[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I believe NASA convention dictates that you have to describe the size as being a dime from X miles away, or the size of X across the continental USA

If you can get 'Tennis Court' and 'Washing Machine' in there, you win a NASA PAO Special Award.

Doug

[djellison]

Oh - this is all set in stone stuff. The concept of ft or metres doesnt exit, things fit into one of the following sizes

Dime
CD
Washing Machine
Golf Cart
Family Car
SUV
Tennis Court
Football Pitch
Texas
Continental USA.


Any angle has to be express as a range to scoring a hole-in-one or the distance to which a dime would mark out that angle.

Power must be expressed in terms of 100w light bulbs

Anything larger than about 20 miles across must be overlayed onto the USA.

High speeds are expressed as X-minutes to cross the continent.

And then when this stuff is regurgitated by the press - any spacecraft or other piece of hardware is prefixed by it's cost.. (i.e. the $750M dollar this, or the $1.2 billion dollar that)



Doug

[dvandorn]

Oh - this is all set in stone stuff. The concept of ft or metres doesnt exit, things fit into one of the following sizes

Dime
CD
Washing Machine
Golf Cart
Family Car
SUV
Tennis Court
Football Pitch
Texas
Continental USA.

You forgot a very important one, though I admit it's outdated and no longer in use. But, from the mid-60s to just a few years ago, any feature on a moon or planet that's in a range of 200 to 300 meters across was referred to as "about the size of the Astrodome."

I think it was only with the demise of the actual Astrodome structure that NASA PAO pulled that particular chimera from their playbooks...

-the other Doug