An interesting anecdote (Score 1)

A couple of months back, a friend of mine told me a story about the apollo moon shots. Either a programmer or an engineer was working on some data for a particular problem involving distances. The number seemed off to him so he called his supervisor over and asked why the number seemed so strange. The supervisor told him that they were measuring distances in earth radii because you would be unlikely to accidentaly use the number in the wrong place and it also made people more cautious with their calculations.