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yaxomoxay

macrumors 604
Mar 3, 2010
7,439
34,275
Texas
And despite contrary myths, yes even the Appollo missions used metric.
that’s misleading. While the non-NASA AGC programmers
might have used metric, everything else was done and planned using imperial.

Here’s the Saturn V Flight Manual: https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap12fj/pdf/a12_sa507-flightmanual.pdf

Apollo 11 Flight Plan: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/apollo50th/pdf/a11final-fltpln.pdf

The entire Apollo 11 comms also used imperial. These are excerpts from the very tense and problematic landing:

02:44:54 Aldrin: Okay. 75 feet. And it's looking good. Down a half, 6 forward.
102:45:02 Duke: 60 seconds (of fuel left before the 'Bingo' call). 102:45:17 Aldrin: 40 feet, down 2 1/2. Picking up some dust.
102:45:21 Aldrin: 30 feet, 2 1/2 down. (Garbled) shadow.
102:45:25 Aldrin: 4 forward. 4 forward. Drifting to the right a little. 20 feet, down a half.
102:45:31 Duke: 30 seconds (until the 'Bingo' call).
102:45:32 Aldrin: Drifting forward just a little bit; that's good. (Garbled) (Pause)
102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.
102:45:43 Armstrong (onboard): Shutdown
102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.
102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.
102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.
102:45:47 Aldrin: Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in.
102:45:57 Duke: (Reporting that Houston has received telemetry confirming engine shutdown and that they have heard Buzz’s transmission regarding address 413) We copy you down, Eagle.
102:45:58 Armstrong (onboard): Engine arm is off. (Pause) (Now on voice-activated comm) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
 
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compwiz1202

macrumors 604
May 20, 2010
7,389
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Don't flatter yourself. We think your whole argument is silly, not just the metric vs imperial. :p

So you expect 80-90% (wild guess) of the members here to change their way of doing things to the way it suits you?
I am having a hard time understanding why it bothers you so much.

I am a member in various football (soccer for us here ;) ) forums where 99% or more of the members are from Europe. I don't ask them to use the 12 hour clock, or celcius for temperature, or feet and inches, or Lbs. If I want to know what the temperature is in F, I'll just do the conversion and that's it. I don't start threads to tell them that they are all stupd for use such systems like you are doing here.
[doublepost=1462692129][/doublepost]Oh by the way, you used the word 'heck' in the title. Very American of you. :p
We know you'll come around :D
24h is one of the things I prefer and I am from the US. So much easier to instantly know what time it is without having to look for an indicator.
 

DaveFromCampbelltown

macrumors 68000
Jun 24, 2020
1,781
2,877
that’s misleading. While the non-NASA AGC programmers
might have used metric, everything else was done and planned using imperial.

Here’s the Saturn V Flight Manual: https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap12fj/pdf/a12_sa507-flightmanual.pdf

Apollo 11 Flight Plan: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/apollo50th/pdf/a11final-fltpln.pdf

The entire Apollo 11 comms also used imperial. These are excerpts from the very tense and problematic landing:

02:44:54 Aldrin: Okay. 75 feet. And it's looking good. Down a half, 6 forward.
102:45:02 Duke: 60 seconds (of fuel left before the 'Bingo' call). 102:45:17 Aldrin: 40 feet, down 2 1/2. Picking up some dust.
102:45:21 Aldrin: 30 feet, 2 1/2 down. (Garbled) shadow.
102:45:25 Aldrin: 4 forward. 4 forward. Drifting to the right a little. 20 feet, down a half.
102:45:31 Duke: 30 seconds (until the 'Bingo' call).
102:45:32 Aldrin: Drifting forward just a little bit; that's good. (Garbled) (Pause)
102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.
102:45:43 Armstrong (onboard): Shutdown
102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.
102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.
102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.
102:45:47 Aldrin: Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in.
102:45:57 Duke: (Reporting that Houston has received telemetry confirming engine shutdown and that they have heard Buzz’s transmission regarding address 413) We copy you down, Eagle.
102:45:58 Armstrong (onboard): Engine arm is off. (Pause) (Now on voice-activated comm) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

Aldrin was a pilot. Even today, pilots use feet for altitude. Everything else is metric.
 
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usagora

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2017
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MM/DD/YYYY makes no sense. It is awful. The fact it is only used in one (maybe a couple) of countries globally shows that the vast majority of people think it is bad as well.

How does it not make sense? It's completely consistent with natural language.

Person 1: "What's today's date?"
Person 2: "April [MM] 25 [DD], 2023 [YYYY]."

