On Fri, 2 Apr 2004 11:57:58 Bill Hooper wrote: >... Why do you need anything more precise? > While Bill's entire rationale about this issue was well laid out I thought I needed to address his very pertinent question above.
The answer is simple, Bill: navigation! It's very important that one defines this entity for navigational reasons. That's the very reason why authorities settled for the hideous nautical mile trash. Because it would jive "reasonably" well with the present tenets of navigational activities on this planet. Now... I have a much more elegant solution to that!... It's the UNS (Universal Navigational System) SI-Tec (my incorporated company) developed, which would render this activity a LOT (and I cannot overemphasize this enough!) simpler and easier. In plain simple terms, arc-angle would refer to a "standard" (or, better yet, *reference*) altitude of about 509 m above current sea level, where the km would be *exactly* 0.01 of a 400-gon circle. In addition to the above, one would use percentime for time reckoning (and NO, there would NOT be a need to change the SI second, NOR the value of the meter with this system!!!). Let me illustrate this with a simple, direct example. Earth's position: As done now, say: Long 256 deg 58' 13" Lat 14 deg 17' 58" UNS: Long 285.52 Lat 15.89 Conclusion: A lot simpler, shorter, where the accuracy, 0.01 refers to exactly 1 km! And one can calculate the distance between any two points on the surface of the earth on this system thusly: 200 arcsin ((sqrt(2)-2cos(0.01 da) x cos(0.01 db)/2)), where da and db are coordinates, as above; cosines are on the gr scale, NOT Babylonian degrees! Time reckoning: Currently: 21:40:55 UNS: 90.341 Time zones: Currently: 24 UNS: 20 (5 percentime hours apart) OBS.: I've settled for 20 instead of 25 to comply with the fundamental principle of effectiveness for base 10, i.e. that one should use primes 1, 2 or 5 for sub-divisioning Speed: Currently: 520 kt (knots... S-I-C!!!!!) UNS: 231 km/ph (ph meaning percentime hour!) OBS.: And the additional beauty of percentime is that the above can also be stated as 231 m/ps, or meters per percentime second!!! Distance calculations: Currently: How much time would one take to cover, say, 2240 km at a speed of 520 kt? Answer: (2240 / 1.852) / 520 = 2.326 h = = 0.326 x 60 = 19 min + 0.558 x 60 = 33.5 s, or: 2 h 19 min 33.5 s (ARGH...) UNS: 2240 / 231.130 = 9.692 ph (percentime hours)! (And t-h-a-t's i-t!... ;-) ) There would be many more advantages to this system, but the space here is too short. However, I'm sure the pilots of us who surf in this forum will learn to appreciate the simplicity this new system would lend in their line of work! (BTW, I'm ONE of them... ;-) ). Cheers, Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
