MetricMoon

As you've probably seen by now, NASA has declared they'll use metric exclusively on the moon. NASA has been using metric for most of it's projects for a very long time now and it's mostly their contractors that still insist on using customary measures (for example Lockheed Martins use of customary measures when everyone else on the project was using metric caused the multi-million dollar loss of the Mars orbiter).

Although they've officially used metric since about 1990, it's been poorly enforced and some contractors (like Lockheed Martin) have been obstinate about their use of customary units. Hopefully this means they're actually going to start enforcing the metric only requirements instead of letting their contractors walk all over them (typically leaving NASA staff to clean up the resulting errors).

From various discussions with NASA staff, what typically occurs is contracts go out in metric and come back in either metric or customary (imperial) units depending on the contractor (and sometimes come back as metric with a double conversion to and from customary measures on the way making for an even larger mess). NASA staff then have to clean up the resulting inaccuracies which is a huge waste of their time (and occasionally things get missed leading to crashed space craft). This is obviously extremely painful for NASA staff, expensive and possibly deadly (fortunately, we haven't lost anything holding a human due to one of these mess ups).

Read more at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/08jan_metricmoon.htm