Yes, one might also respond, "The 25th [DD] of April [MM], 2023," (although that sounds overly formal in casual conversation), and thus DD/MM/YYYY also makes sense. Neither is "awful"; they're simply two ways of saying the same thing. Just because a lot of people do something doesn't make it better. There's also only a handful of countries that use YYYY/MM/DD. So is that "awful" as well?
 
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cyb3rdud3

macrumors 601
Jun 22, 2014
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that’s misleading. While the non-NASA AGC programmers
might have used metric, everything else was done and planned using imperial.

Here’s the Saturn V Flight Manual: https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap12fj/pdf/a12_sa507-flightmanual.pdf

Apollo 11 Flight Plan: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/apollo50th/pdf/a11final-fltpln.pdf

The entire Apollo 11 comms also used imperial. These are excerpts from the very tense and problematic landing:

02:44:54 Aldrin: Okay. 75 feet. And it's looking good. Down a half, 6 forward.
102:45:02 Duke: 60 seconds (of fuel left before the 'Bingo' call). 102:45:17 Aldrin: 40 feet, down 2 1/2. Picking up some dust.
102:45:21 Aldrin: 30 feet, 2 1/2 down. (Garbled) shadow.
102:45:25 Aldrin: 4 forward. 4 forward. Drifting to the right a little. 20 feet, down a half.
102:45:31 Duke: 30 seconds (until the 'Bingo' call).
102:45:32 Aldrin: Drifting forward just a little bit; that's good. (Garbled) (Pause)
102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.
102:45:43 Armstrong (onboard): Shutdown
102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.
102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.
102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.
102:45:47 Aldrin: Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in.
102:45:57 Duke: (Reporting that Houston has received telemetry confirming engine shutdown and that they have heard Buzz’s transmission regarding address 413) We copy you down, Eagle.
102:45:58 Armstrong (onboard): Engine arm is off. (Pause) (Now on voice-activated comm) Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
That is because the pilots were used to that system because of flying. The scientists who developed it didn't. And we know that NASA is metric today as well. Nothing misleading about it, the code even shows that certain displays were converted to aid the pilots, but internally, it was metrics. The code doesn't lie, look at it.
 

cyb3rdud3

macrumors 601
Jun 22, 2014
4,050
2,724
UK
How does it not make sense? It's completely consistent with natural language.

Person 1: "What's today's date?"
Person 2: "April [MM] 25 [DD], 2023 [YYYY]."

Yes, one might also respond, "The 25th [DD] of April [MM], 2023," (although that sounds overly formal in casual conversation), and thus DD/MM/YYYY also makes sense. Neither is "awful"; they're simply two ways of saying the same thing. Just because a lot of people do something doesn't make it better. There's also only a handful of countries that use YYYY/MM/DD. So is that "awful" as well?
Only if Person 2 is from the USA that is considered natural language, the rest of the word would say what you call overly formal and find Person 2 just odd ;)
 

monstermash

macrumors 6502a
Apr 21, 2020
974
1,058
Okay guys, this is probably my angry 1 AM self again posting here, but this is something that has been bothering me for a few weeks now. I am posting it here because I know this is a website primarily of American people, and I don't know who else to rant this about.


Okay, first off, temperature. We all know what the three useful temperature measurements are. Only one is used in daily use, it's Celsius, and across the entire world. It is the most logical of the three, 0° is water's freezing point, 100° is its boiling point, every semi-educated person knows that. Only THREE countries use Fahrenheit exclusively, and surprise surprise, the United States is one of them. Why? Why is that necessary? Why use a system that is absolutely outdated, makes no sense whatsoever (water freezes at 32° and melts at 212°? yeah, totally makes sense), that is used by basically no one else? Even, excuse me for this term, stubborn countries like the United Kingdom now use Celsius exclusively and primarily. Even Canada, and its influence of the country did not force it to keep Fahrenheit. It annoys me because every time someone says "it's 60° outside!" I have to google and convert it because that means nothing for me, and I don't communicate enough with Americans to bother learning it. I could get away with it if it was something that was used interchangeably in multiple countries, but it isn't, it's outdated.

