If you got buried out there..... Would anyone EVER come and visit?

I loved this article but it was hard to read fluently because the writer kept jumping from imperial to metric with the other one in brackets.
I would prefer all measurements to be in metric because 99% of countries use the metric system. A far more sensilble system for measurements. My own country, Australia, went through the conversion in 1966. There was as you would expect a transition period when all the older citizens were converting in their heads, the old measurements.
I believe there was a major stuff up where the UK and the USA were working on a rocket program and the UK was working in metric and the USA worked in feet.
I now know that most scientists in the US use metric so why not get the whole country on board and join the rest of the countries.
- Article has been updated to make order of units consistent. Ed.

Surely Web 2.0 should support \"read in your own units\"? Then provincials can use miles, most of us can use kilometres, and the central country can use li, without distraction.

A couple reasons why we don\'t switch over to metric is because: -Everyone here is using the imperial system of measurements. We\'re one of the few countries that still uses the system, and we might keep it for that reason alone. -(The Biggest) Because the cost of changing things would be unfathomable. Billions would be spent because we have millions of road signs alone that use the imperial system. All of those billions would be from just the tax payer\'s money. We can\'t afford that at the moment because we\'re one of the most broke countries in the world now, and we have more important things to spend our money on (education, roads, NASA, etc). Even if we were out of all debt and had money to spend, changing EVERYTHING would put us back into debt.

I noticed that the article says that Voyager has enough power to continue to transmit until 2025 and it\'s been operational since 1977, we still can\'t build a decent electric car?

\"everyone is doing it...\" \"get on board\" \"sensible...\" This is flawed thinking at it\'s finest. mate.
English measure is inherently tailored around the human condition and is not like metrics, an artificial contrivance that might suit scientists but fails the day to day relationship that people have with their world.
Take Celsius. Might be fine for robots but for people you must squeeze yourself into a rather confining 30 or so degrees not so with 0º F. Here you know it is hot at 100º and very cold at 32º. 72º is just peachy. Even science ditches Cº when dealing with absolute temps.
In building, we logically use feet and inches and seldom yards. And here fractions shine. In fact the world is parted in fractions. 8 fingers and 2 thumbs by the way. And people in yards, never as feet and inches are perfect.
You Aussies use Nautical Miles do you not? Why? Feet are used for altitude and not yards by reasoned choice.
In fluid measure, gallons are used not quarts for fuel. And fluid ounces mean something to humans.
During WW2, English measure was just peachy in defeating the Germans and Japanese. Von Braun had no problem using such to send humans to the Moon... .
I could go on by I am running out of time, something else that is NOT metric. As a SUBJECT to your State you really don\'t have much of a choice in doing so many things so if the State wishes to be like Lemmings, so be it mate. Alex has some good points too.

Naaaahhh... actually, the reason we don\'t change over to metrics here is because the tools at the top (read that metaphorically if you must) aren\'t capable of real change. If they were, the government wouldn\'t own two of three of our primary automotive manufacturers. This excuse has been around for years. In the words of Nike: \"Just do it!\"

we knew this was cool back in 1977. how very cool is it now!

@ lwesson
I couldn\'t disagree more. I grew up in the metric system; it\'s as real, human and tangible as it gets. When someone says a measurement in metric like \"98.5mm\" it makes instant sense. When someone rhymes off something like \"1 and 5/16th\" it pure gibberish. Inputting fractions into a calculator, computer or etc is a huge hassle. Decimal points over fractions any day.
Temperature metric makes sense. 0 is water freezing, 100 is it boiling and 30 is stinking hot. If you want to get more out of Celsius you just make use of decimals. Easy. Having freezing at -32*F and boiling at 212*F is crazy. Lots of unnecessary math in there.
There\'s a reason why scientists, even in the USA, switched to metric ages ago. It makes sense.

Let\'s switch to the Réaumur_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Réaumur_scale Or perhaps Rankine?
How the Voyager probes have kept going so long is with RTGs or Radioiosotope Thermal Generators. They have a core of radioactive material, surrounded by a large number of stacked Peltier junctions. It\'s the reverse of the same process used in solid state electric coolers where a voltage applied across a Peltier junction causes heat to be moved from one side to the other.
Of course there\'s inefficiency so the hot side has an excess of heat compared to how much heat is being absorbed by the cold side.
Heating one side of the junction while cooling the other causes a voltage to be produced. I suspect there are optimizations of the design for producing electricity from temperature differential VS designs optimized for moving heat with electricity.
When RTGs were first used one name for them was SNAP or System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, but it had that word \"Nuclear\" in it so they got renamed RTG.