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posted by takyon on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the 2016-lbs-in-a-ton dept.

The most recent candidate under the DNC banner is Lincoln Chafee who interestingly, besides being the lone Republican (he switched parties) to vote against the Iraq war, is vehemently pro-metric system. I remember when I was a kid, the freeway signs for distance and speed were printed in both English and metric. Converting all those signs from miles to km (again) would cost money, but then, using the English measurement system costs money too, forever -- according to a random guy I googled up without putting any real effort into it because I'm not that interested in proving myself wrong (Paul Naughtin), somewhere between six billion and a trillion. There are without a doubt, critics who might call that somewhat of a wide margin but as one witty commenter noted: "It is probably impossible to give an upper bound on that, however I can give you a lower bound: 500 Million Dollars for the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter by NASA".

Now, I'm neither a firm GOP nor DNC voter... but I'm tempted.

takyon: Former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee joins a number of other candidates seeking a 2016 U.S. presidential nomination.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:02AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:02AM (#193118) Journal

    What exactly are the (bad) consequences of making a "universal mandate" that a spaceship must be all metric and not mix in imperial parts or measurements.

    Higher costs and more mistakes of course. What makes you think the mandate didn't already exist in the first place? Just because you have a mandate doesn't mean it gets honored. And what sort of effort are you going to go through to make sure that imperial tools don't taint your spacecraft as opposed to all the other mistakes that can happen?

    This kind of mandate is as bad as requiring that all technicians account for their tools at the end of the day. It is an extremely wide policy but shouldn't have been necessary if people didn't make mistakes. People do make mistakes.

    Which is another top down policy that I can see management screwing up. I really don't see the point of your post.

  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:34PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:34PM (#193388)

    You are inventing stuff. Metric is now higher cost and more mistake prone than mixing imperial and metric? Just go away.

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    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 08 2015, @03:11AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 08 2015, @03:11AM (#193478) Journal
      What am I inventing? There's going to be cost and error introduced with switching over from one standard to another.

      But I think the whole argument is absurd in the first place. "We must go metric because of a 15 year old accident with a spacecraft". You should have a better argument than that for a switch.
      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Monday June 08 2015, @04:36AM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 08 2015, @04:36AM (#193508)

        I do agree that it is a bad argument to use when switching civilian stuff over to metric.

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