Digital BW, The Print

In the early days of satellite programs they tended to use earth radii 
as a unit distance and seconds as the unit of time. These units resulted 
in numbers not to small and not too large which gave much less numerical 
error in the orbital propagation programs on the available computers of 
the time. Martin built the this particular space craft that crashed in 
to Mars. They also build satellites for programs that use feet and 
seconds, kilometers and seconds and earth radii and seconds. In this 
world there really isn't a standard.

Of course there was the British program that wanted to use furlongs and 
fortnights as the units. And of course the units for velocity would be 
furlongs per fortnight :-).

Truman



Jerry Olson wrote:

>
>
> Bob Frost wrote:
> >
> > Jerry,
> >
> > OK, but didn't one of 'your' spaceprobes crash into Mars or somewhere
> > because one group of workers were using your old-fashioned system of 
> units,
> > while the others were using the internationally-agreed system?
>
> Exactly!
>
> So if the rest of the world were in our measurement system, it wouldn't
> have crashed.  It's all their fault.  :)