Recently I posted to this forum that I heard that the American Mars Rover did a 10 foot stroll. I was so excited when i thought that NASA was using imperial I almost pee-ed in my pants.
When I found a news article strictly in imperial, I immediately concluded that NASA did it all in imperial.
Now the outrage. Those b------s at NASA had the nerve to actually speak to the news media in metric. All this imperial talk never was spoken by NASA personel. It was all a translation by my news service.
The flight director Chris Lewicki was quoted as saying: "the most significant 3-meter drive in recorded history."
How dare he! How dare he speak metric and let me think all of this time that NASA still used imperial. This is an OUTRAGE! This is Metrickery! I am burning with anger.
Look at this article. They have put the rounded nice metric numbers first and the imperial afterthoughts in parentheses. OUTRAGEOUS! Thanks NASA for making my day!
Spirit robot ready to take first three-meter stroll on Mars
WASHINGTON (AFP) Jan 14, 2004
The US Spirit robot will make its first three-meter trek on Mars late Wednesday, as part of its mission to seek out traces of water on the Red Planet, to determine if life once existed there, NASA officials said Wednesday.
"We will be driving three meters (10 feet) on the surface of Mars," said NASA's Kevin Burke, who is overseeing the robot's descent from its platform, where it has sat since arriving on the planet January 3.
The first data from Spirit are expected at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, at around 0900 GMT Thursday, mission manager Jennifer Trosper told reporters.
Then on Friday, the robot's 13th day on Mars, the European probe Mars Express will pass over the planet's Gusev crater, where Spirit landed, said Ray Arvidson, one of the Mars Exploration Rover's project scientists.
Mars Express may not be able to "see" Spirit, but the probe will take a series of measurements that will prove helpful to the US mission, via three German, French and Italian instruments "looking down," Arvidson said, praising the cooperative effort.
"To our northeast, 250 meters (820 feet) to the northeast, is a crater 200 meters (655 feet) in diameter. This is an extremely attractive target," said mission scientist Steve Squyres, noting that it will "provide a window into the subsurface of Mars."
"The goal of this site is to try to find materials that will tell us whether or not Gusev crater once contained a lake and what the conditions were like in that lake," Squyres said.
A second robot, Opportunity, is set to land on Mars late January 24. Each robot will operate for three months on the planet, running on solar energy.