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From a March 17, 1994 weekly activity report by James Oberg to United Space Alliance "Orbit Design" Division, supporting NASA JSC's Flight Design and Dynamics (FD&D) division.


“Why not metric? -- During the course of reviewing the Space Station's FD&D Groundrules and Constraints, it became evident that there were going to be more and more trajectory-related interfaces between FD&D and metric-using international partners (Russia, now ESA, probably also Japan), along with the already-known metric users at USSPACECOM. Mr. Oberg raised the question of why, despite high-level policy pronouncements in its favor, NASA-JSC was not switching to the metric system, particularly in such critical areas as FD&D where bad conversion and user unfamiliarity lay the foundation for future operations errors. Since FD&D measures are not connected with Space Station structural measures (which can retain English measures without impacting FD&D operations), Mr. Oberg suggested that to avoid future data exchange slip-ups, FD&D should take this current but soon closing "window of opportunity" to convert all Space Station trajectory-related activities to metric.

 

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