On 1/10/25 15:40, e...@gmx.us wrote:
On 1/10/25 15:30, mick.crane wrote:
On 2025-01-10 14:39, John Hasler wrote:
Tomas writes:
Past experience shows that we'll live with this for a while (watch
the US still on their Imperial measures,
Pedanticism: The US is not and never has been on the Imperial system.
We use both SI ("metric") and US Customary (the latter predates
Imperial).
wasn't a defect in the Hubble telescope mirror caused by a misunderstanding
between US/UK what units they were working in?
I'd heard it was a failure to account for the effects of non-gravity on the
main mirror. The Mars Climate Observer was doomed by one team using
imperial instead of metric, and applying the wrong impulse because of it.
That is not what they told us on this side of the pond, it was an error,
less than a human hair in the parabola they polished it to. So they
designed an eye piece of sorts to correct it. Likely at the expense of
some wide field loss. But we've sure gotten our moneys worth since. That
is the last thing this planet has put up that sees visible light. And
now with the shuttle shut down, its low orbit will eventually bring it
down. The shuttle has been used to give it an orbit raising gentle push
at least once but now the giro's are wearing out. They aim it.
--
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
-- C. S. Lewis
.
Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
