Internal calculations were are all done in metric, but converted to traditional US units because many of the astronauts were pilots and more used to them

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

imperial system is based on metric(on wikipedia) so they calculed on metric, converted to imperial, that is basically metric but worse

[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kinda sorta not really.

One problem with units is defining them precisely.

For example, a meter is ostensibly "one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle". That's not exactly precisely defined because the earth isn't a perfect sphere.

So currently, a meter is defined to be the distance light travels in a vacuum in 9192631770 / 299,792,458 hyperfine structure transitions of caesium-133.

Rather than doing the same sort of thing with updating the standard definition of a foot or pound, the US just piggybacked off the work precisely defining metric units and defined imperial in terms of metric.

So now a foot is officially the precise distance light travels in some number of hyperfine structure transitions of caesium-133, and the US government didn't need to do a thing.

[–] Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

If only they made a meter equal a yard. I'm okay with a bigger yard.