WTF NASA II

Watching the NASA live feed on Youtube invariably shows related Youtube videos that claim to interest me. 

I came across a very detailed study of the Apollo 13 mission.  The conversations between the crew and mission control is clear and, where required, are explained by a narrator.  Included is an ever changing diagram of how things fit together, which clearly details how the explosion of one of the two O2 tanks put the crew in jeopardy.  The conversations between people on the ground highlight the extremely clever, thoughful, and CALM, people on the ground who saved the lives of Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCObwsXbSeU 

Give it a look.  It's long (2 hours), but well worth the investment.

It includes the humour before the explosion (especially regading both Jim and Jack not filing their income tax in time).

I was 12 years old at the time and I only remember the crew being in some sort of jeopardy.  But listening to the details (as an adult) and seeing how the various parts fit together and how close, in spite of multiple reduncancies, the mission was almost fatal.

I became alarmed and emotional all over again.  Somehow differently, and perhaps more so, now that I'm aware of many more things as an adult.  

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Anyway, the (what sound like genuine) audio snippets from NASA included with the Youtube video above report the spacecrafts distance in NAUTICAL miles (just like ships at sea and planes in the air) and speed is in feet per second.

So not only is NASA not using the Metric system today, but have moved backwards after half a century in that they now use both NAUTICAL and STATUTE miles and speed in miles per hour (where the "type" of mile is not defined).

(Interestingly, the Artemis II recovery ship, the USS Murtha appears to use GMT rather that EST (you can see the time stamp in the upper left corner of the ship videos).  I wonder when that was standarized to match the rest of the civilized world?)

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During his opening monologue that included a discussion of the recent Artemis II mission, Stephen Colbert (the current host of The Late Show on CBS) reported an article from the New York Times giving the new furthest record distance from Earth of the space mission in Dachshund lengths.

Yes, the little dogs with short legs is now a standard of measurment.

728 million of them nose to tail.  Well, I can certainly relate to that (NOT!).

He summarized the New Yorks Times article with "...Americans will do anything to not use the Metric system...".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGkpa-lo1AQ&t=102s (at about a minute an a half) 

WTF NASA?

NASA Mission Control Houston reported on the morning of 9 April, "the Artemis II mission is 143,000 statute miles from earth and 133,000 statute miles from the moon and is travelling at 2800 miles per hour".  Presumably that is 2800 statute miles per hour.

They continued with "As Artemis II approaches reentry at 400,000 feet it will be travelling at approximatley 35,000 feet per second and will be downrange 1500 nautical miles".

What?  Now we're using nautical miles?  Is that why Artemis is now travelling at feet per second because you can't decide on statute or nautical miles?  Who or what else uses feet per second?  Not your typical American and not aircraft as they use knots and the really fast ones use Mach (Mach 32 in the case of Artemis II).

I realize sea vessels and aircraft use feet and nautical miles and knots, but for what reason is distance out of the ocean and atmosphere (i.e. space) using statute miles?  Why the change?  What's the excuse?

If you silly Americans insist on using the archaic Imperial system, why not embrace it?

How about "Artemis II is 50,000 leagues from Earth and the mission time is 0.62 fortnights?  It will enter the atmosphere at an altitute of about 600 furlongs and will travelling the length of 45 football pitches per second".

You can guess if the football pitich is English or NFL (it's similar to the difference as between statute vs nautical miles).

Artemis II

As a child of the 60's, the various space missions became very exiting as I became aware of the world.  I don't have any memory of the earlier adventures, but I do have vague memories of Apollo 7 and many more of Apollo 8 and subsequent missions.  As the manned Apollo missions continued I soon wanted to know about what the Soviets were up to and where all the unmanned missions were going.

I recall disappointment with the early pictures Mariner took of Mars (it looked just like the moon!)

What took so long to get back to Mercury?  What a shame that Venus is so hostile.

After the Apollo missions, then came the Grand Tour of the outer planets.  The Voyagers became the little craft that could.  With the Pioneers before them, these were examples of human ingenuity to thier finest.  Designed to operate for enough time to complete their missions (in the case of Voyager II the years to get to Neptune), they have outlasted their most pessimistic critic.

What an engineering feat to land a craft (ESA Huygens) on Saturn's moon Titan!

What a pleasure to know of such engineering prowness while here on earth it's always a race for the bottom.  "Higher call volume than usual" has become the norm.  Among the disappointments of the 21st century, that phrase sums it up and I would say has become the "mantra of our times".

Artemis II lifted off only a few minutes later than scheduled (well within the launch window) and within half an hour of the mission had already taken the crew beyond where anybody has been since 1972.  It was about three times the altitude of the ISS by this time. 

The United States has launched an international mission (there is a Canadian on board) and they can't bother to even list the metric measurements with the old imperial system (7.5 billion of us use the metric system at least partially).  It was annoying to me to have to translate BACK to the metric system to figure out what the temperature was at the cape and when the mission passed the ISS altitude.

I started using the metric system when I was still in high school and now I'm retired.  Honest to god, that country is both the most advanced and most backward at the same time.  Don't get me started about how an industrialized nation lacks a social safety net.

Anyway, it's amazing to see what the crew is seeing from the spacecraft as their orbit apogee take them out to where the geosynchronous satellites live.

A crescent earth.

As has been said by others (better than me); everyone alive is "there".  In a single picture.  All eighty one hundred million of us.

(Yes, all the flat earthers regard this as just another media circus to justify spending money for some hair brained scheme.  It's too bad so many of those knuckleheads have the levers of political power).