Dear Mr. Koczor, I am writing to you as a matter of courtesy to let you see a copy of a (humorous ?) note that I sent to the mail list of the United States Metric Association eleven days ago.
As you will see, it is my belief that re-changing modern metric units to old measures can also have the effect of making NASA look rather foolish to the rest of us around the world. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Geelong, Australia ** Dear All, Over the last few days, I have been hearing excitedly breathless reports about the 'Gravity Probe B' space mission. Sadly, all of the data I heard on radio was in old inch-foot-pound measures. For example: . the craft is to fly at 400 miles high . the gyroscope sphere was to be an almost perfect 1.5 inches diameter (when it wasn't 'about the size of a golf ball) . if the gyroscope was expanded to the size of the Earth its biggest bulge would be 8 feet . the Dewar flask to contain the science module is 9 feet tall . the Dewar flask holds 645 gallons of superfluid liquid helium I suspected that the radio stations were simply reporting directly from a NASA site, and sure enough, I found it at: <http://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/f_gpb-parts.html> It amused me somewhat to see this line: 'If Albert Einstein were alive today he'd be relaxing in his easy chair, pipe in hand, very calmly awaiting the results of this historic mission and probably marvelling at the technology it takes to probe his 89 year-old theory'. Perhaps, what they meant to say was: 'If Albert Einstein were alive today he'd be "frantically worrying " while . . . awaiting the results "(he couldn't possibly know who was doing what conversions, from what old measures, with what conversion factors, and with what errors)" of this historic mission and probably marvelling at the technology "(at least wondering how NASA could possibly produce such advanced technology when they are clearly dedicated to the encouragement of seriously old and proven difficult-to-use measures)" it takes to probe his 89 year-old theory'. Let us hope that the remaining components of this mission aren't equally suffering from the same mish-mash of old and new measuring units that led to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter. I can only hope for the best for this extremely important mission, as quiet confidence in sound technology, well-applied, is clearly out of order given the above context. Cheers, Pat Naughtin Geelong, Australia --
