Comments
By bryanlarsen 2025-11-210:072 reply This is also good news for SpaceX. Satellite and payload designers generally design to common fairing sizes so they have a choice in launch providers. The 8.7m 9x4 fairing is similar to the 9m Starship fairing so more designers will now be designing payloads that use the full Starship capacity.
I agree, though I think the real winner here is the customers. The New Glenn 9x4 has a higher targeted payload capacity that an expended Falcon Heavy. Mission design takes years, and payload mass is the most important constraining factor. So it'd now be fairly reasonable approach to start building now for 9x4's constraints, and then fly on it or Starship depending on readiness and price. If customers start doing this now, that also means a quicker pickup on using the increased launch capability.
On a funnier note, the 9 in Falcon 9 is the number of engines. So blue origin is somewhat picking up on their naming scheme. Or, by BO's scheme, it'd be the Falcon 9x1, or the Starship 33x6.
> Falcon 9x1, or the Starship 33x6.
...and we'd be back to steam engine wheel formulas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyte_notation
By dotancohen 2025-11-218:53 Though not identical, more commonly well known are the 4x2 and 4x4 designations for vehicle drive wheel specification.
Such standardization will set a design envelope for the Golden Dome weapons..
By sandworm101 2025-11-218:47 Shh. Forget the physical limits. Just tell him that everyone is working on his golden hat idea. Thats what everyone did the last time an old man demanded space lasers. In a few years, one way or another, someone new will come along who might understand math well enough that we can explain why it wont work.
Launch cost was already a single digit percentage of total cost when using Falcon-9s. Reduction in launch cost doesn't really change anything at that point.
Ignoring that weaponizing space would backfire badly (you want hundreds of nukes in orbit? yeah actually let's just not do that) and thus no one considering it either.
> you want hundreds of nukes in orbit?
If you think about that, a lot of fuel for in-space nuclear reactors will already have been launched, so, if a new peace treaty outlaws them, it'll be a boon to whoever operates fission reactors in space. Or wants to use them for propulsion.
Once in space, they can't be disposed of - deorbiting is a big no-no, as it's blowing them up.
If one is using a nuclear reactor for long term power or propulsion you shouldn't need to be disposing of it in the Earth's vicinity anyways - there is plenty of solar in Earth orbit. Not that peace treaties around nukes will inherently ban reactors.
By rbanffy 2025-11-2115:40 If the nuke is already in orbit, harvesting it for fissile fuel seems like a sensible way of decommissioning it. They you can power your NTR (or RTG if you must) from its fuel. It'll require some in-orbit metallurgy work, to get it in the proper shape and composition.
By anovikov 2025-11-215:39 Indeed, exciting times! What looked like science fiction in Reagan's era (brilliant pebbles)? now seems almost too banal and simple to even build.
By SilverElfin 2025-11-2021:501 reply For those who aren’t aware, the next flight is to lunar orbit, with a planned landing on the moon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Pathfinder_Mission_1
That seems like a big jump between flights. I'm used to the spend and explode fast incremental iterations of SpaceX.
By cratermoon 2025-11-2023:442 reply The first flight of the Saturn V was 'all up'. Every stage was the real live thing. No dummy stages, real payload.
The third flight of the Saturn V took 3 astronauts in their spacecraft to lunar orbit and back.
By timschmidt 2025-11-213:15 That's true, but there were several prior rockets in the Saturn family which were used to test various parts of the design and mission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(rocket_family)
By hvb2 2025-11-2111:40 And no one would be ok today with the risks taken in those launches.
Human spaceflight is more about mitigating risk than anything. Apollo was getting there first, so there was a willingness to take more risks.
Also, NASA at the time had a humongous budget compared to today, adjusted for inflation [1] and it was a lot more focused on just getting to the moon.
I think SpaceX is taking the re-usability part of Starship as foundation. Meaning they won't move forward until it's solved. With Falcon they added it as a bit of a secondary priority. They've spent so much resources trying to get the second stage back to earth. I think they should have just focused on getting the whole system flying to orbit, throwing away second stage for now, and using that platform to replace falcon. Eventually, they could refactor second stage to get it back to earth. But perhaps it's all too coupled that it has to be solved at one time (not later).
