Measurment question......................

[Guest jaapverduijn]

Greetings Lizardo!My own part in putting men on the moon was rather passive: buying a brand new television set especially for the occasion, and together with the wife breathlessly watching events unfold.Since then I've got a somewhat younger model television set and a somewhat younger model wife, but even after 33 years I remember "the landing" vividly. Were you involved in an active capacity? Be, stay, live and capacity well!Jaap Verduijn.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Staffan,English may be the world language for you, but in the U.S., the number of Hispanics is growing all the time. Soon, Spanish (or Spanglish) may be the language of America. In a large part of the country, both languages are already officially used. So, you are a little behind the times.Too bad you will have to learn a new language.As for driving on the left, I believe that the majority of the peoples of the world do so. Just consider the large countries where this is so: China, India, Japan, Australia, large parts of Africa, etc.Best regards. Luis

[Guest Lizardo]

(no. me and 30 other guys were crowed into a USN "line-shack" watching it on a feeble B&W tv; the whole base shut down to watch. Me too: new wife, new TV, new dog, etc...)

[Guest Lizardo]

Let me "try" to explain. Let's say that you are on one side of a mountain, and where you want to visit is on the other. Let's say this mountain makes an equilateral triangle. On the map, your destination is 10 miles away. (or "X" nauts). But to get there, you will have traveled/walked 20 miles of earth. "as the crow flies" is not the same as "as the feet walk". And the same for surveyor's measures..you might own a half mile of property, on the side of a mountain, but on a map it looks like a few feet. You can't physically measure an ocean with links, chains and furlongs..but you can by degrees lat/long..which comes back to nauts/knots. (by the way, they used MILES and decimals of miles with the moon shot. Now, all metric).

[Guest jaapverduijn]

At least we both watched it breathlessly in *real time*! That's something those young gubbers can't say! Aye, new TV, new wife, in my case not a new dog but a new cat... kind of a whole new LIFE, it often seems. Didn't have the faintest idea, back then, that flight simulation would come into our very own homes, let alone the quality of it. In the late sixties my whole and total experience with flight simulation was one little Link trainer, which then seemed the summit of technology... Jaap Verduijn.

[Staffan 12]

>English may be the world language for you, but in the U.S., >the number of Hispanics is growing all the time. Soon, >Spanish (or Spanglish) may be the language of America. In a >large part of the country, both languages are already >officially used. So, you are a little behind the times. >>Too bad you will have to learn a new language.Hmmm...sorry to dissapoint you, but I don

[Guest Lizardo]

merely cartography.

[Staffan 12]

I couldn

[Guest]

My few cents, but I think that Chinese (Manadarin/Cantonese in all it's dialects) is the world language if we measure by nr. of people speaking it...Come to think of it:if we (the Dutch) wouldn't have sold New Amsterdam (New York) for a Dollar to the English, the world would now have spoken Dutch :-hahBut for sure Jaap will now tell me that New Amsterdam was traded for Surinam :)- Gideon

[Guest jaapverduijn]

Yep, that's what I've learned: "we" got Suriname instead. Couldn't get rid of it fast enough, it took until 1975 before the Dutch government finally managed to push "independence" upon the unwilling Surinamese. Funny, these things. By colonizing a country you ruin it for fifty percent, and later on by de-colonizing you ruin the remaining fifty percent. Result: chaos. As far as Chinese in it's different variations being the most-spoken lingo in the world: I believe you're right. Ni hau (grin)?!Jaap Verduijn.

[Guest]

"I only need to mention two examples where Spanish or "Spanglish" never will come even close to a world language...."Spanish and english are world language

[RobertVA 0]

Each of those statue miles is the same length. You compare "apples" of direct distance to "oranges" of traveled distance. The quantity of miles are different, but the individual miles are the same length.As far as Ships and planes traveling only the direct distance, they often don't. Planes ussualy take off and land facing the wind. Since the runways often don't align with the general direction of flight, the plane travels several extra miles while turning betwen the runway headings and the general direction of flight. Planes often fly in nearly the oposite direction of the destination to face into the wind for a landing or takeoff. Further additions to the distance result from following published airways, standard departures, standard approaches, and air traffic controler directives. Ships often take roundabout routes to avoid shoals reefs and areas they cannot enter because of political restrictions, military exercises, and even space launches.Land isn't always measured by direct measurement either. Dispite its location along the northern border of Nepal, Mount Everest was determined to be the highest point on Earth with surveyer's transit sightings taken from temporary surveyer's towers well into India.There isn't any feature of statue miles, nautical miles, or Kilometers that, for accuracy purposes, prevents the use of any of the measurements on land, sea or in the air. While the division of a kilometer into exactly 1000 meters certainly makes the math easier (just move the decimal) the use of either system of miles is a matter of people being accustomed to the older units and not yet willing to undergo the expense of replaceing all those speedometers, air speed indicators, inertial navigation systems, and DME units. What would cause problems would be pilots with mile based instruments trying to do conversions in their head (or even with a calculator) when a trafic controler gives them altitude, distance, or speed instructions in metric. One demonstration of the consequences of an inadequately planned conversion betwen units involved a plane using a metric fuel consumption chart using the wrong conversion factor to order fuel from a facility equiped with pumps that measured dispenced fuel in imperial gallons. The jet liner ran it's tanks dry at cruise altitude and had to glide to a landing at a closed military airfield!

[Guest The Ancient Brit]

Everybody in the multi-aspect thread seems to having to fun so I might as well dive inEnglish as an world language won

[Guest jaapverduijn]

Greetings Robert!Excellent posting! You pointed out, and countered, the main error of thinking in this thread very well.But don't count on it changing the mind of several of the guys here. A surprising number of people seem to have "learned" and henceforward insist that certain measurements of distance aren't fixed standards, but actually CHANGE according to height, latitude, longtitude, barometric pressure, time of day, or whatever. I really dunno where they got that idea, and it sure is a sad state of affairs. But I don't think it can be changed.Be well!Jaap Verduijn.