6 ms·

It bothers me (too much) that we are going to space and still using 'feet' as a unit of measurement.

by vvvv 7y ago

ravroid 7y ago
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft grabs close-up 9.6652e-16 light-years above asteroid
- Bjartr 7y ago
  Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft grabs close-ups 30.5 light-nanoseconds above asteroid
  - siffland 7y ago
    Wonder how many stones the Hayabusa spacecraft weighs? Perhaps i will have the answer within a fortnight.
    - MS90 7y ago
      600kg is 94.48 stone
adrianN 7y ago
Japan doesn't if that helps.
melling 7y ago
We don't use the imperial system for space, but the American readers do. https://www.space.com/3332-nasa-finally-metric.html https://www.space.com/3332-nasa-finally-metric.html I'm just as guilty as the next person when I post numbers. Occasionally, I'll also show metric. However, as an old(er) dog, my first instinct is to use feet, miles, etc. Perhaps we should agree to use only the metric system on HN?
- ahoka 7y ago
  It's a mistake that sometimes even Americans do, but the USA uses the US customary units system, which is closely related, but slightly different to the British imperial system.
  - cryptonector 7y ago
    Imperial pints are bigger than customary pints, for example.
    - redler 7y ago
      ...the sad fact of which rears its head in American drinking establishments nationwide.
    - EdwardDiego 7y ago
      In my country, NZ, we refer to beer as pints, and order them as such, but a pint isn't a legal unit of measurement, so it's accepted that your pint will vary. The good establishments have a chart on the wall explaining how many millilitres map to their "pint". And a pint of high alcohol beer will often be less than a pint of average alcohol beer. 473mL vs 568mL typically. It's not illegal to serve someone a "pint" if they ask for one, but it is illegal to offer a "pint" for sale.
      - stallmanite 7y ago
        So at the same establishment you could order two pints of beer and the high ABV one would be smaller in volume? That would really bother me or anyone calculating the unit cost of ethanol.
        EdwardDiego 7y ago
        They make it clear what size they serve it in on their beer menu, so it's not too bad.
  - cbhl 7y ago
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
At least it wasn't... Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft grabs close-up 1/10th of an American football field above asteroid
maxxxxx 7y ago
You should be happy that they don’t measure it in “baseball fields” or something like that. That’s how usually things are reported.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  9 football teams stacked on top of each other
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    Somehow I was thinking about Shaquille O’Neal as the unit :)
- jhayward 7y ago
  My pet peeve is energy reporting that uses "average households" as a unit of power.
magduf 7y ago
Who's "we"? This article is about Japan. The Japanese do not ever use "feet" as a unit of measurement. It's only Americans who still use feet and other imperial units, which is why they lost a Mars probe.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  You mean the British-built one? I think us Brits are the worst of the worst when it comes to mixing units. Fuel is sold in litres but consumption measured in miles per gallon. Milk is sold in 1 pint or 2/4/6 litre bottles. Road signs to towns are in miles but in roadworks are in metres. And so on.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    To add to the mix, some signs are in yards - who even knows what one of those equals these days?!
    - merpnderp 7y ago
      Yards are the easiest to translate. A yard is roughly a meter (~9/10's).
    - GordonS 7y ago
      I don't usually complain about downvote... but seriously? Someone really thinks it's OK to have signs in all of miles, metres and yards?!
  - angrygoat 7y ago
    Yeah, the strange half-transition to metric in the UK is really odd. I'm from Australia, another Commonwealth country, and we're -entirely- metric here. The only thing I can think of is that people still talk about height of people in feet and inches, but on official forms it's in centimetres. I wonder why the UK couldn't quite make the jump over? At least the US has agreed that the Moon is a metric only zone! https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/08jan_metricmoon/ https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/0...
cwilkes 7y ago
https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/06/05/tucker-carlson-almost-every-nation-earth-has-fallen-under-yoke-tyranny-metric-system/223874 https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/06/05/tucker-carlson... Tucker Carlson: God bless you, and that's exactly what it is. Esperanto died, but the metric system continues, this weird, utopian, inelegant creepy system that we alone have resisted.
- ldite 7y ago
  ...I had to look up Tucker Carlson to discover if this was satire or not.
Nelson69 7y ago
I went all metric when we started the new millennium. I try to do all my personal measurements in metric. It has been my own personal battle to make progress, every little bit helps.. It's funny how life fights with you though. My wife and I share a scale in the bathroom, it's a fitbit wifi thing and she finally laid down the law, it uses pounds now. Chasing 130lbs is somehow more satisfying than 58.9 or 59Kg. Our electronic outdoor thermometer is in Fahrenheit now too; this one sort of pisses me off, metric is simple, below 10 you need a coat, 10 to 20 probably want a light jacket, 30+ is shorts because it's hot. Mind you, she is an actual scientist, a real deal scientist that works on viruses and immunology, which is somewhat frustrating. You wouldn't believe the fit she had when our electronic human thermometer was found to be metric... When you call the doctor because your child has a fever, it is better to use whatever units the doctor uses. I suspect that major new papers could probably start using metric units with translation in parens and only the wingnuts that think the papers already harbor a liberal bias would say anything about it. Other than temperature and like human height, you can toss out metric measurements to most folks when they ask something and they seem to absorb it well; from time to time you get a question or push-back, rarely I'll translate the unit for them. We're at the point where people just need to see it more. It would be an interesting experiment if some media organizations started to make metric more prominent. Hell the US military uses it, mostly for NATO reasons... we could probably somehow put a patriotic spin on it.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  > Chasing 130lbs is somehow more satisfying than 58.9 or 59Kg. I mean, chasing 60kg is more satisfying than 132.2lbs. There's nothing intrinsically important about 130lbs except that it's a round number in base 10. In metric you just pick a different round number to chase.
dang 7y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It bothers me (too much) that we are going to space and still using 'feet' as a unit of measurement.

