assure that fasteners, material and electronics packaging were done in traditional units as very little metric material was available in the US in the 1960's. My own experience in the aerospace world of the 1970's and on was that units were very mixed. On one system I was involved with the sensor diameter was in traditional units while focal length and area were metric. Similar mix in a detector, linear size in standard units, but area in metric. Any assertion that the unit system had anything significant to do with the moon landings is very suspect. From either side of the discussion.
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The on-board computers did their maths in metric and then converted it for the sake of the air force crew more used to customary units. Though I'm always surprised by patriotic smugness about the Moon landing half a century ago when there's currently no US manned orbital capability. NASA funding is predominantly a political matter so less attachment to the past and more attention paid to current matters would be great. NASA should be capable of wonderful things, but the political swerving isn't helping.
GeorgeOfTheJungle:
What's an ms? A metre second. What's this? https://ludens.cl/philo/measures.html A very good read!
--- Quote ---The new system was constructed in a logical way, as far as the fuzzy human mind allows this. There was to be just ONE unit of measurement for every physical magnitude. For example, the unit for distance would be called the meter, and EVERY distance would be measured in it, regardless how large or small it was. Not like the stupid British system, where length could be measured in inches, feet, yards, furlongs or miles, to mention just a few of the many options! In the new system, for adapting to small and large distances, prefixes would be used that allowed to easily multiply the unit in decimal increments, from trillionths to trillions and much more! These same multipliers would be user for each and every unit. Only basic units, like distance, time, temperature would be freely defined. All derived units, such as speed, acceleration, inductance, would be built on top of the basic units. This is a fabulous advantage over every older system! You can simply multiply and divide any values in these units, to obtain the result in the correct unit of the resulting class. For example, one watt is the power that is required to free an energy of one joule in one second. This one joule is the energy required to push something with a force of one newton over a distance of one meter. The power of one watt means that the object will move that one meter in one second. This same one watt is the power defined by putting a current of one ampere through a resistor of one ohm, and the potential difference that will appear across this resistor is one volt! If instead you put this current of one ampere into a capacitor of one farad during one second, the capacitor will charge to one volt. Or if you apply this one volt to a coil of one henry, the current will rise by one ampere in one second. By the way, if the coil has one turn, then applying one volt to it for one second will result in a magnetic flux of one weber, and this flux distributed over one square meter of area is of course a flux density of one tesla! Everything is one by one by one! What could be easier than this? No other measurement system ever in history has been as practical! Every other system requires conversion constants in most or all of these calculations!
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