By iknowstuff 2025-11-2023:061 reply Starship can fly to orbit, it's just not cheaper than a reusable falcon 9 that way
By margalabargala 2025-11-2023:281 reply Starship has only flown 11 times. I suspect it's more cost effective than the Falcon 9 was when it had 11 launches, long before any reuse.
By margalabargala 2025-11-2118:25 It's a technical rocketry term that encompasses all attempted flights, successful or otherwise.
Your confusion stems from trying to use a different definition of the word when reading. Context clues are your friend here :)
Seems BO is taking the NASA approach of not being so cavalier with testing. You can tell people you expect the thing to fail, but repeatedly seeing them fail is still seen as a negative.
New Glenn is manufactured with a different philosophy, so Blue can't be Starship levels of cavalier with testing. It would cost way too much to do with their current approach.
The factory tours for the two show this difference. New Glenn production is a lot more classical aerospace in terms of a high tech cleanroom factory being built from the start, versus a rocket that started out being built in tents that is slowly guiding the factory design as the tolerances are sorted out.
I think Blue's philosophy is pretty similar to the old space giants, except for being willing to invest a ton of money into improvements and new technologies without waiting around for the government to give them a blank check first.
Maybe we'll find that the thing limiting aerospace progress wasn't even that old space was afraid to test, but rather that they were simply unwilling to progress on their own initiative.
Did I miss a privately funded, reusable heavy lift rocket coming out of old space in the past 20 years?
By notahacker 2025-11-2111:03 I guess it depends on which decade you look at. The Saturn and Shuttle programmes achieved more novelty for the time on faster timelines. Of course, they also cost a lot more....
By crawshaw 2025-11-2110:50 That is clearly not true. SLS is much more expensive by any measure and is not reusable in any way. Other interesting work, e.g. rocket lab, is not old space.
By Seanambers 2025-11-210:272 reply Sad part is that even though SpaceX / Elon has been very clear about expected outcomes it's still used against them.
By WorkerBee28474 2025-11-2022:402 reply NASA still had much smaller jumps in capability between flights. Check out the Smarter Every Day NASA talk.
Sure, we went through Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo 1-7 before humans orbited the moon. However, we started from blank sheet of paper back then. BO has the knowledge learned from Gemini, Mercury, and all of Apollo to start.
I don't need a YT influencer to know my NASA history. I'm old enough it was taught in school while young enough to not have lived through any of it.
By stevenjgarner 2025-11-2023:251 reply I am so old I lived through it! - 13 years old staying up all night to watch Neil take his little stroll. Genuine question, how DO they teach it in school? Do they get into the physics of any of it (orbital mechanics, rocketry etc)? Do they get into the cold war geopolitics of it? Do they teach the amazing accomplishments of the Soviet Union as well as NASA?
By dylan604 2025-11-2023:52 It's not like it was a class on rocket science, but more of just history of each program being a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of landing on the moon
By JumpCrisscross 2025-11-210:244 reply > Check out the Smarter Every Day NASA talk
FYI, that talk was poorly received in the aerospace community.
Destin missed that the entire point of Artemis is not to one and done the Moon again but build towards getting to Mars. And the repeated "we're going, right?" shtick was condescending in the same way Hegseth wanting generals to cheer and holler for him was.
He acted like a petulant influencer. Not a science communicator.
By timschmidt 2025-11-213:281 reply Few of us like having our work critiqued by an "outsider". Especially when such critique threatens your paycheck.
Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine any kind of sustainability when each launch costs north of $2 Billion and nearly all hardware is thrown away each time. In that sense, his criticism was very valid, even if tough to hear.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-11-213:451 reply > Few of us like having our work critiqued by an "outsider"
I said aerospace community. Not NASA. Plenty of people hate Artemis. Most people hate SLS. But they hate it for good reason. Destin touched on some of that. But because he missed Artemis's purpose, he bungled that criticism too.
I like Destin. But he missed the mark pretty badly on that video, and I judge him for now following up with clarification.
By timschmidt 2025-11-214:021 reply > I said aerospace community. Not NASA.
