At 13:06 08/01/02 +0000, you wrote:
Anna wrote:
Orac places the main computer at 'seven meters due west of the entrance' in Moloch, and uses meters again in Headhunter.
Does Orac ever use yards? ie is he more likely to use metric measurements than imperial?
Orac never uses yards, but he uses miles in Orac. (But while checking, I noticed a slight mistake--the second reference to meters was in Power, not Headhunter.)
Looking at other imperial measurements, inchs are alive and well. Tarrant asks for every inch of the ship searched in Powerplay, Orac refers to cubic inches in DotG, and Servalan comments of Tarrant's shooting skills at a distance on one inch in Sand. Centimeters, by contrast, are never mentioned.
Examining miles more closely, they are used by Orac, Slave and the Crew, Servalan and Travis, and various other Ferderation minions and neutrals.
Slave sets the initial orbit in Traitor at 40 miles above the surface, and 10 miles in Orbit. (The rendevous between the shuttle and Scorpio at the end of Orbit is set at 300 miles, rather more than the initial 10.) How any of this relates to the '1000 spacials' traditional for Liberator is unclear. It's more than possible that Scorpio sits in a much closer orbit, being a very much smaller ship and thus presumably less detectable.
Knots (nautical miles per hour) are also in Orbit, by Egrorian, in their traditional role as a measure of airspeed. That is the only speed reference I could find which wasn't Time Distort or Standard By.
Harriet
love Anna