When you watch a ULA launch stream and they talk about how many nautical miles in altitude they are it’s just so fuckin embarrassing
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Fun fact:
Internally they switch between imperial and metric all the time. The broadcast is in imperial for US viewers.
Sauce: once upon a time I worked there
Technically the ISS isn't NASA and it has happened to them as well.
Good thing Trump is ending the only metric highway in the USA despite pleas from locals.
NASA used metric, it was a contractor that fucked up the conversion on their piece which they decided to do in US units for some reason
Lockheed is the company that fucked up by using US customary, for any curious.
To be fair, an Ariane 5 rocket failed because of a float being treated as a double, or something similar. I don't remember the details, but what makes it embarrassing is that it was the result of recycling code from Ariane 4.
I don't think recycling code is embarrassing? No-one can be expected to write a new codebase from scratch for every new product or machine. That would be worse than building on top of a solid foundation.
It isn't. Never testing that it's compatible with the new hardware platform is.
even worse, Americans cant even get a pint right and will short you 4oz
I like how it just devolved from metric vs imperial to imperial vs imperial
I consider myself a fairly "progressive and open minded American". I have even paid lip service to the superiority of the metric system.
But I can say with sincerity, this is the first thing that has ever made me truly care about metric vs imperial... or conversions in general.
Then ask for a tip...
Gotta break a few pounds of eggs to make a meter wide omelette
"Oh I'm sorry, did you guys not use imperial when you walked on the moon?"
Did they?
Well yes and no? Calculations were apparently done in metric units but operators were reading ~~fantasy~~ customary units.
Although data was stored internally in metric units, they were displayed as United States customary units. Fom the Wikipedia Article for the Apollo Guidance Computer
AFAIK no country on earth has brought humans to the moon since the Apollo missions ended, so no.