NASA doesn't build rockets. ULA (Lockheed Martin + Boeing), Northrup Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne, etc. do. That's what I took "aerospace community" to mean. The community of people working in aerospace. Artemis has shifted focus several times now, since before it was called "Artemis" as each political administration has emphasized different goals, and as mission planning has evolved with hardware development. Over the years I have read everything from an abstract Moon-to-Mars testbed, a 5 year deadline crash program to land "the first woman and the next man" at the lunar south pole, a sustained lunar presence, the "first woman and first person of color" on the moon, safety science and Mars prep, and latest a de-scoping of the cis-lunar gateway station and shift toward private industry. Such things are difficult to avoid under constantly changing leadership.
Given that, I don't see any problem with the way Dustin presented the situation, nor do I feel any kind of need for an apology or clarification.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-11-216:171 reply > ULA (Lockheed Martin + Boeing), Northrup Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne, etc. do. That's what I took "aerospace community" to mean
Fair. Not who I talk to. None of them get their bread buttered by Artemis. A few would if it were dumped.
> I don't see any problem with the way Dustin presented the situation, nor do I feel any kind of need for an apology or clarification
Fair enough. I thought the "we're going, right" was childish. But it works for YouTube, and it's not like NASA didn't know they were inviting an influencer.
But suggesting NASA should just redo Apollo was dumb, and he should realise it's dumb. If that were the case, I'd argue for cancelling the programme.
By timschmidt 2025-11-2113:27 > None of them get their bread buttered by Artemis. A few would if it were dumped.
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-partners/
"NASA prime contractors Aerojet Rocketdyne, Axiom Space, Bechtel, Blue Origin, Boeing, Amentum, Jacobs, Lockheed Martin, Maxar Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX"
> suggesting NASA should just redo Apollo was dumb
Dumber than redoing Shuttle and throwing away proven reusable RS-25 engines? It's been a while since I watched it, but it seems to me one example highlights the absurdity of the other.
By bryanlarsen 2025-11-210:421 reply AFAICT it's "getting to Mars" for SpaceX and their ecosystem, and "sustainable cislunar economy" for Nasa, ULA and Blue Origin and their respective ecosystem. For example, see ULA's "cislunar 1000" concept from ~10 years ago.
Either way, your criticism of Destin's presentation hits. One and done'ing the Moon is not particularly helpful in setting up a sustainable cislunar economy.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-11-212:37 > it's "getting to Mars" for SpaceX and their ecosystem, and "sustainable cislunar economy" for Nasa, ULA and Blue Origin and their respective ecosystem
In 2017 Space Policy Directive 1 amended the national space policy to pursue "the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations" [1]. This formally established the Artemis program [2].
Destin's criticisms were apt for Constellation [3], which was closer to an Apollo reboot. They were uninformed for Artemis.
[1] https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/pr...
By brain_staple 2025-11-212:071 reply That was my interpretation of that talk. It seemed like a regurgitation of opinions of an old aerospace engineer. But that's probably unfair to Dustin, I believe that he actually came to that conclusion himself. But it was a really incorrect take that SLS was somehow the "safe bet" in comparison to betting on Starship. The whole talk just seemed insane based on what I knew about both programs.
By imtringued 2025-11-217:39 The payload capacity of Starship version 2 is around 35 tons to LEO. The propellant capacity is 1500 tons. This means it takes 42 tanker loads to fill up one Starship. This means Destin was extremely optimistic with respect to how well Starship is going to perform.
Even with the projected 100 ton payload for V3, the minimum number of flights to refuel a V2 HLS Starship is 15 flights and 26 flights for V3 HLS.
If we are optimistic about New Glenn and the cislunar transporter, then it will take 4 flights to refuel the transporter for each moon landing plus one flight to launch Orion on New Glenn and another three flights to push Orion using the cislunar transporter. There is also a hypothetical option to use a second Blue Moon MK2 between LEO and NRHO plus a crew capsule launch that says in LEO.
Given a budget of 4 billion USD, this could pay for 50 New Glenn flights assuming falcon 9 pricing. 8 flights per moon landing means one moon landing every two months.
That seems pretty promising unlike SpaceX, which is locked entirely behind a functioning reusable second stage or they don't get to participate at all, because expending 15 to 26 upper stages is not viable at all.
But you do you. SLS only has to launch a few times until the cislunar transporter gets established, which means it is exactly the safe bet that the US needs to reach the moon.
By imtringued 2025-11-217:25 Nobody is going to Mars anytime soon. It's the moon or nothing.
