Posted by Scott Johnson on January 03, 2000 at 13:15:34:
In Reply to: Re: Speed of Hubble posted by Norman Werling on December 31, 1999 at 18:29:16:
> > > How fast were the astronauts moving while on the Hubble doing repairs.
> > > Rumors have it that it was 4000 mph. Can you inlighten us?
> >
> > The astronauts actually move pretty slowly while they repair the telescope, if they moved at 4000 mph they'd have all their tasks done in a couple of seconds!
> > Jokes aside, I think what you are asking was the relative speed of the shuttle and HST to someone standing on earth, which was about 17,500 mph (or 28,163 kilometer/hr for you metric fanatics). The relative velocity between the astronauts and the shuttle was zero (they were traveling at the same speed and direction), so they have really had no sensation of how fast they were traveling.
> Since the whole world outside the U.S. uses SI-metric, it would seem that
> Americans who resist metric are the fanatics for opposing change. By the
> way, since 17,500 mph is a rounded number, one should speak of a rounded
> number such as 28,200 km/h. A sinister technique used by anti-metric
> fanatics is to use too many unnecessary digits to make metric sound
> more difficult.
Unnecessary digits are used by most people because they don't understand
significant digits. They are given an English unit and try to be
helpful by converting it to metric unit. Since metric conversions
are usually given with 5 (or more) significant digits, it is retained
in the calculation. It is not a plot by the "anti-metric fanatics."
Scott