The shuttles that NASA uses to fly to space currently use measurements in the form of pounds and feet as opposed to the more widely adopted meters and newtons. The upcoming shuttle replacement will continue to use the imperial measurement system because it would cost NASA $370 million dollars to convert to the "'International System' of units".In 2009 a launch to put a shuttle into orbit costs approximately $759 million dollars and to spend half the budget of a launch to convert units of measure can not be justified because it will produce no gain for the agency or the shuttle occupants.
To convert to a new system of measurement is not as easy as it sounds. NASA has formulas crafted in Excel that are thousands of lines long that are able to give measurement and predictions in almost any type of circumstance. Changing such formulas and re-verifying their accuracy is a long timely process that no one at NASA wants to undertake.
NASA's Constellation program will replace the aging shuttle in the next decade but an exact timeframe has not been set as the testing of a new rocket system will take years to perfect in order to give our astronauts the safest possible journey to the heavens above.
+1
LOLL I officially elect you for the "comment of the day" here on Neowin
But seriously, I don't see why it wouldn't work o_O
And I thought they already switched a couple of years ago, how retarded are they anyways!?
No but when you are involved in a scientific field, you use standard units of measurements. Which, no matter what the case or where you are in the world, is meters and kgs.
When traveling to a moon on Jupiter, or the planet mars it can be the difference between success and total failure. Rounding error is not negligible when traveling across huge distances. So i agree with nasa, there is no reason to currently change the measurement system. But they should migrate SI for future projects independent of current projects (perhaps talking with other space agencies for SI equivalence may be feasible)
Wrong .. in Printed Circuit Design we still use 'thou' , or thousands of an inch.
I'd be willing to bet that just about everything down to the nuts and bolts in NASA are still in the old Imperial system .. to change everything would be a massive undertaking!
"Thou shalst not use international measurement units, lest thou burnest in hell for such heathenry."
That's the reason they don't want to use metric units like any sane person.
Actually no, pounds are a unit of force, the metric equivalent would be newtons, not Kg. Kg is a unit of mass. To equate the two, you would have to take into account the local gravity, which is not always going to be constant, even on earth.
Hence why the author said
Hence why the author said
Karraang (or whatever is the sound in game shows for a wrong answer) - Pound-Force is a unit of force, just like Kilogram-Force or Newton. Pound is a unit of mass. Thank you for playing.
Imagine the uproar if there was another disaster & it transpired they had merrily converted to SI without testing everything after the changes. And changes there would be, to everything!
because it wont be exactly 45.463968 meters, having tolerances within a few fractions of an inch is bad enough, but having rounding errors as well would make it too difficult to go on...
Nah media rubbish 'sorry I mean speculation'
The thing is there are tolerances in the structure, and a couple of a mm over a distance of 30 m is not worth worrying about, the control systems and sealing arrangements are there to correct for error. Error is part of life, and not even Boeing/Lockhead or NASA built macroscopic objects to microscopic tolerances.
we're already backwards, this just means we continue to be backwards...unfortunately.
Why's that so?
Ugh, I'm an idiot. I didn't read the article and assumed it was about NASA finally accepting the metric system... :/ (so I thought these two were complaining about the metric system being "a giant leap backwards")
I agree
But the current project managers maybe thinking, not on our budget. 8p
They cannot be using non-SI units forever.
Already now, everyone's laughing at them for that.
well ur pc is obviously rubbish then. cos ive never had a single crash with office.
please, anything but matlab
LOL+1 but on the other hand maybe microsoft just gave them a copy
Nice!
Does it matter? Metric isn't "right", it's just another way of measuring something. There's no point in converting if doing it in imperial is working fine for them.
Metric is the SI unit for anything scientific...
But NASA has been doing just fine with imperial. Eventually they might switch over but there is no big rush right now.
This is sad. "No gain for the agency...?" They didn't learn from that one time they lost a mars probe because of units?
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
Interesting that according to the article about the mars probe case, "NASA has been using the metric system predominantly since at least 1990." Make up your mind already and get up to speed with the times and the rest of the world.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
Interesting that according to the article about the mars probe case, "NASA has been using the metric system predominantly since at least 1990." Make up your mind already and get up to speed with the times and the rest of the world.
No, they lost the probe because of incorrect conversions. In fact, that is a prime example of why they shouldn't change at all.
Although I don't agree with having to change all previous or ongoing missions, they need to start phasing out the imperial system with future missions.
i thought this is a prime example why they should change? if they do it now, they only have to do it once, if they leave it as it is they will have to convert everytime it needs to be in Metric and risk more incorrect conversions every time
but then made millions on those same pens when they were used in other fields.... such as low pressure and under water areas
That's actually not true. It was some bloke in Nevada that (with no request from NASA) developed the "Space Pen".
And no one uses pencils in space, they're too dangerous. Little splints of pencil carbon can break off and get lodged in equipment. They used grease pencils and plastic "paper" before they started buying pressurized pens.
call it standardization or whatever , i know that the US loves to be diferent from the rest of the world , but NASA nowadays do not work Alone
actually it's a lot... when you think about what could go wrong if you converted wrong
Are you an imbecile?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
Too bad the rest of the world doesn't entirely use metric either
Intel has taken its Core i7 0.00000125984251969-inch (32-nm) manufacturing technology out of the development stage.
Intel has taken its Core i7 0.00000125984251969-inch (32-nm) manufacturing technology out of the development stage.
Don't do that when I'm drinking coffee!
In school I learned both, very well and all my classmates were able to use both as well. Metric was far easier to do math with and conversions like area to volume were amazing.
Perhaps, we are behind in our measurements but its working fine I use inches, pounds, and gallons on a daily basis and when the time comes I will make the switch.
Perhaps you can relate this to the transition from x86 to x64. People such as myself have already made the transfer but I waited until there were the appropriate drivers to make everything run. At the same time I can still run all my favorite 32 bit software
I can read and understand metric almost efficiently as imperial. Yet I still like to drive 60mph and buy milk by the gallon
But things like trig measurements, say an angle difference of even .00001 degree but done over say 50000000 miles compared with 80x10^6 KM suddenly becomes the difference between hitting a target or ending up lost in space forever.
NASA budget is some ridiculous amount so 370mill dosent seem alot to get things done right.
Australia made the switch to metric in 1970, however there is still a legacy of anything drawn before then which still has plans in imperial units. The US still insisting on using imperial sized engineering materials makes for compatibility issues integrating US built systems into European and Australian systems. This is a huge cost, and for at the least construction and engineering in the US to make a full change to SI units would make a huge difference in their international relations.
Unless NASA use some computers that magically dont use floating point method of calculation then they might be ok, but thats my reasoning on the matter anyways.
Get over yourselves. Everyone here thinks everything in the world revolves around software? Yeah, it's possible to convert the design software calculations to use the metric system but do you all think that's the only cost involved?
What about the cost of re-tooling manufacturing machinery spread around hundreds, if not thousands of contractors?
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