Re: Re: “Did nobody stop to think what might happen in an emergency in space?”

In article <vaj9g1$74g$1@panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Gary R. Schmidt <grschmidt@acm.org> wrote:

On 26/08/2024 06:08, Paul S Person wrote:
[SNIP]

great fan of metric, but the French are certainly not going to agree
to use anything else in /their/ components, and at least using metric
will make the entire mission doesn't just die on reaching its
destination.
 

Are you aware just how few countries choose to not use the metric system?
>
I'll help you, it's three: Liberia, Myanmar, and the USA.
>
I wouldn't like being lumped in with Myanmar...

>
I was surprised when in Scotland for Worldcon that all of the speed limit
signs were in miles per hour, especially when the ones in England are all
metric.  I mentioned this to my host who shrugged and said that Scotland
is different.
>
And when we were visiting a cognac distillery a couple years back I was
surprised to see distillation temperatures in Rheaumur....

Canada switched to metric in the 1970s because the US was going to
and we didn't want the fuss of having a different measuring system
from our largest trading partner. In any case, what unit of measurement
gets used is context dependent. Could be Imperial--not quite the same
as US--metric, some archaic unit, time used to measure distance, and
so on.
--
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