NASA also agreed with the logic of “sure, we don’t know how it’ll perform at low temperature, but we don’t know that it won’t work!” that led to the Challenger explosion. They aren’t infallible and they can make extremely stupid mistakes too.
I’m an engineer, and the unit mixup you’ve linked isn’t a failure of different unit systems, it’s just shitty engineering. You should always label your units. There’s several domains where even a single unit system has ambiguity without labeling – pressure with bars, atmospheres, and kilopascals.
It was the contractor (I believe it was Lockheed?) who used pounds though NASA’s documentation used metric units, cause they make actual scientific contributions.
Not confusing at all, but it confused NASA somehow.
NASA also agreed with the logic of “sure, we don’t know how it’ll perform at low temperature, but we don’t know that it won’t work!” that led to the Challenger explosion. They aren’t infallible and they can make extremely stupid mistakes too.
I’m an engineer, and the unit mixup you’ve linked isn’t a failure of different unit systems, it’s just shitty engineering. You should always label your units. There’s several domains where even a single unit system has ambiguity without labeling – pressure with bars, atmospheres, and kilopascals.
We use a mix of imperial and metric and some that you need a doctorate In maths to understand why we still use it
We sell petrol in litres but measure fuel economy in miles per gallon and if that some how makes sense
It was the contractor (I believe it was Lockheed?) who used pounds though NASA’s documentation used metric units, cause they make actual scientific contributions.