Something i thought about well exploring. Why does Elite Dangerous use the metric system wasnt the United States the last surviving superpower at the end of WW3?
Metric system in Elite
- Thread starter Captain Thea Kreutzer
- Start date
Jacques d'Orleans
Banned
The US Armed Forces and also NASA (and US scientists in general) already used the metric system in the 20 century, so they just had to teach it to the civilians, well the few remaining ones after Kaboom 3.0.
In the year 2064 China (totally metric) became the dominant power because they don't have a political system that tears itself apart in the USA in 2016. That is why aliens from another planet landed in China in 2048 versus the USA. It was all because of some game called Elite Dangerous exploring the universe and their society was prepared to make first contact. While the game was created in the U.K. most of the developers died long ago of old age while China improved upon it and aliens were watching.
万事开头难 wàn shì kāi tóu nán - All things are difficult before they are easy. A lot of current ED players don't get this. The movie 'Blade Runner' (c1982) might just be the global civilization this planet will be in the future. Deep huh! Forget Latin or Spanish in school. Learn Chinese! It might be useful in the year 2064.
万事开头难 wàn shì kāi tóu nán - All things are difficult before they are easy. A lot of current ED players don't get this. The movie 'Blade Runner' (c1982) might just be the global civilization this planet will be in the future. Deep huh! Forget Latin or Spanish in school. Learn Chinese! It might be useful in the year 2064.
Last edited:
In a tragic misunderstanding, the US emergency broadcast gave people instructions to shelter underground at a depth of at least 5m and all the people who mistook that for 5ft died of radiation poisoning.
On the bright side, subsequent studies revealed that, as a result of this unfortunate incident, the average IQ of US citizens had risen by 23 points.
True, however, due to the increase in I.Q., we lost many fine television shows like "Keeping Up With The Kardashians," and "Dr. Phil." I don't think the world was quite ready for it.
Space is metric.
NASA and organizations like it are military spinoffs. The military use metric because it's much easier doing things like range estimates in your head accurately in units of a thousand meters rather than in imperial with it's sixteen hundred and something yards. You can see how this would be an advantage in things like remote artillery fire direction.
It's a more efficient system.
NASA and organizations like it are military spinoffs. The military use metric because it's much easier doing things like range estimates in your head accurately in units of a thousand meters rather than in imperial with it's sixteen hundred and something yards. You can see how this would be an advantage in things like remote artillery fire direction.
It's a more efficient system.
Just out of curiosity: are there any imperial units beyond the mile & league for measuring long distances? a mega-mile is just putting a metric prefix on an imperial measure.
I mean, I'm from the UK - so I've always been taught metric and lived with imperial. I have a soft spot for imperial - BUT the whole concept of the system is human and human scale - it was never created for the extremely small or the extremely large. Metric - was by its very inception all about infinite scalability - as such - makes total sense to handle the awesome scale of space.
I mean, I'm from the UK - so I've always been taught metric and lived with imperial. I have a soft spot for imperial - BUT the whole concept of the system is human and human scale - it was never created for the extremely small or the extremely large. Metric - was by its very inception all about infinite scalability - as such - makes total sense to handle the awesome scale of space.
Everyone uses SI units, but a few still stuck with the ancient measuring systems. The pilots who stuck with them all eventually whanged into the sides of astral bodies in a spectacular display of Darwin Evolution.
https://www.simscale.com/blog/2017/12/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/
https://www.simscale.com/blog/2017/12/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/
Last edited:
Well the parsec is the IAU approved measurement of very very very long distances, so I guess that makes the more human-friendly "Light Year" the frowned upon unit.
It's not like either was particularly "metric", both use highly local and ambiguous units (1AU and "year") in their original definitions.
Not 1AU as in one Astronomical Unit
but IAU as in International Astronomical Union
The AU and the parsec are based on the movement of the Earth. But then the metre is also based on the Earth. It's one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole
My original pocket money had to be accounted for in £ s d. It was a cunning system to enable me to get used to counting in bases other than the decimal one. I now realise that everything uses a decimal system, except computers and their archaic binary system 
The metre has been retconned to be the distance light travels in 1/299something seconds (like what is even going on there, 1m²/(1c*1s)‽), the AU upon which the definition of a parsec is founded was similarly redefined.
Hardcore astronomers do their distance maths in Ångström
Hardcore astronomers do their distance maths in Ångström
Heh
I vaguely recall something about physicists having to fight tooth and nail to be able to use angstroms in their papers and other publications against the objections of those who demanded the use of picometres.
When you're dealing with wavelengths you get that weird mix of nm, pm, and Å. Around the visual range, you see a nasty mix of nm and Å on unitless chartsHeh
Last edited: