the UK leaving the EU.... part 2.

I bet you 5 guineas he does.

 

Actually tax on beer is not by the pint , it's only read out as per pint to give an indication of the effect of the tax ....all the calculations are metric , known as hectolitres/% .

 

That's what I said!

In general I'm all in favour of metric measurements, but I'd find it tough to manage if they switched miles for kilometres, and I'd be out with the kippers if they tried to take away my pints.

 

(CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.

The units mismatch prevented navigation information from transferring between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in at Lockheed Martin in Denver and the flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Lockheed Martin helped build, develop and operate the spacecraft for NASA. Its engineers provided navigation commands for Climate Orbiter's thrusters in English units although NASA has been using the metric system predominantly since at least 1990.

No one is pointing fingers at Lockheed Martin, said Tom Gavin, the JPL administrator to whom all project managers report.

"This is an end-to-end process problem," he said. "A single error like this should not have caused the loss of Climate Orbiter. Something went wrong in our system processes in checks and balances that we have that should have caught this and fixed it."

The finding came from an internal review panel at JPL that reported the cause to Gavin on Wednesday. The group included about 10 navigation specialists, many of whom recently retired from JPL.

"They have been looking at this since Friday morning following the loss," Gavin said.

The navigation mishap killed the mission on a day when engineers had expected to celebrate the craft's entry into Mars' orbit.

After a 286-day journey, the probe fired its engine on September 23 to push itself into orbit.

The engine fired but the spacecraft came within 60 km (36 miles) of the planet -- about 100 km closer than planned and about 25 km (15 miles) beneath the level at which the it could function properly, mission members said.

 

You should've suggested that to em mate, s.lut and vinegar might be more popular

 

Sorry...hadn't spotted your reply when I started replying !!

 

Agree, It's like being Bi-lingual or even multi-lingual. I'm Bi-lingual I speak fluent Tarn and my English is quite good too.

 

Does that mean we can revert to feet and inches, pounds and ounces (all of which I still use)


I thought it was those wanting to remain in the EU who were the moaners?

 

and speak in grunts