Posted by Meat Pizza on January 04, 2000 at 15:22:19:
In Reply to: Re: Speed of Hubble posted by Norman Werling on December 31, 1999 at 18:29:16:
> > 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).
> 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.
Geez louise -- get a life, will ya? Did NO ONE see the word "about"? Perhaps "roughly" would have more specific (or indicate the non-precision of my answer). It didn't appear to me that the young lady was looking for an answer accurate to 5 significant figures, and my "it's about this fast" answer was off by ROUGHLY 4% from the apparent *real* speed. Think she cares?