By BoredPositron 2025-11-2022:34 Mostly because the whole landing thing was pretty novel.
By SilverElfin 2025-11-2022:261 reply I was thinking the same thing - big leap. But maybe there’s no real difference between ending up in Earth orbit versus lunar orbit, in that the basic aspects (thrust, staging, navigation, etc) are all there already? But everything relating to the lander (releasing it, landing it) would be new.
By WJW 2025-11-2023:07 I recognize a fellow Kerbal space program enthusiast by what they consider to be challenges and what is just "more of the same". :)
I REALLY wish they would stop displaying ft, mi, lbs. It actually angers me.
By GuB-42 2025-11-2110:15 I am the first to complain about imperial units but this article is mostly metric. As long as metric/SI is there, I have no problem with what they chose to show next to it, including swimming pools, football fields and Hiroshima bombs.
Also feet happen to be the standard measurement of altitude in aviation, which rockets are part of, even in metric countries, I hate it but it's like that. Distances are nautical miles, a not so bad unit (it corresponds to 1 arcminute on earth), which make me hate the use of terrestrial miles in articles partaking to aviation even more. But it is a bit offtopic here because most of the article is metric.
By nancyminusone 2025-11-211:323 reply Good lord, find something else to be angry about. Decades of metric vs imperial threads should have you convinced by now that no matter how hated they are, these units aren't going away any time soon.
By RealityVoid 2025-11-217:411 reply Not with this attitude they won't!
By ahoka 2025-11-2111:08 A pet peeve of mine is that the US doesn't actually use "imperial units", as those were established by the Brits well after the declaration of independence.
Intel should announce their new 40ni (40-nanoinch) process node next April Fools' Day.
By lnenad 2025-11-2110:44 If one byte equals one grain of rice it would have a bandwidth of 7.47millioncups/s
By dmichulke 2025-11-216:32 If I wouldn't know better, I'd assume using the metric system is actually a disadvantage when building SOTA rockets.
By sitharus 2025-11-211:11 Wait until you find the places people use non-SI but still metric units, it's super fun.
By cowsandmilk 2025-11-211:04 Good thing they didn’t use two of those units.
By cuckmaxxed 2025-11-210:43 [flagged]
Welcome to Earth. Some countries use different unit systems. (Some even use a hodge podge of multiple systems!) Please enjoy your stay.
I don't think that's the OP's issue, it's just in this context.
Can someone from the industry confirm whether they use metric internally and the stream uses imperial just for the patriotic show or whether imperial units are used because some countries use different unit systems and this is normal?
On a related note, I don't think anyone is bothered buying screens (monitor/phone/...) labeled in inches, but orbital elevations and speeds? Weird.
By goku12 2025-11-2112:38 I was with the space industry in India. The aviation sector is uniform throughout the world and uses feet, ft/s (vertical rates), knots (air and ground speed) etc. But I believe ground ranges are in kilometres and fuel loads are in kilogram, though I have heard pounds used in some places. Some ex-Soviet countries used to work with SI units even for aviation. But that difference between them and the world was partially responsible for a very tragic and horrific mid-air collision over Charkhi-Dadri near New Delhi in 1996. I don't know if they changed that afterwards. Meanwhile the naval and marine sectors also use nautical miles (different from the imperial miles) and knots exclusively. I believe that it's because the naval conventions were formed before the SI system was devised. Aviation sector just borrowed from them.
Considering all these, you'd expect space sector to borrow from the aviation sector. But we use SI systems exclusively. Everything in metres, kilograms, seconds. Feet, miles, knots etc are unheard of (Well, we have heard of them. We just don't use them). SI units make calculations and our life a magnitude of order easier. I need to check up how it is with winged reentry vehicles. But they're also likely go with m/s rather than knots. The only time we face difficulty with esoteric units are when we use some rare sensors. You end up looking up the definition of 'BTU' and other similar atrocities.
