Obligatory xkcd reference
https://xkcd.com/1504/
The thirteen year-old Opportunity rover is moving on from the region of Mars it's been exploring since 2014. Opportunity has spent the last 30 months at “Cape Tribulation”, a spot near the rim of the Endeavour Crater. The Cape's yielded all sorts of insights from finds like an outcrop of clay-like minerals and some interesting …
It WAS always expected to last more than 3 months. 3 Months was just it's primary mission time, things it "had" to get done before the winter and the possibility of losing the rover due to lack of power from dust on the solar panels. Plans to survive the winter had already been made before the rover arrived on the planet though. But 13 years is certainly something no-one would have believed a decade ago. And I'm sure we can forgive the lil' chap his memory problems. I'm sure we all get those senior moments once we age.
Nasa, which measures in football fields has put forth 25 missions to Mars with 6 failures/partial failures yielding a 76% success rate. Countries which do not measure in football fields have fielded 30 missions to Mars with 24 failures/partial failures yielding a 20% success rate. Obviously football fields are the superior unit of measurement.
As in wtf length is a football field? Why is it even used? It's some arbitrary measure of distance used by the americans for americans, it has no meaning outside USA.
Yep. Anyone else in the world would only use "cricket fields" or "tennis courts" because there are no other sports in the world named "football," let alone ones that also have a field approximately 100 meters long. ;)
Were I writing that press release, I'd be keeping in mind that its goal is to ensure attention is paid to the Mars program and that funding continues. I'd phrase it in ways that the average voter or elected official would understand. I'd avoid use of metric units that might make me seem like some godless furriner, and stick with good ol' American units. To make the press release seem less elitist, I'd put in a reference to a sport for Real Men such as football.
You, as (I'm assuming) a non-American, just don't matter as far as the writer of that press release is concerned.
I've never seen a Russian or Chinese space agency press release, but it does seem to me that the ESA releases (which have their own issues) don't appear to be quite so narrowly Eurocentric. Once Brexit is accomplished and the UK is on its own for space affairs, I assume any press releases from the new British Space Agency will measure things in the height of Big Ben or something like that.
"Were I writing that press release, I'd be keeping in mind that its goal is to ensure attention is paid to the Mars program and that funding continues. I'd phrase it in ways that the average voter or elected official would understand."
So, heights in multiples or fractions of Trump towers, distances in multiples or fractions of Trump golf courses, areas in multiples or ftactions of the area of Trump's resort in Florida, time intervals as multiples or fractions of the average time between Trump's tweets.
Got it.
I had an interesting conversation with a fast jet pilot, in a bar. The subject was the mixture of measurement systems used when flying. As an example, height is usually specified by the flight level, a multiple of 100 feet (?). They used the units that were easiest to accommodate in a very busy brain.
If you have ever seen an elderly, experienced, carpenter working out imperial dimensions you'll understand the utility of quarters, eighths ,sixteenths etc. Use the metric system and it is calculator or a pen and paper.
Ultimately use what is best for the particular problem, ideally El Reg of course.
"If you have ever seen an elderly, experienced, carpenter working out imperial dimensions you'll understand the utility of quarters, eighths ,sixteenths etc. Use the metric system and it is calculator or a pen and paper."
Alternatively, have you ever seen a young, experienced carpenter working out metric dimensions you'll understand the utility of working in base 10 throughout. Use the imperial system and it's "WTF is that?" :-)
Although it's funny reading people writing about using British Imperial units as "proper American" units :-)
"Last I heard, NASA is American, funded by Americans, so if they want to measure in corn dogs, that's their prerogative."
Maybe so, but they already screwed up big time by using old-fashioned measurement before.
"Hey, is that measured in milli-football fields or micro-football fields?"
Maybe not. Milli- and Micro sounds too metric. More likely in 1/3rds, 1/8ths or thou.
Football fields can be used for area too. And maybe use footballs for volume. How many footballs of fuel do we need?