Have you ever accidentally used a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon? Or maybe grabbed a metric wrench when you were trying to loosen a 9/16ths bolt? Maybe you’ve heard someone say something weighs a tonne and have had to ask, an imperial ton or a metric tonne?

Luckily when you and I mix up units it likely only makes our food taste bad, or strips a bolt, or simply leads to an annoying argument between which is the right measurement system. But when NASA and Lockheed Martin mixed up units for the Mars Climate Orbiter, it led to the loss of a 327 million dollar mission to Mars.

Article version of this video - http://everydayastronaut.com/mars-cli...

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