Second, measurement units. On one hand, you have the most logical system on the planet, the metric system. Simple, each unit correlates with each other, and there are basic prefixes which simply divide or multiply the numbers by multiples of 10. And I will be blunt here, the imperial units are more intuitive and are still somewhat logical. However, once you want to do anything slightly more complex, it becomes annoying. You can't do anything with a system like that. You have to learn the massive amount of words and how each of them correspond with each other. Imagine instead of having to use Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, you would instead use Floppies, Discs, Drives, and Servers. It seems like the logical option, but they do not work together well at all and you gotta remember all of that crap. Once again, only the United States along with two other small countries exclusively use this system. In fact, when I thought that the United Kingdom was responsible for the same thing, it turns out it's technically the main measurement system of today (even though many people still use the other one), so I've actually gotta give them credit for having the guts to defy a traditional system. Every commonwealth country has adopted the SI, even if some like Canada still offer it occasionally. Seriously, why do this? Sure, I can deal with that, it's not like it's stupid or anything, but NOT when it's officially only used in a SINGLE GODDAMN COUNTRY (I'm excluding minor countries here because they are usually very small and have very little influence on the rest of the world).

Finally, this one pisses me off so much I just want to die. The date system. The entire world uses one or the other, either a DD/MM/YYYY system (common in European countries), either a YYYY/MM/DD system (common in East-Asian countries and some other places). Both are perfectly fine, as they represent a proper level of importance. What is NOT fine is when a single country just comes to troll everybody and bring a MM/DD/YYYY system, which completely messes up the order of the dates. The month, then a small part of the month, and then the year which the month takes place in? WHAT? How does that make any sense? WHY IS THAT NECESSARY? WHY THE ILLOGICALITY? I can bear with a January 1st, 2016 date system because it is closer to being a feature of the language, but not when it's a purely written form! At least use YYYY/MM/DD if you want to keep the M/D part! Seriously!


Okay, I understand that this was a bit blunt. But I can't accept that. I can't accept a country where there are people so lazy to adopt systems that are, by far, much more convenient than whatever is present, especially considering we are in 2016 and no improvement has been made to this date. And not to mention I'm sure there will be some idiots defending this system saying that "we are not sheeple to follow other people like that!". Well, uh, then you're sheeple to your own ****ing community. Any thoughts? Sure, you may call be brainwashed if that's what you believe, but I'd just like to point out that even though I grew up in a 24h system and I completely switched to 12h. And now I'm (partially) back at 24h. During this whole time, I barely spent any time outside. How exactly can you prove this against me if that's your intent? Anyway, any reasonable and non-biased explanations and/or defenses? Thank you.

This? Again? It's simple. Cost/benefit. No real incentive to change.

On a related note, nobody is stopping you from using any system of measurement you like for whatever personal needs you may have.
 
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yaxomoxay

macrumors 604
Mar 3, 2010
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Exactly that! That was the reason, they were just display values in a language that pilots were already used to.
I haven’t said anything about the reason. I simply said that the Apollo program used the imperial system. Yes, in some closed-loop and internal instances such as the AGC’s and the LMGC’s software the metric system was used, but that was a choice of the contractor; every output of the two computers was still converted to imperial. Even then, the Apollo program as a whole was an imperial system program (actually it wasn’t even imperial but another system of which I forgot the name, US Common Units or something).

The why is irrelevant to my comment. Saying that the Apollo program used metric because a contractor used it in internal documentation and development on two very specific, limited instances is misleading.

Thankfully NASA did switch recently with the SLS.
 
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yaxomoxay

macrumors 604
Mar 3, 2010
7,439
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Texas
The scientists who developed it didn't.
This is factually incorrect. It’s not even something that can be argued about. The entirety of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo NASA engineering and project management was not done using the metric system but imperial system (or whatever the US equivalent is called).
 
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usagora

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2017
4,869
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Only if Person 2 is from the USA that is considered natural language

LOL! Whatever you say. My point is neither is "superior" to the other. They're simply two different ways of saying the same thing and both make perfect sense. I notice my question at the end was ignored. I guess since it's not "Americans" who use the YYYY/MM/DD format, then they get a pass 🙄 And of course there are countries that use more than one format.
 

Nermal

Moderator
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
20,982
4,546
New Zealand
LOL! Whatever you say. My point is neither is "superior" to the other. They're simply two different ways of saying the same thing and both make perfect sense.
DMY and YMD make more sense than MDY. In both former cases, the thing that changes the most frequently (the day) is at the end, second most frequently (month) is in the middle, and least frequently (year) is at the other end. With MDY, the middle number changes the most, which is the least logical of the three formats and at odds with most (all?) other representation systems.
 

usagora

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2017
4,869
4,456
DMY and YMD make more sense than MDY. In both former cases, the thing that changes the most frequently (the day) is at the end, second most frequently (month) is in the middle, and least frequently (year) is at the other end. With MDY, the middle number changes the most, which is the least logical of the three formats and at odds with most (all?) other representation systems.

