[Vwdiesel] Metrics for beginners ---- ( The Mixups and disasters )

[LBaird119 at aol.com]

Loren  ask NASA   how many millions and millions of your tax dollars they
lost due directly to a Metric mix-up ?


  Actually that's a yes/no thing.  Yes they were reading English and 
though it was metric or vise versa but the PROBLEM was that nobody 
felt comfortable REPORTING it.  There was some "lessor" that did 
notice the error but from experience or he actually tried to tell the 
engineers  they were reading the wrong system he was promptly 
ignored, told to shut up, whatever.  They ended up firing retro rockets 
at about ground level instead of several hundred feet, 'scuse me, METERS 
up.  It went crash.
  The real problem wasn't so much the system of measurement but the 
system of reporting an identified error in a system.  Not having two systems 
MIGHT have prevented the crash or it might have just let another ignored 
problem take it's toll.  
  I use cubits, spans, hands, scosches, hairs and my helper uses fuzz's.
Multiple systems can be problematic but it's policies and procedures 
that have much more to do with it than the measurement system itself, 
excepting of course calculations, etc where metric kicks butt.  I still 
convert back to English quite often after doing the calculations because 
I have mental "images" of those units even though I know both.
    Loren