Oolite Bulletins

Cmdr James wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 11:55 am

... and indeed some planets, most notably Teceinre, have a celebration to honour the legend which consists of pacing up and down in period costume, holding glass balls (representing ancient light sources) and using a so called "foot rule" and eyeglass to admire the wavelegths whilst reciting poetry. Claims that this was started by Teceinre marketeers as a way of selling more of their poetry have consistently been denied.

stranger wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:21 am

Well, you are US astronaut. As military pilot you have 6000 hours or so in your flight log, so measuring distances in nautical miles (1 NM = 1852 m), speed in knots (1 kt = 1 NM per hour or ≈ 0.52 m/s) and climb rates in feet per minute (1000 feet per minute is ≈ 5.08 m/s) is a part of your nature. As citizen you are driving your car using statute mile (1609 m) as distance unit and speed in miles per hour (1 mph ≈ 0.447 m/s). It is a part of your nature too. Working for NASA and planning to take part on expedition to ISS you have special education in engineering, so metric system is part of your nature too. You Russian colleagues, military pilots too, uses kilometers as distance unit, kilometers per hour as speed units and meters per second as climb rate. But they have one advantage – using the same distance and speed units driving they cars. That’s not all. You wife call you to by dozen eggs for lunch and to return home at seven at the latest. Damn! Just another Babylonian units, and it is part of your nature too!
No any versta or parasang, please! Metric system is not ideal. But it is lesser evil. We have ten digits and trained to calculate in decimal system.