I have a chip on my shoulder about the metric system as it appears in sci-fi writing.

It drives me nuts that in books like The Expanse (and I think the Bobiverse and Andy Wier's works) that the writer will call distances in "thousands/millions of kilometers".

Really feels more reasonable to just go full send and call them megameters and gigameters, but maybe that's just my American non-metric mind trying to force full use of a system in a way those born to it don't actually do.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Everytime I see one of these posts I have to make the same comment. The US is metric, everywhere that it matters. In the military, in the medical field, and in the scientific field. The ONLY reason we haven't converted every other part of our lives to metric is that our country is 50 times the size of the average European country. Do you know how expensive it would be to replace the infrastructure we've built and maintained over the past 200 years? The tax payers could not handle that burden, and it would require every state to agree to the terms of the change for a total conversion.

At this point, it is just part of our identity. It would be like asking the French to eat day old bread. They could, but why?

Metric is useful but it lacks enough units for everyday use. Like milimeter is useful for measuring somethings, and meter is useful for somethings but not having a foot equivalent makes it less useful. I'd rather say 4 feet than 1.3 meters. Same with grams and kilos; not having an ounce is an oversight. I'd rather order an 8 ounce burger than a 226gram burger. Mililiters and liters are useful but not having a fl ounce makes it clumsier.

My favorite fact about the metric system that blows imperial believer's minds is that if you take a 1cm thick tube you put 1 liter of water it weights 1kilogram and it it 1 meter tall the measure.