I fail to see the relevance of matching the positions of the numbers to the frequency at which they change.
 

usagora

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2017
4,869
4,456
Iran does things differently…

Re-read what he said. He didn't say it's right because it's different. He simply said just because it's different doesn't make it wrong. And that's absolutely true. There has to be a better reason than simply "it's different."
 
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Scepticalscribe

Suspended
Jul 29, 2008
65,135
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In a coffee shop.
DMY and YMD make more sense than MDY. In both former cases, the thing that changes the most frequently (the day) is at the end, second most frequently (month) is in the middle, and least frequently (year) is at the other end. With MDY, the middle number changes the most, which is the least logical of the three formats and at odds with most (all?) other representation systems.
Agree completely.

To my mind, it is more logical - more rational - for the sequence to read DD/MM/YYYY.

YYYY/MM/DD also has logical, but does not make sense as a form of regular use, for the year is what changes least in this format.
 
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yaxomoxay

macrumors 604
Mar 3, 2010
7,439
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Agree completely.

To my mind, it is more logical - more rational - for the sequence to read DD/MM/YYYY.

YYYY/MM/DD also has logical, but does not make sense as a form of regular use, for the year is what changes least in this format.
Are we talking about written or verbal here? The two don’t necessarily need to be the same.

In written form I prefer YYYY.MM.DD. Verbal form I prefer Day Month Year.
 
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eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,604
28,366
I think the whole debate about MM/DD/YYYY is largely irrelevant to the daily life of most Americans.

Yeah, that's how we write it. But if you ask an person (in the US) in daily life what the date is, they're going to turn to you and say 'the 26th'. Or even '26th'.

The assumption is that you are not a moron and are aware what month you're currently in. Even saying 'April 26th' is stilted. If you want to imply someone is an idiot you'd say "April 26th, 2023", punctuating the month, date and year.

We only get into attaching the month to our conversations if we're talking future dates. There's no reason to mention the month.
 

cthompson94

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2022
812
1,164
SoCal
I think the whole debate about MM/DD/YYYY is largely irrelevant to the daily life of most Americans.

Yeah, that's how we write it. But if you ask an person (in the US) in daily life what the date is, they're going to turn to you and say 'the 26th'. Or even '26th'.

The assumption is that you are not a moron and are aware what month you're currently in. Even saying 'April 26th' is stilted. If you want to imply someone is an idiot you'd say "April 26th, 2023", punctuating the month, date and year.

We only get into attaching the month to our conversations if we're talking future dates. There's no reason to mention the month.
100% agree with this front as far as the date debate goes. It seems like only in movies and TV Shows that you may get the whole stating the day and the month along with possibly the year. Largely in day-to-day conversations it will just be a response on what you asked for. "what day is today?" or "what is today's date" will get a response of "the 20th" or of course whatever the day of the month it is. Maybe every now and then the month may come up but that is usually because the next month just started and usually followed with "wow it is x month already" or something similar. As far as written goes, I feel like any place in the U.S. at least that cares what the date format is will usually put the format they want. When I was military a lot of the forms I wrote dates in were yyyymmmdd and the month was written like "JAN" "FEB" and so on.

Edit: Adding that some forms were also ddmmmyy almost forgot
 
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cosmichobo

macrumors 6502a
May 4, 2006
986
603
Re-read what he said. He didn't say it's right because it's different. He simply said just because it's different doesn't make it wrong. And that's absolutely true. There has to be a better reason than simply "it's different."
Fine.

It's not different. Its logical. It's easier. It's better. But that's ok, America. You keep your backward ways. Wont matter much longer anyways; you're already waning into obscurity.
 

compwiz1202

macrumors 604
May 20, 2010
7,389
5,746
100% agree with this front as far as the date debate goes. It seems like only in movies and TV Shows that you may get the whole stating the day and the month along with possibly the year. Largely in day-to-day conversations it will just be a response on what you asked for. "what day is today?" or "what is today's date" will get a response of "the 20th" or of course whatever the day of the month it is. Maybe every now and then the month may come up but that is usually because the next month just started and usually followed with "wow it is x month already" or something similar. As far as written goes, I feel like any place in the U.S. at least that cares what the date format is will usually put the format they want. When I was military a lot of the forms I wrote dates in were yyyymmmdd and the month was written like "JAN" "FEB" and so on
Think I'd like the month abbreviation. Saves your brain the tiniest bit of time on conversion. Just like I prefer digital clocks and speedometers.
 
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