There are two noteworthy exceptions to this trend though. It's when specifying engine thrust and specific impulse. Engine thrust is often specified in kilograms, (metric) tonnes etc. Of course they mean kgf and Tf (weight equivalent of that mass under 1g). Meanwhile mN, N, kN and MN are also used equally frequently. It's a perennial source of frustration and conflict, with younger generation preferring SI units and the seniors preferring kilograms and tonnes. Meanwhile, specific impulse is even weirder. If you were using SI units, you'd expect N.s/kg or m/s or something similar. Even if you were using imperial units, you'd expect something similar. But the unit everyone actually uses is seconds. For examples, a high end cryogenic engine may deliver an Isp in the range of 450s (SSME had a vacuum Isp of 452s). Sometimes, it's also expressed as 'effective velocity' of exhaust in m/s. There are logical explanations for all these weird units. But the reality is that none of them, including the SI units are strictly correct, because they all use some sort of scaling that isn't linear or an assumption that doesn't apply.
You can blame the US for all these inconsistencies in the space sector. The Americans have a habit of making up units on the spot. For example, the kT, MT yields of nukes were invented by the Manhattan project scientists. Similarly, the unit of nuclear criticality is dollars and cents - thanks to Louis Slotin. (Sadly, he passed away soon after the second criticality accident with the demon core). Anyway, the US also has shot themselves in the foot by mixing up units. The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the planet instead of entering its orbit due to the engineers mixing up the SI and imperial units. Moral of the story, if you plan to go to space, you better choose a measurement system and stick to it. Also, don't make a round scrubber for the command unit and a square scrubber for the lander. Make up your mind first!!
By andrewxdiamond 2025-11-214:531 reply and also by ‘some countries’ they mean about 4% of the earth’s population, or 1 in 25 people.
By SirHumphrey 2025-11-217:44 But 26.3% of the world’s GDP.
In India, decades after metric, many will only understand feet and inches for height, length etc.. Think it's the same in many Asian countries, though some have moved on.
But miles has gone out of fashion. Pounds too..
Some of use in India don't even grok inches, miles, pounds, pints, ares or cubits. In fact, I haven't met anyone in the professional fields (science, engineering and medicine) who is comfortable with imperial or any other non-metric systems. Not even our parents are comfortable with them. It was a nightmare when we were faced with such units in public exams. That's an arcane skill that disappeared 3 or 4 generations ago. To be clear, I'm not claiming that the whole of India is like that. But I'm pointing to the fact that there are entire regions in India where it has been like that for generations.
By kopirgan 2025-11-2211:41 Its not uniform across domains. For example in Singapore or Hong Kong if you ask someone's height it's CM but flat apartment area or price is psf. Ounces are unknown. I guess it's same in India.
By kopirgan 2025-11-2211:31 Yes in a large country it could be regional variations.
By dotancohen 2025-11-218:561 reply Science progresses one funeral at a time.
By overfeed 2025-11-2118:47 The kids need to learn a new system first for things to change. Canada understood this. The US insists on teaching future generations imperial units, so it won't change quickly.
By riffraff 2025-11-216:47 Fwiw, Myanmar has been transitioning to metric since 2013 but, well, they had other worries.
Likewise, Liberia set up a transition program in 2018.
AFAIU both still use a bunch of traditional non US units too, like the UK.
By randyrand 2025-11-217:27 You’ll find imperial units in lots of Chinese products too.
After all, they’re the ones manufacturing the imperial screws, etc.
By goku12 2025-11-2111:56 I love how you mischaracterize it. All measurement systems are as artificial as Esperanto. So that analogy is meaningless here. But as far as popularity goes, the SI system is like English and the imperial units are like Esperanto. Never mind the age difference. So you're better off choosing the system that maintains consistent prefixes and units without arbitrary conversion constants. And that's what the rest of the world does. Meanwhile, enjoy the company of Myanmar and Liberia!
By CogitoCogito 2025-11-217:382 reply I don't understand why this is being downvoted. I would love if metric were used universally, but I don't really see any difference between that and wanting a single language to be used universally. In fact, the cost of different languages is certainly much higher than different systems of units. Converting between systems of units is just trivial arithmetic after all.
Because SI units are part of the language of science and communicating about rockets involves the language of science.
By notahacker 2025-11-2112:01 Also, SI units aren't some niche idealised standard like Esperanto, they're more widely used than the English language...
By goku12 2025-11-2111:57 False analogy, in fact. The explanation is in my direct reply to the commenter.
By oceanplexian 2025-11-216:23 If you feel that strongly, maybe the rest of the world can use the metric system for their reusable rocket programs.
