From what I know the vast majority of nautical travel is measured in knots. It just feels a little ancient for this world of technology. Wether it’s a ship or amphibious craft the speed is always knots. We have pretty reliable GPS and satellite nav nowadays even to the point you can buy a GPS speedometer for less than $50 for your car. I completely understand the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” philosophy but surely it would make life just that little bit easier for sailors and captains to have their speed in MPH/KPH?
In: 579
There is no reason to change, but plenty of reasons to continue using knots.
There’s no time when pilots or boat captains need to convert to miles or kilometers, so why would they change? It doesn’t make anything easier but it could make things harder.
Nautical miles are 1/60 of a degree of latitude. So if you are traveling north/south and you know the coordinates, you can calculate in your head how far that is and how long the trip will take if you use nm or kts.
Maps and gauges are calibrated in nm, so you would need to change all of your gauges and maps over.
If you did decide to change to km or miles, not everybody would change at the same time so you would have a decade of confusion where everybody would need to use both units simultaneously.
Latest Answers