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From: p515dfi@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Daniel Fischer)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.space
Subject: Re: Galileo Update - 11/02/90
Message-ID: <1363@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de>
Date: 7 Nov 90 08:28:02 GMT
References: <1990Nov2.225442.8608@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> 
            <4680@cvl.umd.edu> <1990Nov3.050407.1642@zoo.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: p515dfi@mpirbn.UUCP (Daniel Fischer)
Organization: Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie, Bonn
Lines: 24

In article <1990Nov3.050407.1642@zoo.toronto.edu> 
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <4680@cvl.umd.edu> herve@cvl.UUCP (Jean-Yves Herve') writes:
>>There is just one little thing that bugs me: how come the Galileo are given
>>with funny units only, while the Ulysses report have both metric and funny
>>units?
>Probably because Ulysses is a European project and hence the European
>audience is being considered. [...]

But then again, Galileo is an American-German bilateral project, and I can
assure you that we here are metric. The strange obsession of American aerospace
activists (officials and journalists alike, esp. Av'Leak's!) with ancient
unit systems definitely does *not* clarify issues, even for the U.S. audience.
Just think of a) the conversion precision problem: how many figures of a 'mile'
number are significant? The 1.609...-factor connecting it with metric units
causes many writers to provide their mile-values with a ridiculous pseudo-
precision (a topic discussed in sci.space many times...). And b) the fact that
km, mile and nautical mile are all of the same order of magnitude, esp. ml. &
nm. which also sound so similar, frequently causes confusion: when a space
expert tells you a satellite is at '400 miles' altitude, you can never be sure
whether he is talking about ordinary miles or nautical miles (and skipping the
'nautical' because it's sooo obvious). [I am aware that the topic must have
been discussed on the net and in journals countless times before - recall the
'no metric units on Fred'-saga? - but obviously it *has* to be repeated :-< ]