I split my time between Europe and the US, and I am totally not convinced that metric is better.
Some things are ridiculously better in the imperial system - like temperature: In Fahrenheit, 0 is roughly the coldest mean day in densely inhabited areas, and 100 is the hottest. In Metric, 0 is the freezing point of water at sea level in ambient temperatures and with a low barometer reading, 100 is boiling in the same conditions.
Since I measure weather much more frequently than I measure water temps, I am driven cukoo by the silly Centigrade system.
Also, The splitting into 12 used by the foot is more useful, in my experience, than the ten of the metric. In fact, I strongly decry that we teach our kids to use base 10 instead of the much more efficient and easier to divde into fractions of base 12. (You can teach kids to count joints on thier fingers [using the thumb as a pointer] to get to 12x12 on two hands, and give the kids a headstart on fractions, multiplication and division, but I digress..)
On the other hand, having both an Imperial Gallon and a US Gallon, etc, where the same word is used for different amounts, now THAT is insane.
By jdranczewski 2025-11-219:064 reply I've always found the weather argument somewhat unconvincing, because 0°C being the freezing point of water is very much a useful point of reference in weather contexts - it's roughly where one may expect iced-over pavements and rain to turn to snow! And then the higher temperatures are a question of getting used to it - 40°C instead of 100°F is very very warm, 30 is pretty hot, 20 is reasonably warm, etc.
But then I grew up with Celsius, so no wonder I'm used to it!
By notahacker 2025-11-2110:56 Yeah, frankly Celsius is very easy for weather temperatures in temperate environments. Snow and ice is approx 0, room temperature approx 20, a hot summer's day approx 30 and it won't reach 40 unless you go on holiday in a desert region. Easy to approximate on a small range (and the nominal extra precision of Fahrenheit is illusory for talking about weather anyway because you care far more about humidity and wind than sub 1 Celsius differences)
By AngryData 2025-11-242:13 In my area of the US 0 farenheit is useful to know as the point when salted roads start to refreeze.
By overfeed 2025-11-2118:36 > But then I grew up with Celsius, so no wonder I'm used to it!
People confuse familiarity with intuitiveness all the damn time. It's a recurring theme in OS "ease of use" superiority debates as well as metric vs imperial. And date, time or number formats. And road signs.
But I'm never at exactly 1 atm plus the government dumps copious amounts of salt so water never actually freezes at 0°C plus so long as I memorize that 32°F is freezing it's exactly the same as memorizing 0°C is freezing.
I would say the nice thing about the metric system is as long as you convert into a base unit (i.e. Meters, Seconds, etc) then you can easily convert stuff around. But you can't! Metric uses Kilograms not Grams all the time for things like Force (Kg *m/s^2). So I still have the same problem as imperial units ...
It's just whatever your familiar with.
> But you can't! Metric uses Kilograms not Grams all the time for things like Force (Kg *m/s^2)
A <kilo>gram is 1000 times a gram, it's written in the word. Are you serious when you say you can't easily multiply or divide by 1000?
A mile is 5280 feet. I can't just convert 231 miles into feet like that, and that's assuming I remember "5280".
By AngryData 2025-11-242:17 If we still used furlongs it would make more sense because there are 8 furlongs in a mile.
If you can't multiple 231 by 5280 what are you going to do when you measure a length of 23.1 cm and need to multiple it by the height of 52.80 cm?
> Are you serious when you say you can't easily multiply or divide by 1000?
You have missed the point. Force is a mass * distance / time. So, if I have a 1 g weight I want to move 1 meter in 1 second then it takes 1 Newton of force. Except it doesn't because Force is actually kilo-mass * distance / time. If I need to look up (or memorize) stuff like this then the entire advantage of metric goes away because I can just memorize the imperial way as well.
It just comes down to what you're familiar with. There's certainly a benefit to everybody using Metric in the same reasoning as there's a benefit to everybody using Mandarin.
By palata 2025-11-2115:41 > If I need to look up (or memorize) stuff like this then the entire advantage of metric goes away
Hmmm... no?
With metric, once you know what a "meter" is, you have the distances. <milli>meter, <centi>meter, <deci>meter, ... It's one unit: the meter. And fractions of it that require trivial conversions.
With imperial, you have multiple units of distance: inches, feet, yards, football fields, miles.