by vvvv 7y ago

It bothers me (too much) that we are going to space and still using 'feet' as a unit of measurement.

ravroid 7y ago

Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft grabs close-up 9.6652e-16 light-years above asteroid

Bjartr 7y ago
Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft grabs close-ups 30.5 light-nanoseconds above asteroid
- siffland 7y ago
  Wonder how many stones the Hayabusa spacecraft weighs? Perhaps i will have the answer within a fortnight.
  - MS90 7y ago
    600kg is 94.48 stone

adrianN 7y ago

Japan doesn't if that helps.

melling 7y ago

We don't use the imperial system for space, but the American readers do. https://www.space.com/3332-nasa-finally-metric.html https://www.space.com/3332-nasa-finally-metric.html I'm just as guilty as the next person when I post numbers. Occasionally, I'll also show metric. However, as an old(er) dog, my first instinct is to use feet, miles, etc. Perhaps we should agree to use only the metric system on HN?

ahoka 7y ago
It's a mistake that sometimes even Americans do, but the USA uses the US customary units system, which is closely related, but slightly different to the British imperial system.
- cryptonector 7y ago
  Imperial pints are bigger than customary pints, for example.
  - redler 7y ago
    ...the sad fact of which rears its head in American drinking establishments nationwide.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    In my country, NZ, we refer to beer as pints, and order them as such, but a pint isn't a legal unit of measurement, so it's accepted that your pint will vary. The good establishments have a chart on the wall explaining how many millilitres map to their "pint". And a pint of high alcohol beer will often be less than a pint of average alcohol beer. 473mL vs 568mL typically. It's not illegal to serve someone a "pint" if they ask for one, but it is illegal to offer a "pint" for sale.
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      So at the same establishment you could order two pints of beer and the high ABV one would be smaller in volume? That would really bother me or anyone calculating the unit cost of ethanol.
      - EdwardDiego 7y ago
        They make it clear what size they serve it in on their beer menu, so it's not too bad.
- cbhl 7y ago

