Scott Clauss wrote: >I've often thought the arguments for and against the terms "mass" and >"weight" that I've seen bandied about in this forum were an petty exercise >in semantics. However, if NASA is talking about an object in space, this is >no longer the case. NASA and the blindly following news media give the >object's earth weight (in pounds of course). The weight is different in >outerspace, the mass remains the same. > >Using earth weight is just plain wrong. You're right, of course. I suspect that NASA used weight rather than mass when writing in FFU about the mechanical arm in space because the unit of mass in the foot-pound system is the slug. If NASA assumes that the reader is too stupid to know the metric system, NASA would also assume that the reader is so stupid as to think that a slug is (a) a garden pest, (b) a shot of whiskey, (c) a bullet, (d) a counterfeit coin, (e) a line of type, or (f) a heavy blow with a closed fist -- anything but a unit of mass.
