News Release: Metric System

NASA news: metric system
‘Bout time.

NASA makes an effort to switch over to the metric system. (For some things.) Because when your day-to-day job involves a lot of calculations and unit conversions, decimal-based order takes a lot of irritation out of doing ordinary stuff.

NASA data with hand-written kilometers to miles conversion
Working units to brain-thinking units.

Of course, when you make the changeover from one system to another, it’s a challenge. Sometimes it’s necessary to use a few crutches before the comfort and ease settle in. (Note that this particular sheet predates the press release by the better part of a decade.)

Enlargement of handwritten note
We’ve all been there.

Odd observations:

  • It’s written out in plain English, rather than as a symbolic equation, like ” 1 km = 0.6214 mi. “
  • There’s no 0 before the decimal point.
  • The k for kilo is capitalized, and there’s a period after the m.
  • But there’s no period at the end of the actual sentence.
  • Love that old-school printed g.

News Release: Space Toilet

Title: Bathroom Commode Design for Space Shuttle Passengers
Cannot overstate the importance of this project.

In cleaning out decades of old papers, attempting to determine what’s worth saving, one occasionally stumbles across the in-betweens: those bits worth remarking upon, but not worth keeping.

For those who’ve kept up on reading Mary Roach’s books, the importance and extreme engineering challenges of making a good space toilet are immense. Suffice to say, the problem was far from solved in 1972.