eli5, Why isn’t there a nautical kilometer?

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eli5, Why isn’t there a nautical kilometer?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

because kilometers are a standardized and universal unit, while a mile is not, throughout history several definitions of what a mile was came up, which is why to this day we have to specify nautical miles because they are different from regular miles

The reason they use nautical miles in sailing and aviation is because it’s defined as 1 minute of latitude at the equator and that probably simplified planning routes back in the day

of course with computers nowadays it would take a simple software update to change the units to metric but you’d have to re-train all the pilots, captains and update all maps and navigation charts for very little gain

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