Everybody would be dead

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

So on the Voy ep Displaced the crew are beamed to a holographic environment designed for optimal human living. This is the temperature!! 70C!!! For all you fahrenheit folk that's 158f.

In universe explanation would be when the captors studied Voyager's database to determine the environment needed some pesky farenheit still lingered within and resulted in this confusion. Thankfully it wasn't actually 70C but was labelled as F or they'd all be dead very soon!

This is why we need everyone to use metric because future aliens may not understand those weird American measurements. Though to be fair these aliens did include literature and entertainment from earth so the F could have snuck in with ye olde books.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Isn't keeping this shit straight part of what Harry was supposed to do at ops? This is why he was never promoted!

 

[Oddish]

Well, arguably they should all just use Kelvin, since it's suitable for everything from absolute zero to blue giant cores, and no confusing minus signs.

And 70° Kelvin is "If I whack you with a baseball bat, you'll shatter" territory.

Going to resist temptation on the subject of Harry.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Isn't keeping this shit straight part of what Harry was supposed to do at ops? This is why he was never promoted!

Harry should have anticipated that any aliens scanning and stealing the ship's database could potentially cause future harm to humans because of two different measurements being employed. Every single of mention of any measurement in ancient american literature etc.. should have been changed to metric.

I mean, a real mission to mars was already destroyed because of these mistakes:

https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/

And that's humans making mistakes about human measurements. Imagine what hostile aliens in a hurry could do with this!

 

[Guy Gardener]

Isn't keeping this shit straight part of what Harry was supposed to do at ops? This is why he was never promoted!

Promotion would have put him somewhere less vital where his Laissez-faire bullpoop half arsedness would not have surely doomed the ship with all hands, if someone wasn't checking his work.

Operations sums up as quartermaster + ducts.

 

[Oddish]

Hmmm... niggling about a few incorrect measurements (those cubic feet didn'tbeling there either), when the show somehow fired 95 torpedoes from a supply of 38. That's a bit like admonishing a guy about some donut powder in his beard and completely ignoring that not only is his fly open, but his "equipment" is hanging out.

 

[evilchumlee]

This was an alien display. "C" might not stand for Celsius, but rather an alien unit of measurement (that just so happens to be closer to Fahrenheit")

Hmmm... niggling about a few incorrect measurements (those cubic feet didn'tbeling there either), when the show somehow fired 95 torpedoes from a supply of 38.

That's really not an issue at all. Yeah they had 38, and they couldn't just replicate more... but we know for a fact Voyager traded fairly extensively with locals, and also had industrial capacity. They designed and built the Delta Flyer in the span of a week from scratch... they could easily build torpedoes, as long as they were able to acquire the materials.

 

[fireproof78]

I really don't think aliens could navigate human measurement regardless of scale.

 

[Hawku]

In the future, we will all excrete a heat-shield mucus over our skin.

 

[at Quark's]

This was an alien display. "C" might not stand for Celsius, but rather an alien unit of measurement (that just so happens to be closer to Fahrenheit")

Why would the rest of the display be in English, except for that one unit?

I guess that global warming just continued and humans, well, evolved and adapted.

Finally it specifies that it's an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere but not which pressure or which proportions of NIT/OXY.

 

[Lynx]

This was an alien display. "C" might not stand for Celsius, but rather an alien unit of measurement (that just so happens to be closer to Fahrenheit")

That's really not an issue at all. Yeah they had 38, and they couldn't just replicate more... but we know for a fact Voyager traded fairly extensively with locals, and also had industrial capacity. They designed and built the Delta Flyer in the span of a week from scratch... they could easily build torpedoes, as long as they were able to acquire the materials.

Exactly what I was going to write. 70C might be Nyrian measurement for heats, equivalent to 205 C on Earth.

For the rest being in English, well the Universal Translator or the B&B device which is used when the Universal Translator is removed or not functionin which messed up the screen text.

Which creates another interesting question: Is the Universal Translator working on text screens as well and how?

 

[evilchumlee]

Why would the rest of the display be in English, except for that one unit?

It doesn't say "Celsius", it says "C". A Klingon Kellicam, roughly equivelant to a kilometer, could well be abbreviated "km"... it appears to be English because it's using the latin alphabet, but it's not an english word.

I mean sure why was it in English at all? They had access to Voyager's systems, so a translation program wouldn't be a big deal (the better question but... why would they do it, since the Voyager crew should have never seen the display?)

Without a character for their unit of measurement, if it was called... idk... cadifom, and their symbol for it was a bunch of squiggly lines with a circle intersected by a triangle... English doesn't have that, they just put "C".

 

[at Quark's]

I guess it's possible, but I still think it's very unlikely.

After all, it seems the translation program (whether the program was alien or Voyager's own translation program they downloaded, the episode doesn't make that clear) attempted to convert the units to English units (see the Cu. Feet). It would be highly likely they could convert their own units to celsius if they downloaded an extensive part of the Voyager database, and even if it couldn't, any translation program worth its salt would/should have issued a warning there that this was an alien, unconverted unit.

Anyway, such minor details don't detract from the episode imho - the screen(shot) obviously never was intended to be crutinized closely by viewers in the first place. I guess I'm going to watch the ep now, it's been years since I last saw it

 

[BK613]

14800 cubic feet? That work's out (roughly) to a 43.4 foot wide circular room with a 10 foot ceiling. So just a bit wider than a Connie's bridge.
Never let a liberal arts major do the math.

Spoiler: The math

V = π * r * r * h -formula for the volume of a cylinder
14800 ÷ 10 = 1480 - dividing by the 10 foot height. this is the area of the room's floor in SQUARE feet
1480 ÷ π = 471.09863155201019387589593958264 -the radius squared
square root of (471.09863155201019387589593958264) = 21.70480664627100966047975761697 -the radius
so r = approx 21.7 feet, which gives a diameter of 43.4 feet, approximately.

(43.4 feet = 13.22832 meters)

 

[Herbert]

This is why we need everyone to use metric because future aliens may not understand those weird American measurements. Though to be fair these aliens did include literature and entertainment from earth so the F could have snuck in with ye olde books.

You can pry my imperial system from my cold dead fingers.

 

[Oddish]

I can use both, if need be.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Star trek Deep Space Nine Let He who is without in sin...

DAX: Aren't you uncomfortable in that uniform?
WORF: Starfleet uniforms are designed for comfort in even the most extreme environments.
DAX: Well, you look out of place. I mean, look around you. Isn't it beautiful?

Only Neelix and Kes would have died.

 

[at Quark's]

You can pry my imperial system from my cold dead fingers.

No desire to pry anything from anyone's dead fingers but I wouldn't expect the system to use those units in a Federation translation, unless it also detected this was Janeway (or she requested it) who came from Indiana where it still might be in use locally by the 24th century. As it is, I would say the imperial system stands no chance to replace the metric system as the world standard today, much less for it to become the Federation standard some time in the future.

 

[fireproof78]

You can pry my imperial system from my cold dead fingers.

Damn straight.

I've tried to learn metric but it's frustrating. It's just beaten in to my head at this point.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Why would an alien station have the signs in English? Maybe its space Engrish, hence it making zero sense