Can’t we just use the metric or imperial system? why is there a need to use this measurement that is seemingly coming from chopping the earth into half and dividing its circumference by 360 degrees, and then calculating a minute of arc of it?
Also what did I just say? The way this measurement is made makes no sense
In: 0
The use of nautical miles is mostly historical. It was easier for nautical navigators to use as there was no need for converting their calculations from angles to distance as they were the same unit. And it still remain because it takes time to switch to another unit. There are still people alive today who used to navigate with sextants and slide rulers and therefore would have prefered nautical miles. It is still taught in naval achademies for use when other navigational techniques such as GPS fails. A lot of charts, laws, tools, etc. are using nautical miles still. It makes it easy to compare distances on these things to each other. If a chart uses kilometers and a tool uses nautical miles that makes it hard to use as you need to convert the values all the time. But we are seeing more and more use of both nautical miles and kilometers which allows things to work in either unit. But it takes time for everything on boats to switch to these and then we can switch units.
Can’t we just use the metric or imperial system? why is there a need to use this measurement that is seemingly coming from chopping the earth into half and dividing its circumference by 360 degrees, and then calculating a minute of arc of it?
Also what did I just say? The way this measurement is made makes no sense
In: 0
The use of nautical miles is mostly historical. It was easier for nautical navigators to use as there was no need for converting their calculations from angles to distance as they were the same unit. And it still remain because it takes time to switch to another unit. There are still people alive today who used to navigate with sextants and slide rulers and therefore would have prefered nautical miles. It is still taught in naval achademies for use when other navigational techniques such as GPS fails. A lot of charts, laws, tools, etc. are using nautical miles still. It makes it easy to compare distances on these things to each other. If a chart uses kilometers and a tool uses nautical miles that makes it hard to use as you need to convert the values all the time. But we are seeing more and more use of both nautical miles and kilometers which allows things to work in either unit. But it takes time for everything on boats to switch to these and then we can switch units.
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