The benefit of metric is that you have to memorise fewer units, period. Your example is a formula in physics. There you have to memorise F = m * a AND in which units those are (bonus if they are consistent between the formulas, of course). That's strictly equivalent between imperial and metric there.
> It just comes down to what you're familiar with.
Of course, if you're familiar with imperial and not metric, then you're better off with imperial!
> There's certainly a benefit to everybody using Metric in the same reasoning as there's a benefit to everybody using Mandarin.
That's an interesting example: Mandarin is known for being a lot harder than English. Obviously, if you grew up with Mandarin and no English, you will be more comfortable with Mandarin. But people speaking Mandarin don't insist on saying that Mandarin is not harder than English, in my experience :-).
By jdranczewski 2025-11-2115:17 I think in your first point the difference is between "calculation" and "conversion". For calculations, it's generally accepted that arbitrary numbers are possible and a calculator may have to come out. For conversions, it's nice to be able to say that 1250m is 1.250km - I bump into conversions much more commonly than having to do calculations, and it's nice to be able to do them in my head.
I don't think the second point is particularly valid. The SI unit is a kg - which is weird, but always consistent. All Physics units in metric involve kilograms. I will grant that it's unusual that it has a prefix, but still - if you know the 7 base SI units (including the kg), the rest follows reasonably, and conversions are trivial compared to Imperial (orders of magnitude vs arbitrary multipliers).
Fundamentally yeah, what one's familiar with is the system that feels most intuitive, but I don't think these specific arguments against metric work super well
I am ready to bet big that you would never hear that kind of opinions from someone who learned the metric system first. Am I right in your case?
As someone who grew up with metric, my opinion is that nothing that imperial people claim is unintuitive with metric is, in fact, unintuitive to me. Nothing. And I tried hard. We're used to what we're used to :-).
> Some things are ridiculously better in the imperial system - like temperature
This says that you grew up with imperial, I'm convinced of it!
> In fact, I strongly decry that we teach our kids to use base 10 instead of the much more efficient and easier to divde into fractions of base 12.
What's the argument there? That because you can divide 12 by 2, 3, 4 makes it vastly easier than 10, because 10 you can only divide by 2 and 5? How does that make it easier to learn fractions? What about the fact that in metric, a centimeter is 1/100 of a meter, and a millimeter is 1/1000 of a meter? Those are fractions, right?
Just to make it clear: I am not claiming anything about imperial being ridiculous; I totally understand that if you grew up with it, then it's intuitive to you. What I don't understand, really, is all those imperial people who just cannot seem to apprehend the idea that maybe, just maybe, they are biased because imperial is what they know better. Is it that hard? It makes me concerned about cultural differences... do those people realise that others may have different cultures, and that it is okay and not ridiculous?
PS: I upvoted you because I don't find it fair that you get so many downvotes for an innocent opinion. I don't share your opinion, but it's not offensive or anything like that :-).
By AngryData 2025-11-242:23 Fractional units do work much easier with 2, and 3 as common denominators, and I find metric natives are a bit less wieldy with fractional units overall, presumably because they aren't used as often. However the majority of people overall are bad with fractions anyways.
By lacksconfidence 2025-11-2115:221 reply I think the mistake you have is starting from the wrong premise. The premise, IMO, should be that OP has been harassed, demeaned, and otherwise been made to feel bad for 20+ years for using the units they were raised with. At least that's my experience as an American.
Most people don't seem to care about the units, what the haters care about (not you, but the general experience) is having an opportunity to proclaim how much better they are than other people, mostly over an accident of birth.
By palata 2025-11-2115:52 I totally feel for that, you should not be harassed, demeaned or made to feel bad for that (or anything else for that matter).
But I don't think that the rational answer is to try to convince everybody that your system is more intuitive because the other has "ridiculous" features. I answered to a comment that said: "ridiculously better in the imperial system".
By fsloth 2025-11-218:53 Imperial is more familiar to you. You could just have said that.
Everybody hates swapping between units of measurement. You pick one and stick with it. It's natural having the need to move between two measurement systems irritates you.
>I measure weather much more frequently than I measure water temps,
In cold climates water temp is actually the most important thing to know about the weather by a long shot. The freezing point tells you if it's wet or dry, slippery or non-slippery.
