[thelist] metric conversion

[Lumir G Janku]

>Am I right in remembering that this is why the Mars probe crashed into the
>planets surface because the landing program was done in Canada & there was a
>confusion over feet & meters?

This is how myths get created. :-)

No. You don't remember it correctly. This happened because the NASA team 
did conversion from metric system to imperial units. Depending what 
conversion values one uses, the resulting values may vary with a margin of 
error that in this particular case was disastrous.

It went something like this:
Team Leader: "Joe, you did these calculations ...huh ... in metrics?"
Joe:         "Yes, of course".
Team Leader: "Well, I know we used it for all previous launches...
               but you know, our current boss just does not grokk it, sooo...
               convert it to imperial units, so it looks good for him on 
paper".

Joe dutifully converts meters to feet and then feet to miles... a nice 
margin of error slips in.

If the job was done in Canada, in metrics, that crash would never happen. :-)

LGJ, Vancouver, GWN (Great White North)

<tip type=php4>
There is an undocumented function called "class_exists(classname)". This 
checks to see if the named class is defined, returning true or false. This 
isn't yet in the public docs.
</tip>