NASA senior officials seem to still carry the idea that no government
agency has the necessary "big stick" to get American businesses to use the
metric system. See the following transcript from NPR.
NPR's April 6, 2001 edition of MORNING EDITION covered the NASA Mars
Mission -- "Tomorrow NASA will launch its latest mission to Mars: a small
spacecraft designed to study the red planet from its orbit. NPR's David
Kestenbaum reports on NASA's efforts to minimize the risk of failure.
(4:14) http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20010406.me.01.rmm "
It seems that Dr. Edward J. Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for
Space Science, doesn't believe that NASA can't "tell" American businesses
to use the metric system. Dr. Weiler is responsible for providing overall
executive leadership of NASA's Space Science Enterprise, and with the
attitude voiced in the NPR report, NASA won't provide much leadership to
America's metric-based space science activities.