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

At least it wasn't... Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft grabs close-up 1/10th of an American football field above asteroid

maxxxxx 7y ago

You should be happy that they don’t measure it in “baseball fields” or something like that. That’s how usually things are reported.

b_tterc_p 7y ago
9 football teams stacked on top of each other
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  Somehow I was thinking about Shaquille O’Neal as the unit :)
jhayward 7y ago
My pet peeve is energy reporting that uses "average households" as a unit of power.

magduf 7y ago

Who's "we"? This article is about Japan. The Japanese do not ever use "feet" as a unit of measurement. It's only Americans who still use feet and other imperial units, which is why they lost a Mars probe.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
You mean the British-built one? I think us Brits are the worst of the worst when it comes to mixing units. Fuel is sold in litres but consumption measured in miles per gallon. Milk is sold in 1 pint or 2/4/6 litre bottles. Road signs to towns are in miles but in roadworks are in metres. And so on.
- GordonS 7y ago
  To add to the mix, some signs are in yards - who even knows what one of those equals these days?!
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    Yards are the easiest to translate. A yard is roughly a meter (~9/10's).
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I don't usually complain about downvote... but seriously? Someone really thinks it's OK to have signs in all of miles, metres and yards?!
- angrygoat 7y ago
  Yeah, the strange half-transition to metric in the UK is really odd. I'm from Australia, another Commonwealth country, and we're -entirely- metric here. The only thing I can think of is that people still talk about height of people in feet and inches, but on official forms it's in centimetres. I wonder why the UK couldn't quite make the jump over? At least the US has agreed that the Moon is a metric only zone! https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/08jan_metricmoon/ https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/0...

cwilkes 7y ago

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/06/05/tucker-carlson-almost-every-nation-earth-has-fallen-under-yoke-tyranny-metric-system/223874 https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/06/05/tucker-carlson... Tucker Carlson: God bless you, and that's exactly what it is. Esperanto died, but the metric system continues, this weird, utopian, inelegant creepy system that we alone have resisted.

ldite 7y ago
...I had to look up Tucker Carlson to discover if this was satire or not.

Nelson69 7y ago

I went all metric when we started the new millennium. I try to do all my personal measurements in metric. It has been my own personal battle to make progress, every little bit helps.. It's funny how life fights with you though. My wife and I share a scale in the bathroom, it's a fitbit wifi thing and she finally laid down the law, it uses pounds now. Chasing 130lbs is somehow more satisfying than 58.9 or 59Kg. Our electronic outdoor thermometer is in Fahrenheit now too; this one sort of pisses me off, metric is simple, below 10 you need a coat, 10 to 20 probably want a light jacket, 30+ is shorts because it's hot. Mind you, she is an actual scientist, a real deal scientist that works on viruses and immunology, which is somewhat frustrating. You wouldn't believe the fit she had when our electronic human thermometer was found to be metric... When you call the doctor because your child has a fever, it is better to use whatever units the doctor uses. I suspect that major new papers could probably start using metric units with translation in parens and only the wingnuts that think the papers already harbor a liberal bias would say anything about it. Other than temperature and like human height, you can toss out metric measurements to most folks when they ask something and they seem to absorb it well; from time to time you get a question or push-back, rarely I'll translate the unit for them. We're at the point where people just need to see it more. It would be an interesting experiment if some media organizations started to make metric more prominent. Hell the US military uses it, mostly for NATO reasons... we could probably somehow put a patriotic spin on it.

Sharlin 7y ago
> Chasing 130lbs is somehow more satisfying than 58.9 or 59Kg. I mean, chasing 60kg is more satisfying than 132.2lbs. There's nothing intrinsically important about 130lbs except that it's a round number in base 10. In metric you just pick a different round number to chase.

dang 7y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html