'Tenths of a Foot'? NASA Unit ???

Quite old, I believe the unit is called a toe.

I downloaded and watched the shuttle launch in HD - looked great, it must be awesome to see it in real life.

Yes. It's also referred to as "one toe". ;-)

Rich Webb schrieb:

Hello,

and that toe would be equal to 1.2 inch. Not very clever to use foot, toe and inch together.

Bye

That doesn't make sense. There are only five toes on one foot. So a tenth of a foot should be 1/2 a toe.

I wish someone would rationalize these units.

George H.

I think its based on surveying conventions. Only one unit is used (feet or meters) and everything is expressed in decimal parts of that unit.

Correct, I even have a surveyor's tape measure that is marked in tenth's of a foot.

Our land surveys are that way. 368.27 feet or notes like "fence is 0.2' south of line"

It's insane that NASA, or any organization dealing with electronics or physics, would use Olde English units. Feet, inches, fractions of inches, mils, yards, miles, nautical miles, knots, drams, pounds, poundals, slugs, pounds-force, degrees F, degrees R, ounces, fluid ounces, quarts, gallons, barrels, pints, cups, tablespoons, gills, fifths, BTUs, horsepower, bushels, screw sizes, wire gages, candles, all insane. And dangerous.

John

Yes, but if all your 30+ year-old instruments are calibrated in tenth of foot units, it is better to use it as is that try to convert on the fly. Remember the shuttles have been flying for 30+ years, and development started just after the moon landings finished, about 40 years ago.

Jon

It's an astronomical unit. 1 attoparsec = 1 decifoot, to within a percent or so of experimental error. (Which is proof positive that God doesn't want us to use metric units.) ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

They're all crazy but you, is that it? >:->

Thanks, Rich

I never claimed that I'm not crazy. But I'm sane enough to do physics in SI units.

Try some thermal calculations in olden units, Btu/(hr·ft-F) and all that. THAT will drive you crazy.

John

If a cubit was good enough for Him, it's good enough for us.

John

Didn't I read somewhere that a bridge near MIT was measured in Smoots and Smoot ears?

Jim

I beg your pardon?

Jim CCA-CTA-NEA and damned proud of it.

It's sometimes six. Would that make it a Polydactyl toe?

Cheers

Parsecs are an utterly arbitrary unit as well

No more arbitrary than the meter.