01 Jul 06
Originally posted by stockenI go for FORTRAN - it was so nice and readable.
I feel right at home in this thread. It's like when programmers argue back and forth which programming language is the best. Always a hoot watching programmers argue about languages, all of which allow the programmer to do the same things in the end.
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by SiskinMercier and subsequent British translators also had trouble with the metric system that Verne used, sometimes simply dropping significant figures, at other times keeping the nominal value and only changing the unit to an Imperial measure. Thus Verne's calculations, which in general were remarkably exact for his age, were converted into mathematical gibberish.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
.... not 111,120 km Under the Sea,
even Frenchman Jules Verne agreed that Imperial is best
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne
Pwned!
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by Nighthawk62If you'd have switched earlier you'd already be up the cost of a Mars orbiter.
I never said that imperial was better or easier to use. I am only stating my opinion that switching over is more trouble that it is worth. Also no body has explained to me why the partialy owned French aircraft builder, Airbus, still uses imperial fasteners.
GV
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by XanthosNZA failure to recognize and correct an error in a transfer of information between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California led to the loss of the spacecraft last week, preliminary findings by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory internal peer review indicate.
If you'd have switched earlier you'd already be up the cost of a Mars orbiter.
"People sometimes make errors," said Dr. Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science. "The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."
The peer review preliminary findings indicate that one team used English units (e.g., inches, feet and pounds) while the other used metric units for a key spacecraft operation. This information was critical to the maneuvers required to place the spacecraft in the proper Mars orbit.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/news/mco990930.html
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by kmax87What if they used a system based on Newtons instead of Grams for metric? Then you have a force system.
one of the reasons imperial measurement will probably never dissapear from the aerospace industry is that being a gravitational system its a breeze to work out forces due to gravitational loading. So for example if you want a margin of safety on a bit of structure that say has 10,000 lbs of tension load acting on it and it pulls say a 3g load in the direction ...[text shortened]... mperial I can see why a lot of structural engineers will not readily give it up without a fight.
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by Nighthawk62It's perfectly simple. 2.2 lbs in a kilogram. 10,000 pounds = ~4550kg. 4550 x 3 = 13650.
So then what you are saying then is that the metric system is not always easier and not neccessarily superior in all aspects. I would hope that AThousandYoung and his intelectialy superior scientists would take note of that!
GV
Physics doesn't change whether you use imperial or metric! And since kilos and pounds are directly interchangable it makes no difference.
Imperial is an obfuscatory and outdated system. Should be scrapped.
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by SiskinWell, considering that the mean depth of the ocean is only about 4 km, and the ocean trenches around 11 km deep, Verne obviously didn't know what he was talking about, and should be ignored.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
.... not 111,120 km Under the Sea,
even Frenchman Jules Verne agreed that Imperial is best
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by scottishinnzkg are mass
It's perfectly simple. 2.2 lbs in a kilogram.
... And since kilos and pounds are directly interchangable it makes no difference.
lb are weight (=force)
there is a difference:
it's only 2.2 lb on Earth.
on the moon 1 kg = 0.367 lb
02 Jul 06
Originally posted by scottishinnzIt's not Verne; it was the retarded British translators that were incapable of basic dimensional analysis and just made stuff up.
Well, considering that the mean depth of the ocean is only about 4 km, and the ocean trenches around 11 km deep, Verne obviously didn't know what he was talking about, and should be ignored.