In an incredibly stupid move NASA.....

[Dr Mordrid]

....has chosen to stick with Imperial units for its Constellation Program; the Orion spacecraft and its Ares I and V rockets.

Link....

NASA criticised for sticking to imperial units

NASA's decision to engineer its replacement for the space shuttle using imperial measurement units rather than metric could derail efforts to develop a globalised civilian space industry, says a leading light in the nascent commercial spaceflight sector.

"We in the private sector are doing everything possible to create a global market with as much commonality and interoperability as possible," says Mike Gold of the US firm Bigelow Aerospace, which hopes to fly commercial space stations in orbit. "But NASA still can't make the jump to metric."

(NOTE: Bigelow Aerospace is the outfit prepping the first module of an 'inflatable' space station for launch in 2011 that, after a few more modules are added, could end up dwarfing the ISS's internal volume)

Gold chairs a Federal Aviation Administration working group on commercial spaceflight that is trying to change strict State Department rules affecting civilian spaceflight systems. He sees NASA's decision to use imperial units as the latest blow to hit the sector.
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[KRSESQ]

At least they chose one or the other. My GMC Jimmy is half imperial and half metric, depending on the country-of-origin of the parts (like nearly all "American-made" cars in the last 25 years or more, I'm afraid).

I've long held the opinion that NASA has long-outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced. The question is, with what?

Kevin

[J1NG]

Starfleet?

J1NG

[KRSESQ]

That actually isn't a bad idea.

Kevin

[cjolley]

Sticking with it to save money is nuts.
The cost to convert will just go up over time and there will always be some legacy something or other that can be used as an excuse to delay the inevitable.

I did like this though:

The argument may be moot, however.
Constellation, which was initiated by the Bush administration, may yet be cancelled. Its rationale is currently under examination by an independent commission appointed by the incoming Obama team.
"If the program is cancelled, 'zero' is the same in English and metric," notes Gold.

[Brian Ellis]

Except in °C/°F

[KRSESQ]

Sticking with it to save money is nuts.
The cost to convert will just go up over time and there will always be some legacy something or other that can be used as an excuse to delay the inevitable.

These vehicles are all shuttle-derived and I'm guessing the space shuttle was designed in imperial units so it does sort of make sense to keep it that way. The retooling to convert just from imperial-unit fasteners to metric fasteners would be daunting enough. Even if the only other changes were on the blueprints (so 1.03579 inch becomes 26.309 mm, etc.), how many millions of pages of documentation are we talking about? Better to leave it as is and worry about it in future replacement vehicles.

Kevin

[Jammrock]

The US really just needs to bite the bullet and convert everything to metric. Most of the US private industry has or is moving that way anyway. All cars have KPH on the speedometers, etc. It's just dumb that the political landscape can't pull their collective heads out of their arses far enough to see that we really need to make the change.

[Dr Mordrid]

For the record: the NewSpace outfits were metric out of the box, save for those parts where they have to mate up to Imperial NASA hardware which is what the guy from Bigelow Aerospace was complaining about.

IMO the best move would be for NASA to do deep space exploration, manned and un-manned, and for LEO and lunar (and later Mars, which is SpaceX's stated goal) to go to outfits like SpaceX, Orbital and others. NASA blazes the trail and the rest make it commercially viable.

By all means keep NASA's testing, advisory and support role (man-rating standards, heat shield and spacecraft testing, etc. etc.) but by now it's obvious that NewSpace knows how to develop spacecraft that meet budget. Not unlike the role of its predecessor agency NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) which supported, but did not dominate, aircraft development from 1915 until NASA was formed in 1958.

Of course one of the big problems with NASA as its currently run is the high cost of their development programs. Example:

Dev. cost of LEO/4 passenter Orion and Ares I: $30 billion (NOT counting lunar hardware)
Dev. cost of LEO/7 passenger Dragon and Falcon 9: <$1 billion, and most of it on their own dime

Any questons?

Programs like COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) where these smaller/leaner/meaner outfits develop the hardware and get launch contracts in return for meeting benchmarks just has to be better than just tossing billions at ATK, Lockheed or Boeing, whose huge infrastructures rival that of government agencies, and hoping for the best.

So...what kind of spacecraft do we need? I'm with Aldrin's suggestions - with a few enhancements....

1. Dragon for LEO crewed missions (crews up to 7)

2. A winged lander that can come down on land at any airstrip from LEO. In a rescue/escape mission it could be a lifesaver. The DreamChaser/HL-20/40, X-37B etc., all former NASA projects. NASA has canceled more capable spacecraft than it's flown

3. A capsule capable of high speed re-entry from lunar/Mars/asteroid missions - maybe Orion or an enhanced Dragon - and SpaceX has said Dragon could be built with this capability.

4. A launcher between Ares I and Ares V; call it Ares III, Jupiter 232 (the idea of some renegade NASA engineers)....whatever. One rocket to design instead of 2 and the >economics of scale should make it cheaper overall.

5. For the long term: an interplanetary/asteroid manned vehicle with a habitat and rotational artificial gravity for extended missions, capable of docking with mission-designed landers and #3. Build the framework(s) in space and leave it/them there, refitting/refueling for subsequent missions. Design the propulsion module so it can be upgraded as new propulsion systems come along. ASAP add a reactor and some form of plasma drive, VASIMR if it works, and get on with it. See Clarke's Discovery for the basics, he got it right, though not necessarily on that scale.