value of GRAD angle mode, thought experiment

[brouhaha]

(03-10-2023 06:24 PM)cortopar Wrote:  

(03-10-2023 06:18 PM)brouhaha Wrote:  In the US, a mil is a thousandth of an inch (a milliinch, but no one uses that). In the US, micoinches are also used, e.g. for thickness of gold plating on electrical contacts.

In elementary school in the US in the early 1970s, they taught us metric units and prefixes, and told us the US was going to switch to metric. I'm annoyed that we haven't.

NASA is required to use SI, but there's a waiver process. Every time they start designing a new booster (e.g. Ares I and V, and SLS), they apply for a waiver on the basis that a metric design will cost more. The waiver is always granted. (Same thing that happened when the DoD mandated the use of the Ada programming language.)

In the US military, a “mil” generally refers to a milliradian as Valentin described. Sometimes they’re called a “milrad.” I’d guess if you’re a military machinist or scientist, they might use it the way you described.

I was, like Maximillian's post I quoted, referring to a mil length, not a mil angle. A mil length is used in just about every aspect of engineering and manufacturing in the US, not just military machinists. On the other hand, I've almost never seen US scientists use mil lengths; thankfully they prefer sensible SI units like mm.