Curiosity Gearing Up for Drive to Next Study Location 73
Curiosity has spent most of the past 5 weeks running instrument and system checks, but on Friday that is all scheduled to change. The plan is to "drive, drive, drive" until a suitable rock for the rover's first robotic "hands-on" analysis is found, says mission manager Jennifer Trosper. The rover will head to a location about 1,300 feet away labeled "Glenelg," where three different types of rock intersect.
Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you put a rover on Mars, you can pick whatever units you want.
Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are going to do conversions, make sure you include proper rounding to significant digits and avoid false precision.
In other words: 1300 feet = 400 m = 2 furlongs.
Well, those are approximate conversions, but it is an approximate distance as well. This is something I think most "science reporting" does a horrible job of dealing with as well.
As for cubits, those were about 21 inches or about 52 centimeters, which would put the distance at about 800 cubits or about 80 rods. A hoghead is a unit of volume, which isn't applicable.
Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. (Score:4, Insightful)
What is that in a civilized unit of measure?
When are American's going to grow up?
A foot is an arbitrary unit of measurement like a metre. What's the difference? Why is one more civilized or grown up than the other?
Re:Ah, Ye Olden Times. (Score:2, Insightful)
Would that be the international foot or the survey foot? Indian or English survey foot? And would it be pre- or post-1959 when the foot was standardized world-wide? Try the same with gallons. Will that be US or Imperial, liquid or dry? For miles, would that be statute miles, nautical miles, US statute miles, UK statute miles, US survey miles (derived from the afore-mentioned survey foot and similar yard)... and it just gets sillier from there. Wait, these differences don't matter? But oh, they do, if you're shipping stuff internationally and expect to get paid properly, or if you're buying real estate and want to make sure that your land survey is correct.
To twist a phrase, the nice thing about Imperial measures is that there are so fricking many to choose from. It's so bad that the "standard" solution these days for Imperial measures is to define *all* of them in terms of the metric equivalents.
Thanks, but I'll take the system with *one* arbitrary unit established rather than half a dozen different ones that are now all based on the metric system anyway.