Imperial measure

[DonHoot]

Is there a mod or a way to switch the program (I don't call it a game it's too awesome for that!) to the imperial (feet/miles etc...) system? I already know metric is considered to be superior so I'm not interested in a million comments to that effect! I was born and raised in the Imperial system and it's my "native" system. I can't mentally picture Earths atmosphere extending 135000 meters, but 83.8 miles I can relate to. I know this is my handicap but almost every other program you use has both systems built in. I would like to try to create this mod if anybody can guide me to do this! Thanks.

[Sokar408]

22 minutes ago, DonHoot said:

Is there a mod or a way to switch the program (I don't call it a game it's too awesome for that!) to the imperial (feet/miles etc...) system? I already know metric is considered to be superior so I'm not interested in a million comments to that effect! I was born and raised in the Imperial system and it's my "native" system. I can't mentally picture Earths atmosphere extending 135000 meters, but 83.8 miles I can relate to. I know this is my handicap but almost every other program you use has both systems built in. I would like to try to create this mod if anybody can guide me to do this! Thanks.

I know you didn't ask for this comment... But you should probably focus on fixing the problem, rather then look for the crutch

As for your question. I haven't see any mod for this, however I can't imagine it being too hard to make happen with a MM file. Realism Overhaul (if my memory serves) converts everything into metric. Then all you'd have to do it, is make a MM file and convert the sized and usage to be the correct proportions to the imperial system.

However I don't know much about the imperial system, so if it has weird sizes, it might not be as easy as I imagine atm.

[SSgt Baloo]

Speed Unit Changer might prove helpful. When I'm flying planes, I prefer altitude in feet and speeds in MPH or Mach. I switch back to M/S for rockets, though, since those are the units I learned to use for that, when I was learning the game.

 

[Minwaabi]

Convert everything to Imperial?  Are you really sure you want to do that?  Sure, you are familiar with feet and miles and miles per hour, but are you actually familiar with slugs for mass or lbs as a unit of force or all the other silly units nobody actually uses (even here in the US).  (lbs don't measure mass - that only works on Earth and then only because we are lazy and just talk weight instead of mass).  Also, if you want to do any calculations, you're just going to make your life harder later.   As an engineering student in Michigan, it took us about 1 or 2 problems to realize that it's easier to work with metric than imperial.   We actually asked our professor if we could do the problems in metric.  He told us that's what most American engineers do in our field anyway and just convert back to imperial when we report the answer (in class or to a customer/boss). If you are just looking for mph and ft for altitude, you probably want what SSgt Baloo suggested. 

[Chris P. Bacon]

FAR also lets you switch your airspeed around to mach numbers and knots.

[DonHoot]

Thanks all especially SSgt Baloo ! Speed unit changer did exactly what I wanted! It will actually help me learn metric better! Now I can see BOTH measures on screen! Thanks! I realized I don't really need to change everything, just speed and distance.

[Yuri kagarin56]

On 6/18/2016 at 10:00 AM, DonHoot said:

Is there a mod or a way to switch the program (I don't call it a game it's too awesome for that!) to the imperial (feet/miles etc...) system? I already know metric is considered to be superior so I'm not interested in a million comments to that effect! I was born and raised in the Imperial system and it's my "native" system. I can't mentally picture Earths atmosphere extending 135000 meters, but 83.8 miles I can relate to. I know this is my handicap but almost every other program you use has both systems built in. I would like to try to create this mod if anybody can guide me to do this! Thanks.

Well I mean its pretty pointless to switch to Imperial. Even your nations space agency uses metric. In fact every space agency uses metric because Imperial doesn't always make sense in space.

[DonHoot]

1 hour ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

Well I mean its pretty pointless to switch to Imperial. Even your nations space agency uses metric. In fact every space agency uses metric because Imperial doesn't always make sense in space.

Oh I know Yuri! It's just for my own visualization! Speed unit changer now won't work on KSP 1.1.3. Boohoo!

[the_Demongod]

I highly recommend learning metric. It does indeed take a little while, but eventually it'll start to make sense. You really can't be constantly converting (that would be like translating from another language to your native one in your head-- not fluency), so just stick with it and eventually it'll begin to make sense. I had the advantage of playing a lot of Arma so I got a good head start in visualizing metric distances, but KSP will teach it almost as well.

[Yuri kagarin56]

10 hours ago, the_Demongod said:

I highly recommend learning metric. It does indeed take a little while, but eventually it'll start to make sense. You really can't be constantly converting (that would be like translating from another language to your native one in your head-- not fluency), so just stick with it and eventually it'll begin to make sense. I had the advantage of playing a lot of Arma so I got a good head start in visualizing metric distances, but KSP will teach it almost as well.

Exactly Nasa switched to metric in the 90s because flight controllers were ending up doing imperial metric conversions. 

[RA3236]

37 minutes ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

Exactly Nasa switched to metric in the 90s because flight controllers were ending up doing imperial metric conversions. 

Actually a Mars mission crashed because the inputted the metric units into an imperial calculator.

[Yuri kagarin56]

11 hours ago, RA3236 said:

Actually a Mars mission crashed because the inputted the metric units into an imperial calculator.

That sounds like a Jeb mistake. 

[RA3236]

3 hours ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

That sounds like a Jeb mistake. 

Well, apparently there was a Jeb in the room...

[Yuri kagarin56]

4 hours ago, RA3236 said:

Well, apparently there was a Jeb in the room...

Do you happen to know which mission it was???

[RA3236]

1 hour ago, Yuri kagarin56 said:

Do you happen to know which mission it was???

I think it was a lander or rover... I read it somewhere...

[Kerbart]

11 minutes ago, RA3236 said:

I think it was a lander or rover... I read it somewhere...

Here perhaps!

Edited June 30, 2016 by Kerbart
IPB editor in mobile does certain things with certain animal parts

[Bob Jub]

Why would anyone want to do this? Every bit of orbital calculation knowledge floating on the internet for KSP is in metric... When you're trying to calculate escape trajectories, you surely don't measure your crafts delta-V in feet per second do you?

[lajoswinkler]

On 29.06.2016. at 8:09 AM, Yuri kagarin56 said:

Exactly Nasa switched to metric in the 90s because flight controllers were ending up doing imperial metric conversions. 

Scientists in USA were using metric system for decades. Granted, some of them didn't know how to properly write the units (for example, they would write "gms" for grams, instead of simply "g", and "kph" instead of "km/h" which shows they didn't really care about the fact that kilo- is a prefix), but metric was used simply because imperial is a disgusting tumor on a metric system (yes, it's defined using metric!) that makes calculations horribly impractical.

3 hours ago, Bob Jub said:

Why would anyone want to do this? Every bit of orbital calculation knowledge floating on the internet for KSP is in metric... When you're trying to calculate escape trajectories, you surely don't measure your crafts delta-V in feet per second do you?

Maybe he's trying to recreate Mars Climate Orbiter?

[Wallygator]

NASA uses metric for everything. 

Except for managing their speed on the way home after work. 

[Ser]

What's really nice in ridiculously inconvenient imperial system is the awesome fact that m/s could be easily converted to knots (just multiply by 2), but converting to km/h isn't so easy.

[technicalfool]

Moving to add-on discussions way too late, but there we go.